The tuff island

In the spring of 1941, on the island of Ventotene, the confined politicians Altiero Spinelli, Eugenio Colorni and Ernesto Rossi drafted the document “For a free and united Europe: Manifesto Project”. Known as the “Ventotene Manifesto” the work is considered one of the founding texts of the European Union. This Pontine island of the Tyrrhenian Sea of only 1.9 square km, once uninhabited, is now an important tourist destination of strong attraction. This opposition returns in its characteristics and re-emerges in its continuous transformations.

My search is directed to a natural place with its own culture and that has endured in time and that time erodes. Wonderful and fragile Ventotene, subject to tragic episodes of collapses and landslides that have involved tourists and islanders. The island is crumbling, time is incredibly at work and it mirrors an intimate reflection on myself, the isolation of man and our loneliness. Alone and small, compared to the vastness of the waters that surround it, the island seems to be standing still in time. The hands move differently on this earth as said Altiero Spinelli, who, as a good watchmaker,was constantly having to adjust the clock in Piazza Castello.

Here I wonder in which direction I am going. In which direction is the Europe dreamed by the prisoners of 1941? This question is reflected in all the meetings and stories I have heard from Ventotenesi. In dialogue with the other and myself I return to being an “island” and wonder how much this erosion is a symbol of movements that resonate in my present and in the present of today’s Europe. Everything seems suspended in a kind of bubble where people, places, past and expectations are talking silently.