based on Paesaggio civile. Storie di ambiente, cultura e resistenza
Author: Serenella Iovino
Edited by: il Saggiatore, 2022
Napoli Explosion is an art experiment that I have been observing for a few years. It is a visual art project, a live performance set by photographer Mario Amura, which has taken place since 2006 on New Year's Eve. In the post-production phase, hundreds of images are "played along" with music, often composed for the occasion, generating a photochoreography. Punctually, just before midnight, the artist and his crew stand on top of Mount Faito, across the gulf, to find Naples at one end and all of Vesuvius in front. And at midnight on the dot, the explosion begins. The fireworks are lights reaching almost to the edge of the crater. In Amura's elaboration, these lights melt or crumble, becoming metaphysical landscapes of stars and animals, drops of matter and nebulae, colored stripes splashing vertically, delicate nocturnal compositions reminiscent of paintings by Paul Klee. It all starts from there, though: from the explosion of light around the volcano, each year the same in ritual, yet each year capable of telling different stories. "This year I saw more poverty, and more anger," Mario told me on New Year's Eve 2016, commenting on photos of a difficult year for Italy and Naples. Even the transition between 2020 and 2021, after Covid's first year, was a tale in itself: "White lights. Zero noise." Effectively, then, what might seem like a repetitive experience changes each time, and each time the photograph captures the synchronicity of a giant exorcism against the inhuman forces-the volcano, fate-that dwell in this place. This exorcism, however, is performed by removing - again, forgetting - the fact that the place in which it takes place is alive among living elements. And here is what I see in these images: I see in them the people who, because of the fireworks, are maimed or even die as in a theater of war; all the animals, domestic and wild, terrorized and killed by these explosions; and the ramified networks of illegality, exploitation, violence and chemical pollution resulting from the production of the barrels and their use. And I also see there how high real estate speculation has risen on the slopes of Vesuvius: the lights show that houses completely surround the volcano. This means that, in spite of the evidence and any precautionary principle, in the local imagination Vesuvius has reverted to being "simply" a mountain, and is covered with a crust of buildings, often illegal, and also with lots of landfills, large or small, all illegal. Its nature, along with its threatened living environment, has been, once again, forgotten. But from this artistic experiment one can also see that the volcano is there, dark among the lights, silent under the barrels, at one with the mind of this place. Amura has often told me that Napoli Explosion is an artistic experiment, yes: but also anthropological and psychological. It is so because it investigates how the volcano enters the fears, hopes and emotions of these people caught in a place that is both a womb and a trap. Beyond the folklore, these fires express periods of crisis, the desire to forget or to rebuild, and, paradoxically, the need to resist while remaining part of a territory pervaded by violent forces. Standing in the cold on top of the mountain facing the volcano with his team of eight to nine elements, Amura is like Pliny the Elder. He gathers the elements of this story, well aware that the real protagonist is a landscape that could swallow us all. But the other thing his photos reveal, I believe, is the unmentionable collective desire to be swallowed by the porosity of the inhuman. This makes me think that all landscapes are porous, all can engulf us, partly because of the way we treat them; and indeed, perhaps we are actually daring them to do so. I talk about landscapes, I mean the planet.
