The porticoes with eyes closed
by Marinella Manicardi for UNESCO 18.05.2024
I am not a historian or a urban planner.
I am an actress. that’s right.
So, I was thinking: if, as an actress, I should interpret the Portico
- You play the Portico.
What?
- The Portico: look, study, get informed, try: the Portico …
Well, it is not so much about being an object instead of a person,
this is not the problem, in theatre we have always been fluid
and everything can be represented…
It’s just that there is no Portico, there are many, all different, like you…
Ah, this is an idea! Would you like to interpret the porticoes?
Do you want to try? I will help you!
As a column you should be masculine, upright, tall or short,
round or square, made of wood, marble, cement,
with capital or without a hat, this we will see later…
in any case masculine.
But as a portico you should be an empty space, concave,
a feminine space that opens up, that welcomes those who arrives.
So to interpret the Portico, the Porticoes
you will be masculine and feminine together.
After all, in Bologna even the City Council is called “la C'mona”,
"la Comune" and "la Comunità".
Bologna is a fluid city, everything returns, it is easy.
And how is the Portico character? Or better still, how are the Porticoes?
To perform them, you must know them.
To help you, as an actress, I propose you a game:
blindfold yourserselves, trust me, and in my company
we will walk, at night, under the porticoes.
At night, so that we won't be taken for mad,
at night because it is at night that the porticoes reveal themselves
in all their beauty and variety, like you've never seen them before...
- But if we are blindfolded! You’ll say…
Exactly! This is the game!
- Ah, how do we do it?...
With the voice for example, just a few words
and depending on the echo, you’ll understand if the portico is tall or
short, if it overlooks a square, like via Farini that opens into
piazza Cavour or if we are in an deserted space like a cemetery,
the Certosa for example…
Because the portico, in addition to being masculine and feminine,
is a soundbox, a sound amplifier:
I don’t know if you’ve ever slept in a room
with a window under the portico…
It happened to me: one night I woke up suddenly,
two men have entered my room
and were arguing at the side of my bed.
I turned on the light terrified: there's no one there,
then I realize that they are outside, under the portico
I look out and ask them To speak lower, please…
and they - Hey beautifull girl! It’s not us, it’s the portico
that resonates…
OK… I'll go back to sleep…
Still blindfolded, you can use your hands:
slide your hands over the shop windows
measure the width of the doorways, understand from the doorbells
if many people live in that house or just one...
if the house is rich or not… be careful not to ring… because at night…
You could also recognise the porticoes by caressing the columns
have you ever caressed the columns? Do it, it’s beautiful…
If they’re cold, they are more exposed…
If they’re warm, they are more sheltered…
Maybe wash your hands afterwards… the porticoes are impataccati
- impataccati - we will translate this later for foreigners…
But if you really want to know and recognise the Porticoes
you have to smell them, not just today's smell
but also those of the past…
We can do it..
If, on certain summer evening, the smell of the sea reaches you,
you are under the last arches of Strada Maggiore,
Rimini is down there…
If you smell the scent of bread all around, it's easy!
It's the portico of Mambo, it used to be the city's bakery!
The porticoes of via Zamboni, until a few years ago, smelled of paper:
books, notebooks, newspapers, dictionaries, handouts
cyclostyles and carbon paper, the first photocopies,
cyanotype with the typical smell of urea.
Now, the smell of via Zamboni are different…
The portico of Pavaglione, between Santa Maria della Vita,
and the portico of Buona Morte,
yes, that’s right: between Life and Death!
There, you can still smell the scents of the past coming from the Old Market:
that sour smell of onions and the sweet one of melons and apples
the bloody smell of meat, the acid smell of the tanneries
- Look, Marinella, it’s not exactly so, the tanners
were farther down…- this is an historyan teacher! …
I know! But I am an actress and you are blindfolded
we can imagine whatever we want!
Certenly, at that time there was a problem with hygiene
if the Municipality, the C’mona, recommended picking up rotten eggs, fish heads - What a stench! And then the rats would come!
It was also forbidden to leave abandoned newborns under the portico…
because later the pigs arrived to eat them….
Different times, different smells.
Today, at most, under the porticoes at night we can smell
the scent of mattresses of the homeless, who prefer
the protection of the arches to the promiscuity of the dormitories,
which are also present in Bologna.
If instead we move under the Treno della Barca,
that is under the portico that runs under the Treno della Barca
- we’ll explain it for foreigners later -
this is a modern portico, built in 1962,
there is not much history there, but there are
the smells of the new inhabitants of Bologna:
Maghrebis, Pakistanis, Ukrainians, Chinese, Senegalese...
Here, the portico is long and all the same, but
the variety of smell and fragrances…
it’s a great journey.
There is another game we can play, but this one without blindfolds:
it’s the gam of light. For an actor it is important to dialogue with light.
Sit under the portico, observe and take notes:
on certain summer afternoons the love affair between
the Portico and the light is violent: the shadow of the columns
is so black, so sharp on the ground and on the wall
that you can no longer distinguish stone from shadow,
real portico from doubled portico.
But it can also be a very soft, nuanced relationship,
as between Morandi's objects of which we cannot tell
where the shadow ends and the bottle or jug begins.
"We are not perspectives, we love the shadow", wrote Morandi.
I really like the new lighting project by the Municipality
to softly illuminate the porticoes.
I'm in favour of soft love affairs…
Last game
Piazza Santo Stefano: if you arriving from Piazza della Mercanzia
the triangle of white stripes on the ground
pushes you towards the church,
and then you just have to continue and get lost in that enchantment.
But if you leave the church and go to the two towers
you will now see many terracotta heads
with or without hat, leaning out over the porticoes.
