co+re dérive IV ...

on arrival, to Bologna, in Bologna

This note truly is alla prima, written down … visually, wet-on-wet, immediately upon the arrival to Bologna, arrival here again, a familiar sensation which always feel new … Bologna never changes, Bologna always feels energetic. This time I am here on a mission, asked to deliver the opening keynote lecture at the fifth Past, Present, Future of Public Space Conference, exactly ten years after I had a great honour to also open the inaugural, 2014 PPF Conference which was held at the exactly same place, a dramatic Stabat Mater Hall at Archiginnasio of the University of Bologna. My talk will be ON change, starting with a statement that over the last decade “nothing has changed, everything has changed”. More about that at urbophilia soon. But, those are only facts. Below are only several cuts from what Bologna had to tell us during the first walk.

here I slow down to read graffiti'; fewer than elsewhere are mere vandalism, while more than anywhere else some provoke thinking, even capturing the essence of the seat of Alma Mater Studiorum (for what I mean - see the last image, below)

He wavered between Leopardian and Hegelian thinking, this graffiti says. It wants and it succeeds to puzzle us, to provoke, to teach. Walls, streets always talk. They ask, they answer … This one places us in Bologna, reminds that we are walking in a learnt place.