The Mural on Scalo San Lorenzo: Reading the Politics of the Neighborhood

 

Of San Lorenzo's many murals, none captures the community's history of in-your-face, leftist politics--at one time the product of the neighborhood's working class, now of a newer population of university students--than the street-level monster on Scalo San Lorenzo. The street can be dark and foreboding, having been victimized by a 1960-era elevated highway running down its center, but it was central to the area's development and character. To the south and east lie a maze of railroad tracks that at one time were crucial to the area's commercial development; Scalo, a word that defies precise definition, has some relationship to loading and unloading--it's likely related to the English word, "scale." 

About fifty feet long and accomplished mostly in grey tones, the mural is a complex political statement of the ideas that currently motivate San Lorenzo's residents, generally, and particularly those in the social space and organization that occupies the space at Scalo San Lorenzo, #33, behind the mural and was, apparently, responsible for it: COMMUNIA. Created a few years ago, COMMUNIA (see below the photo of the bus in the mural) is a feminist movement, mutual assistance organization, and a laboratory for experimenting with modes of production, and culture, that lie outside the marketplace. 

As a feminist movement, it works against workplace harassment (le molestie) and other injustices; the driver of the #19 bus (today, replacing the tram on via dei Reti while work is done on the tracks far away in Parioli, it is central to the area's transportation network) is a woman with fist raised (looking a bit like the Statue of Liberty), but it's noteworthy that the mural does not attack patriarchy or men in general. The section of the mural at right foregrounds the role of women and the community's need for green space and public services. I have not been able to figure out who L. Blissett was or is. 

[Nota bene: an anonymous reader explained that L. Blissett was Luther Blissett, a "multiple use name" shared by artists and activists in Europe and elsewhere since 1994. That is, there is no individual artist named Luther Blissett. He (named after a soccer player) is a community "myth" and a community project. For more--much more--see the entry "Luther Blissett" in Wikipedia, at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luther_Blissett_(pseudonym).]

Among the issues the mural raises are gentrification and the proliferation of Airbnbs that have raised rents and driven out residents, especially older ones ("poor people leave quietly," says the mural).

Increasingly, the area is unable to support traditional business; there is no classic Roman deli, no dedicated bakery (although there is one attached to a bar), only two orto-fruttas (fruits and vegetables) and one 72-year-old butcher with a very limited array of meats.

The source of the problem, the mural tells us, is money ("Rich Uncle" Pennybags, the figure from the game Monopoly) and developers, represented here by grotesque machinery, part metal/part skeletal animal. "Fight power not people," is the phrase on the front of the bus (photo showing bus, above). 

San Lorenzo values equality. OMNIA SUNT COMMUNIA, a well-known phrase from the Latin, translates as "all things are to be held in common." And it values inclusivity: "No Borders"/"A San Lorenzo Nessuno E' Un Straniero" [at San Lorenzo, no one is a stranger]. 

The mural also includes at least two aspects of the community's physical presence: the Sopra-Elevata (the elevated highway that runs down Scalo San Lorenzo) and the neighborhood's graffiti, represented here in the signature of GECO (high up on the mural) and the painter Hogre.

Bill 

 

GECO in Rome: Art or Egotism?

 

The building in the photo is a public market on Via Magna Grecia (we wrote 10 years ago about the market and Morandi), not from the the Basilica of San Giovanni in Laterano. It was designed by Riccardo Morandi, a well-known and admired engineer in his day, whose reputation has since been tarnished by the collapse in 2018 of the "Morandi" bridge in Genoa, which Morandi also designed. The circular parking ramp at the far end of the building--not visible in the photo--is nothing short of lovely. But in light of the Genoa debacle, it has been closed.

The letters at the top/end of the building are not part of Morandi's design. They are work of Lorenzo Perris, a 32-year-old Roman who until 18 months ago was anonymous, known only for the letters GECO--Perris's "tag." Over the last few years, Perris has done his GECO thing on hundreds of buildings, most of them in Rome and some in Lisbon. Sometimes with paint, but more often with paste-ups. The letters on Morandi's building are most likely large paste-ups. He also uses smaller stickers on signs--and anything else he can find to affix them to.  

A GECO sticker on a motor scooter, outside our apartment on  via Tuscolana

Perris, who resides in the Via Prenestina area of Rome, has recently been accused of damaging many of Rome's buildings with his tags. Just how many buildings have been "damaged" is not clear, nor is the extent of the damage, but the legal complaint filed against Perris charges that his work has appeared on the Central State Archive building, on the benches along the Tevere near Porta Portese, on the Arch of Quattro Venti, in Villa Pamphili, in Via Ardeatine, and at the Parco degli Acquedotti (Park of the Aqueducts -- #2 on RST's Top 40), among many others. Authorities claim to have confiscated some 13,000 of his works. 

In the San Lorenzo quarter

The authorities, and the folks at the Rome newspaper Il Messaggero, not only believe Perris's GECOs to be damaging, but they are convinced that his "bombing" is entirely lacking in artistic merit. 

Perris seems to agree with the critics. In 2018, when interviewed during a sojourn in Lisbon--Rome having become too "hot," a place where he was more likely to be caught (and identified), even though he works only at night or at dawn--Perris admitted to being a "bombardier," whose style did not differ from city to city. 

"I want to spread my name," he added, more than to develop and sharpen an aesthetic sensibility. "The prime objective of the aggressor [that is, him] is quantity....My objective is to be everywhere and be seen and known by everyone. I see graffiti as a sport--an illegal one. It's as if I were a superhero; the more one is exposed, the more one must be anonymous. The world of graffiti is pure egocentrism, in my case a veritable megalomania. I want to attract the attention of everyone and to provoke feelings, whether of love or hate."

Bill 

Graffiti GECO, 2020