And this is the game: see the porticoes from outside
by moving to the other side of the street.
- But indeed! from under the portico, you never see the sky … -
someone says.
It must be for this reason that from time to time you find,
under the porticoes, a Madonna painted on the wall
or as a statue placed there, to remind you the sky,
The funny thing is that one of the UNESCO Porticoes,
the beautiful one that goes up to San Luca, is like guarded
no guarded! protected by two Madonnas: the fat Madonna,
only in Bologna could there be a fat Madonna…
and that of San Luca, who is black…
Between the fat Madonna and the black Madonna, there are 666 arches:
mystery writers remind us that this is the number of the devil,
and that, up above, the devil is crushed under the bare feet
of the Black Madonna…
And here the religious/erotic, dark/mystic literary genres mix together, which is a delight!
The porticoes invent stories… and poets, singers,
painters and actresses are there to tell us.
I read UNESCO's statement.
Happy for this recognition.
So, many people will know that Bologna has almost 38 km of porticoes
in the city and 62 km including the suburbs:
San Luca, Barca, Pilastro…
62 km of porticoes above and 30 km of canals below.
To you I say: I want to see you interpret the Navile, Cavaticcio canals…
To UNESCO I say that they will return to Bologna
to also safeguard its canals.
So, ours is just a
Goodbye!
(The text is protected by SIAE)
'The Porticoes with Eyes Closed' was presented on 18 May 2024 on the occasion of the unveiling of the first Unesco plaque under the Palazzo d'Accursio portico and replicated in Piazza Rossini on 6 June on the occasion of the Bologna Portici Festival.
We asked Marilena Manicardi a few questions which she kindly answered. We thank her very much for this.
In your work, in the very beginning there is a reference to the masculine and feminine in architecture. I ask myself if you have already dealt with it, because there is a debate between architects, anthropologists and historians on this and you seem to be acquainted with it.
I am a curious actress because I believe that the theatre must be nourished by all the thought that surrounds us, therefore also the view of architects and city planners. Moreover, in these years women's associations such as Orlando in Bologna, for example, have reconsidered the city from the point of view of women. Streets, squares, public and private buildings crossed and inhabited also by women's bodies and views: welcoming places where you feel safe or poorly lit zones, dangerous if you are alone. The porticoes can be one or another, accordingly. Then a physical sensation, as an actress: I can photograph a gesture, not a pause. I can photograph the columns, but it is more difficult to photograph the emptiness they delimit. Full and empty, assertive gestures or silent presences, masculine and feminine, is said to make it simpler. Nothing new for actors and actresses always accustomed to a variable gender, presently called fluid.
Perception of space through blocked (blindfolded) or exalted senses (odours, sounds, touch): also these I find very interesting and unprecedented
Thanks for confirming to me that this is an unprecedented point of view! I thought that for UNESCO the Porticoes have always been drawn, photographed, described through paper, or photographic and film documents. But a photo, or a painting, lacks the odour, lacks the touch, even the taste - I have not been so driven as to taste the porticoes! It is always difficult to describe odours, tastes, tactile sensations in stories, so metaphors are used. In reality, instead, we quickly recognise the smell of bread or the caress of a loved one. There you are: to get to know a city, its porticoes, is to recognise its odours and stones.
Bologna and Morandi: the porticoes are in any way present in his paintings, although he has never painted a single one. What do you think?
I love Morandi, to whom I have dedicated a show written with Luigi Gozzi. Morandi has never painted porticoes, but doesn't the repetition and variation of his objects have something to do with the infinite repetition and variation of the Bolognese porticoes? With the variation of the light that one finds walking by in different seasons? And doesn't the shadow, so important in his compositions, feed on the shadows that modify pavements and walls if projected inside the portico? And again: depending on the portico which we are passing by, doesn't it change our relationship with the others, as between the large and small objects of Morandi?
Let us share the teachings of a great master, Ezio Raimondi, of whom we are celebrating his 100th birthday this year. In that very precious volume that represents a two-voice dialogue with Angelo Varni ("Dialogo sulla cittadinanza", 2002), Raimondi identifies in the porticoes the theatrical matrix of so much Bolognese art, and not only figurative.
How nice it is to share a master like Ezio Raimondi! I was intimidated by his forty books mentioned in every lesson, books that I should have known or at least read! And just think, I have followed both the Italian literature lessons and those of the history of theatre! A quantity of books that cannot be read in a lifetime. Then the meeting with Luigi Gozzi and the theatre, they offered me another path and another view, that of the stage. A condensation of books, sometimes. But I will look for "Dialogo sulla cittadinanza" by Raimondi, I'm not familiar with it, thanks!
Another matrix inherent to the Bolognese is 'the culture of doing' that you outline very pleasantly in your "La Maria dei dadi da brodo": also here there are relationships with the porticoes…
"La Maria dei dadi da brodo" is the story across true or invented characters of the economic history of Bologna. I believe that this is also an unprecedented point of view. To tell the story of work as a bet, as a single or collective invention, as creativity and risk, as a sense of community. Usually work in the theatre is told in a negative tone: exploitation, strikes, deaths: everything true. But this way, the whole part of pride, study, theoretical and manual culture that is the background of any type of economy is denied. And of the community.
In the play I also tell the story of the madness of the portico of San Luca that climbs up the hill like a snake protected from sun and rain…
Finally, I ask you what you would like to read in a website like ours, do you have any suggestions?
What I would like to find in the Porticoes website? Stories: I will tell you about my portico, that of my childhood, the one bombed and then rebuilt, the one where there was the store with the excellent buns that now…
