I am convinced that the present, which envelops us and often drags us along, hides within its material traces, relationships, and meanings that are worth investigating and telling. Never like today are we leaving things behind. The eye of archaeology has the ability to grasp the invisible, to value marginal details, and to reconstruct seemingly lost connections.
I work with things and in places, documenting objects, memories, landscapes, tangible and intangible stories of people and communities. I seek out traces, position them in space, analyze their shape, materials, reconstructing their origins, trying to understand uses and meanings. Everything is interconnected.
Doing present archaeology in critical contexts – for example, working on contemporary Mediterranean migrations – means making an effort for collective restitution; it is trying to counter-narrate through the data collected in the field, reading the transformations of a time of which we are a part, recontextualizing and identifying new attributions of value. It is to oppose resistance to silence, to undermine a dominant discourse full of already defined words. Francesca Anichini
We will be wisely welcomed by Chiara Alpago Novello at 9:30 for breakfast with coffee, tea, and all the good things needed to start the day well; at 12:30 light lunch, greetings, and toast.
