Memoria e desiderio

The starting point is the image of Riparbella seen from above on Google Maps. Daniel Muñoz turned it into an artistic map of the town and its surrounding area, painted on the main façade of the building that houses the bar in Piazza Matteotti.

The map grew out of a long process of listening: many conversations with residents of all ages and with the third-year classes of the «In Natura» state middle school. Out of them came the places of memory — not just events, but sensations, emotions and smells recounted by local people: the benches as a meeting place, how far the smell of wild boar in salmì travels, the photograph of a local partisan on horseback.

Alongside the memories come the wishes. From the middle school students’ sketches, the statue of a love of football, the outlet shop and peace made their way onto the wall. The title holds the two poles together — memory and desire, ecumene and anecumene: inhabited space and uninhabited space, the space of the imagination.

On the side façade of the building the artist painted the map’s key. Not a conventional key: instead of kilometres it gives social, emotional and political distances.