SETTE more art, architecture, re-use and social life

All you need to bring new life to a collapsing old abandoned building is willpower, a few tools and some reclaimed materials. This is the idea inspiring Collettivo Limitrofi, a collective which has been bringing abandoned places back to life since 2009.
This year the yard of garages featured in the last edition, SEI, is once again a place for getting together, holding exhibitions and having fun. SETTE is the name of the event combining sustainability with creativity, art and architecture in a place that would otherwise have no reason to exist.

Over the past three months the members of the collective have got their hands dirty transforming the interior of the space entirely, opening up large portions of the roof, knocking down walls, making new windows and even planting an indoor garden.
The yard in Via Zuffardi has been a lot of things over the past hundred years: a slaughterhouse, a collection of small businesses, a bakery, a lathing shop, a maze of garages. Now, after having been abandoned and then reclaimed, it is an exhibition space that has already hosted more than twenty artists.

Painting and sculpture, photography and urban planning, video art and activities for children, lights and installations: there’s a bit of everything at Limitrofi. What makes the space unusual is the juxtaposition of the signs of time with those of life passing by, of dusty beams with rivers of people passing through the yard, of greenish infiltrations on the walls and the paintings on display.

In only five days the space has already attracted a lot of visitors. Some of them are there for the art, others for the music, yet others out of pure curiosity. As the members of the collective say: "Limitrofi is a cultural association inspired by the need to make something, even out of practically nothing. You don’t know how it will go, whether it will work; the important thing is to do it". With hindsight, we may say that this sustainable hybrid of art and architecture really did work!

Francesco Cibati

Location: Fornovo di Taro, Parma, Italy
Dates: July 31 – August 4 2015
Project: Collettivo Limitrofi
Artists involved: C.A.C.C.A., Matteo Sclafani, Alessandro Canu, Notawonderboy, P-54, Chomp, David&Golia, U.R.C.A., Marcello Rossi, Enrico Ferdenzi, Isabella Bersellini, Maria Storiales, Eleonora Bonanzinga, Irene Adorni, Gloria Dardari, Giulia Montali, Baobab, Centina, Alessia Leporati, Mha Corre fra gli Alberi, Grozni, Simona Costanzo, Naima Fornari, James Kalinda.
Photos: Francesco Cibati

www.limitrofi.org

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