Rome is Degraded. Can't wait to Return

A personal favorite.  No orange fencing or yellow tape here, probably because this project, intended to protect
pedestrians and vehicles from the collapsing wall at left, was initiated years ago--perhaps decades ago--before
orange fencing was invented.  Maybe before plastic was invented.  The road is via di Porta San Pancrazio, on the Gianicolo, below the steps leading from Acqua Paola.  Via Garibaldi is ahead. 

Because we're in Rome only once each year (though for an extended period), we see both less--and more--than year-around residents.  We miss many of the day-to-day details of the city's governance.  But our absence also provides a greater sense of change, of how today's Rome differs from last year's Rome. 

The picture isn't entirely bleak.  On the positive side, the efforts of Tevereterna and other organizations are beginning to reshape Romans' relationship to the Tevere, a relationship damaged, we once thought permanently, by the enormous walls erected in the late-19th century to control flooding.  The enormous and powerful William Kentridge mural on the west bank may mark a turning point in this regard.  Incredibly, Romans are beginning (but just beginning) to pick up after their dogs.  So, too, the turn to private sources of funding to restore Rome's public monuments and buildings holds promise for cleaning up and repairing Rome's cultural heritage.  More on this in a future post. 

In some ways, however, the city and environs appear to be more degraded (degrado is the Italian word) than ever. 

1) The pothole problem.  The Romans refers to the holes in their streets as "buchi"--that is, holes.  And they are, we believe, rightfully concerned that their streets are becoming more hazardous year by year.  Our perspective on this derives from the 700 miles we put on the scooter each time we visit, over roads in every section of the city.  Hitting a pothole or a rough patch of road can be dangerous, but avoiding potholes is dangerous too, especially when the streets are wet, but any time.  Pothole avoidance inevitably distracts the driver from other problems on the road, and may take the scooter into the path of another, faster-moving vehicle, approaching from behind.

The worst Rome road by far is a quagmire of potholes, bumps and gravel leading to a sports facility on the north end of the city; simply scary.  Of the major consular roads, via Salaria may be the worst; as one exits Rome proper and moves onto the narrow, 2-lane, fast-moving "highway" north of the city, the right 2/3 of both lanes is simply undriveable on a scooter.  The left 1/3 is fine, but it positions the scooter perilously close to oncoming traffic.  In the city, most streets are worse than they were last year, in our opinion.  I was too busy dodging potholes to photograph them.

The Bernini "bee fountain" on via Veneto, nicely framed by
orange fencing

2) The orange fencing problem.  Whoever has the orange fencing contract for Rome is doing very well, indeed.  It's everywhere.  Its purpose is to fence off projects while they're being worked on.

Useless fencing on the Lungotevere

That's noble, except that one seldom sees anyone working in or around the orange-fenced areas, and it's rare that a project gets done and the fencing removed. 

Collapsed fountain, Flaminio, rear of
Tree Bar

Put another way, the city appears to be adept at installing the orange fencing, yet rather inefficient at getting the required work done and the fencing removed.  Hence the impression--and it's really just that--that the orange fencing is accumulating, year after year. 

Almost an art work.  For patrons of bar, right.

 However
appropriate it might be in protecting citizens from say, walking into a hole, it's also bright, ugly, and, as a sign that not much is getting done, all too obvious. On this trip alone,  we took a dozen photos of orange fencing, and could have taken dozens more.  We're sharing just a few.

Protecting peds from fallen tree.  Looks like it
didn't fall yesterday.

3) The yellow tape problem.  Yellow tape is sometimes used for the same purpose as orange fencing: to mark a potential hazard.  Here's a good example: a large portion of a tree has fallen on the sidewalk, and the danger is set off with yellow plastic tape.  The same tape is used for crowd and automobile management, for example to mark areas where parking is prohibited during a soccer match.  As letters to the editor in the local papers reveal, the authorities often fail to remove this "control" tape when as event is over.  So it remains in place, sometimes for weeks.

4. The trash problem.  Not exactly man bites dog.  Everyone--literally, not figuratively--knows that Rome has a trash problem.  Trash is--figuratively, not literally--everywhere. 

Piazza Mancini, Flaminio

Every neighborhood,  almost every sidewalk.  On one street after another, garbage bags, boxes, mattresses, construction debris--you name it--sits on the street next to overflowing trash bins.

Why?  No one seems to know. Too few bins?  Infrequent pickups?  Lazy garbage workers?  Obstructionist unions?  Tight budgets?  Romans who don't care?  If Virginia Raggi, the newly-elected mayor, can find a solution and clean up the city, she's a cinch to get re-elected. Good luck.

Building collapse

6.  Projects that never end--or don't even begin.  We witnessed one of these on our last trip, staying in a building on the Lungotevere at Piazza Gentile da Fabriano.  In February of this year (2016), long before we arrived, several floors of an identical building on the other side of the piazza collapsed, producing tons of rubble that had to be removed from the sidewalk and streets below.  The city moved the debris from the sidewalk but did not remove it, opting to deposit it in a huge mound across the two outbound lanes of the Lungotevere, one of the busiest streets in Rome.  Four months later, when we moved in, the mound was still there, still blocking the outbound Lungotevere, and forcing every vehicle taking that route to turn into the piazza, go around it (passing three major streets), and negotiate a stoplight before moving on.

