il mondo di sotto
Il mondo di sotto, 2017
[The world below]
HD video, 24'24'
"Il mondo di sotto" is an audiovisual journey by Chiara Caterina and Nicola di Croce.
Galaverna | approaching post-digital sound 2017
Galaverna | approaching post-digital sound 2017
Text by Leandro Pisano
Italian independent filmaker Chiara Caterina and Venice based sound artist Nicola Di Croce spent together a long time photographing, filming, writing and recording in a deep exploration of Basilicata region, Southern Italy, “in search of its pieces of bitterness and wonder”.
Il mondo di sotto is the result of this audiovisual inquiry that crosses landscapes, territories and elements from the high mountains of Pollino to the underground world of mines in the Val d’Agri area, 100 mt below the surface of the earth. They walked in the rain and sunshine, meeting people, experiencing desolate places and flourishing plateaus, water and ground, finding a sense of landscape animated by the magical, but aiming at exploring coexistences and divergences between modernity and traditions, past and present, artificial and natural, terrestrial and subterranean.
Caterina and Di Croce’s audiovisual essay is a sort of a rite of initiation to the residuality and the liminality of a Southern Italian rural region in 2017, following the echoes of suggestions evoked by literary works as Christ Stopped at Eboli and Magic: A Theory From The South. But at the same time, it draws on critical issues as offshore oil drilling, exploitation and colonial processes. In the deepness and delicate narration of both visual and sonic levels, we can find the traces of a sharp and poetic inquiry that takes the audience to a mesmeric and arcane world crossed by voices and bodies from the past and the present. Il mondo di sotto reveals itself as a powerful and touching immersion in a resonant and reverberating environment facing us to a fascinating and problematic condition of such a rich and conflicting land.
Il mondo di sotto is the result of this audiovisual inquiry that crosses landscapes, territories and elements from the high mountains of Pollino to the underground world of mines in the Val d’Agri area, 100 mt below the surface of the earth. They walked in the rain and sunshine, meeting people, experiencing desolate places and flourishing plateaus, water and ground, finding a sense of landscape animated by the magical, but aiming at exploring coexistences and divergences between modernity and traditions, past and present, artificial and natural, terrestrial and subterranean.
Caterina and Di Croce’s audiovisual essay is a sort of a rite of initiation to the residuality and the liminality of a Southern Italian rural region in 2017, following the echoes of suggestions evoked by literary works as Christ Stopped at Eboli and Magic: A Theory From The South. But at the same time, it draws on critical issues as offshore oil drilling, exploitation and colonial processes. In the deepness and delicate narration of both visual and sonic levels, we can find the traces of a sharp and poetic inquiry that takes the audience to a mesmeric and arcane world crossed by voices and bodies from the past and the present. Il mondo di sotto reveals itself as a powerful and touching immersion in a resonant and reverberating environment facing us to a fascinating and problematic condition of such a rich and conflicting land.
