ViewsVisions. Parco delle Cave, Milan

Silent video installation on 9 monitors / wall projections.

By Alessandro Vicario with photographs by Ennio Vicario.
Direction, cinematography and moving shots: Alessandro Vicario
Photographs (1976-1979): Ennio Vicario
Editing: Davide Ferrario – Videozone.

©Alessandro Vicario – All rights reserved.

Parco delle Cave developed around artificial lakes — the former quarries — created by gravel and sand extraction that began in the 1920s and ceased in the 1960s. It is Milan’s third-largest park, after Parco Nord and Parco Forlanini. Located in the Baggio district in the western part of the city and managed by the Municipality of Milan, it forms the Parco Agricolo Sud Milano together with Boscoincittà and Parco di Trenno.

The park includes four artificial basins, agricultural fields associated mainly with Cascina Caldera, and natural environments such as groves, irrigated meadows and wetlands. Dense and lush in its more wooded areas, the vegetation is dominated by black locust, field maple, hornbeam, ash, poplar, oak and willow. The park is home to a variety of wildlife, including fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and even rabbits and foxes. Among the many bird species that can be seen are cormorants, herons, little egrets, mallards, moorhens, flycatchers, swallows, skylarks, woodcocks, green woodpeckers and redstarts. Nocturnal predators such as barn owls and little owls nest near the farmhouses.

The installation ViewsVisions. Parco delle Cave, Milan, 2024 (1976–1979, 1981) makes no claim to be a documentary. A few arbitrary visual fragments evoke the radical, positive changes this urban area has undergone in recent decades: from the late 1970s, marked by abandonment, decay and squalor — yet already offering precious glimpses of beauty to those who could see them — to a present that surprises with lush natural scenes full of life. I focused on nature and the animals that live there, choosing to suggest the human presence indirectly. The rhythm reflects the slow, unhurried pace of nature.

The work also draws on my personal and family memories and my early visual education. Moving images are occasionally interrupted by black-and-white photographs taken by my father Ennio between 1976 and 1979, some of which were printed on linen canvas and coloured by hand. There are also a couple of photographs I took in the winter of 1981 with the legendary Rollei with a Galilean viewfinder, the camera of my childhood. Carefully preserved in an album, they show members of a flock of mute swans from northern Europe that came to spend the winter in Milan that year, staying at Parco delle Cave for several months.

The installation consists of nine projections, or monitors, continuously showing different shots of varying duration. The work invites a fragmented experience shaped by chance. What viewers see depends above all on the moment they find themselves in front of a monitor, but also on the curiosity and patience I brought to filming and, finally, on their own patience and curiosity.

Milan, 23 May 2024