Rubble storage site: the Lungotevere.  In three weeks at this location, we never saw anyone working here.  Still,
someone dropped off the dumpster.  Progress?

Oh, yes: we can't wait to return.  After all, it's Rome.

Bill
 

"Sorry for the inconvenience.  We're working to improve our city."  Working, maybe.  But not here.

 

William Kentridge's "Triumphs and Laments": A Spell-Binding, Ephemeral Work on Rome's Tevere River

One of the two processions along the Tevere in front of Kentridge's wall drawings, with enormous projections of iconic Rome figures of history - and of triumph and lamentation - against those drawings.  The "puppeteers" were colorfully dressed and highlighted as well, giving a sense of the making of the performance (see close-up below).

A must stop on anyone's visit to Rome from now (April 2016) until about 4 years from now must be William Kentridge's artwork on the right bank (Trastevere side) of the Tevere between Ponte Sisto and Ponte Mazzini.  What can we say besides just don't miss it?  Head down to the river level at one of the stairways and walk the 500 meters slowly, drinking in the great work South African artist Kentridge created on these massive river bank walls.

If there is a repeat of the performance that opened the artwork on Rome's 2,769th birthday, April 21, 2016, don't miss that either.  The music and "projections" were spell-binding.

The theme of "triumphs" and "laments" is presented by Kentridge in his main mode:  the drawing of people and animals in black and white.  We were fortunate to see a few of Kentridge's videos, in this same style, in the path-breaking 2015 video exhibition at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery (Buffalo). Here in Rome, the marrying of Kentridge's style with the subject matter of 2700 year-old Rome and the blackened 57-foot high walls of the Tevere (Tiber River) are quite frankly a thing of beauty.

Rome's lupa or she-wolf... here, instead of the infant twins Romulus
and Remus, Kentridge presents amphorae, or water jugs.

Kentridge draws on themes familiar to Romans - from the lupa (she-wolf) who suckled Rome's founders, Remus and Romulus - to the deaths of Rome martyrs such as Giordano Bruno (the "heretic" monk, burned at the stake by the Church in 1600), Aldo Moro (moderate politician murdered in 1978 by radical leftists) and Pier Paolo Pasolini (filmmaker and artist killed mysteriously in 1975 in the Rome seaside town of Ostia). He also uses iconic Italian objects like the Vespa, the moka coffee pot, the Necchi sewing machine, and the bicycle (from DeSica's neorealist film, The Bicycle Thief).  He also brings the successes and tragedies to the present, with references to the migrants landing on the Italian island of Lampedusa.  Persecution and migration is a strong theme in this set of drawings.

Kentridge's interpretation of La Dolce Vita.
Marcello Mastroanni and Anita Ekberg
are in a bathtub, under a shower, in place of the
Trevi Fountain.  Kentridge also makes heavy use
of carts and wheels (as here), perhaps signifying
travel through time.

 A 10-Euro booklet provides a guide to the 1/3-mile wall of art, as well as explains the techniques for making these enormous figures.  If that isn't available, hopefully some of this explanation will be online. Even without it, the work is tremendously powerful.

The iconic Vespa is at the center of this procession.

As we watched one of the opening performances on the left bank, looking across at Kentridge's drawings, we were captivated by the music of triumph and lamentation and the enormous puppetry or projections. The large shadows moving across the great walls, with the colorfully dressed puppet masters (if we can call them that) also visible, was mesmerizing.

Giordano Bruno, represented by Kentridge
through his statue in Campo de' Fiori

The music for these opening performances, composed by Philip Miller, used a variety of music types, from liturgical songs of the late Renaissance to West African slave songs, to ancient Southern Italian songs.  Frankly, the 4 of us (we and 2 of our good Roman friends) could not truly "understand" the music, and I'm not sure we were supposed to, but we did pick out the religious music, the African music, and the Italian folk music - we knew there was a confluence of musical types.  The sounds of triumph and lamentation were superimposed on each other.  It's an experience one was immersed in, rather than must or should have comprehended in its entirety at the time.

Hopefully the music too will be available in some form in the future.  Meanwhile, we will leave you with a link to our video of 30 seconds of the April 22 performance.

The making of the wall art, if we can use such simple words to describe it, is fascinating as well. We were in Rome in 2005 when Kristin Jones first presented her "lupa" - actually several "lupe" on the walls of the Tevere in this spot. She created them by erasing the background to produce the white, leaving the dirty walls to provide the figures themselves.  This same technique was used by Kentridge, who was inspired by, coached by, and encouraged by Jones, who is billed as the Artistic Director of the project.  We also need to give a shout-out to "Tevereterno", the non-profit organization that presented this as well as Jones's work in 2005, and has been working hard and long to reclaim the Tevere, under the direction of architect Tom Rankin.

Because the work depends on the erasure of dirt from the walls, the walls will in time become dirty again, and the black figures will appear to fade into the darkening walls.  That's the reason we suggest you might have only about 4 years from now to see this magnificent, ephemeral, work.

Joggers using the Tevere's bike and walking path, with Kentridge's
art as a backdrop.

Will "Trimphs and Laments" be received as great art?  We have yet to hear from establishment art critics in that regard. We do know the crowd on April 22 was wildly enthusiastic, cheering, whistling, and clapping for the performers and the art.

Dianne

Some of the hundreds of observers of the April 22, 2016 performance, from the left bank of the Tevere.