Francesco Dongiovanni

Departing from a passage of the “Ecclesiastes” reflecting on the insatiable desire of watching and listening to the things of the world, begins a visual and acoustic chase of archival images from WWI, videos found in a mobile phone, whispers in the street, the melody of a piano, silent landscapes, urban architecture, and night lights.

Peppino lives in the Italian countryside, between Puglia and Basilicata, Altamura and Matera. His days and his works are dedicated to the land and animals. The time of its existence follows the movement of the sky and the wind. We don’t need to know much about him: that little or that much – which is everyone’s life – is written in his eyes.

"It is always, out eyes alone, our way of looking at things. Nature alone knows what she means now, and what she had meant in the past" (J.W. Goethe – Aphorisms on Nature)

In artist studio, the painted faces and figures slowly take shape. The eye and the hand at work seem chasing eachother and weaving togheter. The moving image and the painting start mirroring and recalling eachother, becoming one single element.

Count Karl Ulysses von Salis-Marschlins was a Swiss botanist and naturalist. He travelled widely observing and studying the lands he visited. In 1789 he travelled in the Kingdom of Naples. On returning home, he wrote a book about it. Here is how he described his visit to the "Casino del Duca" at San Basilio, the largest estate of Apulia, South Italy. "Anapeson" are these places, now, sleepless and abandoned within the distracted modernity. The History as ruins.

Count Karl Ulysses von Salis-Marschlins was a Swiss botanist and naturalist. He travelled widely observing and studying the lands he visited. In 1789 he travelled in the Kingdom of Naples. On returning home, he wrote a book about it. Here is how he described his visit to the "Casino del Duca" at San Basilio, the largest estate of Apulia, South Italy. "Anapeson" are these places, now, sleepless and abandoned within the distracted modernity. The History as ruins.

A family’s old film found in a drawer. A big country house of childhood, abandoned. An archive of photos, one hundred years old or even older. A walk in a small town cemetery. Fleeting visions from an (unfinished) film about time.

A family’s old film found in a drawer. A big country house of childhood, abandoned. An archive of photos, one hundred years old or even older. A walk in a small town cemetery. Fleeting visions from an (unfinished) film about time.

A family’s old film found in a drawer. A big country house of childhood, abandoned. An archive of photos, one hundred years old or even older. A walk in a small town cemetery. Fleeting visions from an (unfinished) film about time.

The images you are watching were shot by Domenico Notarangelo, who was correspondent for the communist newspaper “L’Unità”. He has documented over time the customs and traditions of Southern Italy villages. 1969. Accettura, a few kilometres from Matera. Whitsunday. A big Turkey oak, cut down on Ascension Day, is tied to yokes of oxen and dragged out of a wood. In another wood, a holly is carried by peasants on their backs. In the evening, these trees meet in the village. The following Tuesday, the treetop, the “Cima”, is grafted onto the Turkey oak, the “Maggio”: it’s the marriage of trees. Meanwhile, the procession of the patron saint makes its way along the village streets, preceded by a group of women who carry votive constructions on their heads. At sunset, the bravest climber, Zizilone, climbs up and reaches the treetop.

For hundreds of years, on the Murgia plateau, on the border between Apulia and Basilicata (in the south of Italy), man walked with his flocks, under the sun and wind. Today, an old shepherd is stubbornly repeating the same gestures and meeting the same fate as his ancestors. A fate made of sky, rocks and solitude.