Nodo d’acqua

28 ink jet prints, 40 x 30 cm.

Nodo d’acqua is a case study done to analyze my cultural identity through the political and environmental aspects that link Irpinia to Puglia, my family’s places of origin.
The Campania region has a strong concentration of water in the province of Avellino, in particular in the upper Irpinia, thanks to the hydrographic system that revolves around the Picentini mountains. The Puglia region instead is historically water scarce, for this reason, at the end of the 19th century, work has begun on the construction of an aqueduct engineering work to transport water from Irpinia to Puglia. The concentration of water that exists in some areas is in the interest of the state, and it must be guaranteed by the regions that the water is distributed to all equally. So, the agreements that are signed fundamentally allow these populations that have a shortage of water to be supplied as well. This created a material bond between the two regions, a bond that has had the power to change the fate of millions of people. Considering the enormous flow of water that Irpinia bestows free of charge on Puglia and the contextual supply difficulties of the own province of Avellino.
Since is a story of contested water, the question of the aqueduct has always been present in the discussions between my parents.
My interest focused on the journey from Foggia, my mother’s birthplace, to Nusco, a small town in Irpinia, where my father’s family comes from. I was looking for an identity story that was close to me, but that I couldn’t find in one place or another. I got into the car towards Foggia and then from Foggia towards Nusco, a familiar route connecting my mother’s and father’s families. It was a journey to explore an environment that is both known and unknown, due to its being exclusively a place of passage. It is therefore a fragmentary experience of a landscape that is equally fragmentary; for the different entities that interact within the place, where the environment changes completely within a few kilometres, where different borders are crossed several times and where a stream of water of 5000 litres per minute, which geographically would not belong to that place, crosses it.
Following 30 kilometres of the infrastructures containing the vent and drain valves of the Apulian aqueduct pipeline, I have traced the presence of the underground passage of water in the landscape and made visible the connection due to the water governance between two populations. This to experience what my presence is in that place and what my sense of belonging to that place is, a sense of inBetweenness in being on one side and on the other side.