“In the summer of 2017, Morten Søndergaard proposed to make a number of Pist Protta based in Pietrasanta, and visit him and Anna Maria Orrù in Montaperti outside the city. A visit is good, but it should also be a collaboration—we had to find a theme. This was slowly separated by our conversations, and became the pursuit of marble and anarchism in the Pietrasanta area.
In the regular editorial there were shared misgivings about whether it was a good idea to travel to Italy. In order to clarify, we used the principle of coincidence: We applied for support for the trip, if we got support it meant we had to leave—if not, we had to find another topic for PP84. As you can see, it did not become necessary.
On the evening of December 10, 2018 we arrived in Montaperti where Anna Maria and Morten welcomed us and we came to live in Villa Bicocca. We had rented a car big enough for all five of us to be in. It became a kind of editorial room the following days, when we visited Pietrasanta with roundabouts; Museo dei Bozzetti; sculptures and marble carvings; Viareggio by the water; the anarchist stronghold of Carrara; and the Academy of Art; the marble quarry Fantiscritti; Colonata known for a particularly good lardo (spicy, fermented); the marble cave close to Stazzema; the traces of old dynamite mills in Mulina; Genoa and Asger Jorn’s house in Albisola. We ate at the Communist restaurant Casa del popolo, Circolo ARCI in Solaio and enjoyed Morten and Anna Maria’s home-grown olive oil, tomatoes and honey. And we gathered, read, talked and discussed and it continued after we left Montaperti. What we saw, recorded and experienced is edited together for this release.
Anna Maria Orrù has photographed and drawn maps, Morten Søndergaard has photographed, written and scanned from the towns where stone was tamed by Costantino Paolicchi. Jesper Rasmussen has driven the car, photographed and written about Asger Jorn / Albisola. Jesper Fabricius has scanned from Lenin dada by Dominique Noguez—commented, noted and distributed. I have put together the picture sequences in a layout based on a picture of a post from Ralph Rumney’s the leaning tower of Venice, which we found in Walkscapes by Francesco Careri. The image of wire rolls is taken in the window of Atelier Paolo Milani.”
— Space Poetry
