After a decade of unprecedented real estate development, Madrid starts to deal with its contemporary ruins: on one hand, more than 47,000 empty apartments wait for a first buyer (Asprima report/Dec.2009), and on the other, hundreds of kilometres of perfectly paved streets run between eerie blocks, waiting for a first construction on their sides.
‘Road Trip through Madrid’s Bubble Challenge’ is an on-going photo-reportage of these frozen in time areas of development. Can they become the natural protected areas of the future?
‘Oae’ is a video work which takes Italy’s colonial occupation of Libya as its subject matter. Patrizio Di Massimo examines this dark chapter in his native Italy’s history by overlapping excerpts of his own footage with black and white documentary and archive material taken from The Lion in the Desert, a film made in 1981 by Mustapha Akkad and censored in Italy at the time for its exposé of empire building and military atrocities. Filmed in high-definition colour on the streets of modern day Tripoli and amongst historical ruins across Libya, the artist sought out the monuments and architectural remnants of both Ancient Rome and more recently Fascist rule from 1911-1940.