Abstract
Over the last five decades, Italy has invested in the construction of public works as the core strategy to dynamize its less favoured regions; however, due to multiple and inherent dysfunctionalities, many of these remain half-built and abandoned today. The group of artists Alterazioni Video refer to this phenomenon as “Incompiuto” (“Incompletion” in English), coining a name for a new architectural style where the characteristic unfinished materiality speaks back to Italian idiosyncrasy. In the pursuit of existential dignity, Alterazioni Video suggest that these sites muster and reassemble metaphysical places of contemplation, thought and the imaginary. Drifting at one of its most spectacular samples (The Dam of Blufi, Sicily), the present collaboration between an architect and a writer testifies to said assertion, and celebrates the phenomenological qualities of modern ruination argued in emerging geographical literatures.
Highlights
Is Italy in love with its ruins? to the extent of The Dam of Blufi is the sky in Sicily a block of air where logic and reality curves warped by a relativity that applies to more than time and space?— to lend a phrase from someone like Ballard—air warping the moral as matter is a result of a bent continuum —and precipitates in a dam, sometimes and the damned
The only prospects that truly materialised are among those who lined their pockets. Perhaps among those who resisted— for whom vanished the prospects of the untouched nature
The moist reflex, the narrow path of mud. His shoes, moving on, carrying and caring – they saw, today: a dead bird under the lack of ’ roof, getting into his deadening auspice drawn by a kicked tyre, fitting the templum of this afterimage lingering trash archaeologies cleansed by the noon
Summary
To cite this article: Pablo Arboleda & Pawel Jankiewicz (2021): The Dam of the Damned, GeoHumanities, DOI: 10.1080/2373566X.2021.1942130 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/2373566X.2021.1942130 Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rgeo20
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
