‘MESSINA: A CITY WITHOUT MEMORY?’
A long essay to accompany the video essay, to be published in the collective volume associated with the Memory and Place project
Synopsis
1. Problems and aims
When Messina was destroyed in 1908, the expectation was that the earthquake would be one of the most memorable events in Italian history. That expectation has evidently not been fulfilled. But the notion that Messina is a city without memory also raises important questions about the meanings of memory and forgetting in contemporary Italy .
2. Evolution of the video essay
Recounts the development of the film, including a discussion of methodological, practical and presentational problems.
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3. Messina and memory: history and architecture
a. Messina: a brief history of memory, 1908-1958b. Architecture and memory
Examines what evidence there is for a ‘memory deficit’ in Messina since the earthquake, in terms both of its history and its currently layout.
4. Commentary on the video essay
a. Cimitero monumentale: memory and forgetting in the necropolisb. Quartieri baraccati: Giostra and Bisconte. (A brief history of Messina’s shanty quarters.
Expands on the arguments set out in the video essay by looking at the state of historical research on the Gran camposanto and the persistent housing problem, the so-called baracche.
5. Conclusions: the meanings of memory in Messina
a. Architecture
b. Politics
c. The tourist gaze averted
d. Memory as a value
A range of problems of political management, but also a horizon of memory expectations generated regionally, nationally and internationally about what local and urban identities, histories and places ought to be, leave many Messinesi unable to create stories about their city that make the earthquake part of history rather than its vanishing point.