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sands of kilometres away, for example
in the offices of a foreign company or
on the bridge of a large cargo ship at
sea. The absence of reliable economic
and market forecasts often obliges
those operating in the Ports to assume
direct responsibility for an intervention
strategy.
It happens so often that there are no
scenarios from which to deduce the
necessity of an action, which is instead
completely intentional – in a word,
political and argued without appealing
to any deductive reasoning.
Precisely because of these specific
characteristics clearly distinguishing
Ports from adjacent historical centres
and at the same time revealing their
common history, it is necessary to
avoid the hypocrisy of a false promise
of “integration” between Port and city.
The relationship between Port and city
in Italian coastal cities (frequently a
source of bitter conflict and misunderstanding)
must be dealt with above by
all avoiding the opposing and mirrorlike
tendencies of rigid separation (as
in the past) and the two territories’
mechanical integration (an attitude
often hiding claims of hegemony by
one over the other). The cohabitation
between the two territories, and their
reciprocal pairing, is only possible by
starting from a clarification of their differences,
aside from their similarities
and “syntonies”, matured over decades
of coexistence and communal use of
infrastructure. The differences are
physical and spatial, but also cultural
and social. They root themselves in a
different political and economic territorial
management, but also in the inertia
of two different imaginations.
Calling for “integration” frequently
means suggesting the quashing in
whole or in part of the distinctive features
of one of the two territories. This
has happened for example with the
large leisure/commercial interventions
on the north American model,
which have colonized, standardized
and therefore killed off many “hybrid”
urban areas in the Mediterranean city,
as in Barcelona.
The dock landscape and the city
streets and squares can only become
reacquainted without creating residual
cracks by preserving or rather further
clarifying their irreducibly different
nature.
In fact an alternative radical on the
model of large United States and oriental
Ports is involved, where only
immense areas for the movement of
containers and the shining quays for
group tourism are alternated. They
have the “Marinas”, fast food restaurants
with figureheads, waiters with
headbands, theme parks and large
parking lots.
The large Mediterranean port cities –
Genoa, Naples, Athens, Salonika,
Barcelona, Marseille, Alexandria – can
and must avoid the overbearing monotony
of this contrast, because they are
still complex and composite places,
where work mixes with resting places,
cars with containers and big ships with
historical buildings. They are still
places where architecture can generate
surprises, changes in scale and
resonance between different and distant
spaces.
It is therefore an entire idea of the city,
and not simply a problem of modernization,
which lies in wait for those occupied
in the transformation of the ports
of southern European cities.
Solid Sea
(Multiplicity)
Que se passe-t-il en Méditerranée?
Le grand bassin d’eau qui pendant des années a été décrit
comme étant «le berceau de la civilisation», le nœud de traditions
millénaires et le point de rencontre de cultures diverses,
est peut-être en train de changer de nature.
La Méditerranée est en train de devenir une «Mer Solide». Un
territoire sillonné par des itinéraires prédéterminés et des
frontières insurmontables, subdivisé en bandes d’eau spécialisées
et rigoureusement réglementées.
Quelles que soient sa biographie et son identité, celui qui
s’est aventuré dans les eaux de Solid Sea est contraint de les
abandonner et d’accepter une identité embrigadée: touristes
de croisière, militaires, pêcheurs, marins, immigrés clandestins,
techniciens de sous-marins et de plates-formes.
Identités rigides, spécialisées, qui se croisent tous les jours
dans ses eaux sans communiquer et souvent même sans se
regarder, condamnées dans leurs itinéraires préfixés. La
Méditerranée est de nos jours un grand continent, située
entre l’Europe, l’Asie mineure et l’Afrique. Un continent
liquide, mais entaillé à différentes profondeurs par des couloirs
impénétrables, subdivisé par de hautes barrières dans
lesquelles alternent des enclos spécialisés et des grandes
plaines déshabitées, entouré le long de ses rives par des
entonnoirs d’entrée et de sortie qui répondent de plus en plus
à des logiques d’exclusion et de séparation.
1, 2, 3, 4. Odessa, courtesy Armin Linke
Un nouveau Continent dont on ne
connaît pas encore la géographie.
Grâce à Solid Sea, Multiplicity souhaite
promouvoir une recherche sur
la nouvelle nature de la Méditerranée
et dessiner un atlas actualisé
concernant ses paysages et les turbulences
qui les parcourent.
What is going on in the Mediterranean?
Could the very nature of this enormous basin of water, often
referred to as «the cradle of civilization», source of ancient traditions
and point of intersection for so many diverse cultures, be
evolving into something entirely different?
The Mediterranean is becoming a Solid Sea: A territory crisscrossed
by predetermined itineraries and insurmountable borders,
subdivided into specialized and strictly regulated strips of water.
Regardless of one’s biography and identity, anyone entering the
Solid Sea is compelled to abandon these and to accept an imposed
identity: cruise ship tourist, soldier, fisherman, sailor, illegal immigrant,
submarine or oil rig technician; rigid, specialized identities
encountering each other every day in these waters, without communicating,
and often not even looking at each other, condemned to
follow their preordained route. Nowadays, the Mediterranean has
become a great continent, lying between Europe, Asia Minor and
Africa; a liquid continent, gashed at different depths by impenetrable
corridors, subdivided by high barriers in which specialized
enclosures and great deserted plains alternate, its shores surrounded
by funnels for entry and exit, answering more and more to
the logic of exclusion and separation.
The geography of a whole new continent remains to be discovered
there. Through Solid Sea, Multiplicity wishes to promote research
into the Mediterranean’s changing nature and to design an updated
atlas of its landscapes and turbulent waters.
Solid Sea 02: Odessa / The World
(Armin Linke)
L’histoire paradoxale de deux grandes
embarcations nous permet de
comprendre la nouvelle nature de la
Méditerranée. D’un côté le bateau
ukrainien Odessa, qui est resté bloqué
pendant des années dans le
port de Naples avec une partie de
son équipage, parce qu’il a été
séquestré par le Tribunal. De l’autre,
The World Residensea, un
bateau de croisière de luxe: une
ville flottante complètement autonome
et en réseau avec le monde.
De 1995 à 2002 pendant sept ans,
l’Odessa n’a pas pu quitter le port
de Naples, parce qu’il était sous
séquestre à la suite de la banqueroute
de la Compagnie Blasco
(Back Sea Shipping Company),
compagnie battant pavillon
Soviétique. Le commandant
Vladimir Lobanov et huit autres
hommes de l’équipage ont continué
à vivre à bord du bateau, sans car-
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