(8 March 2016) “Le printemps de la mémoire Italian” is a three-day festival scheduled in Paris at the Consulate General of Italy (5 Bd Emile Augier 75116 Paris) featuring a rich program of events that bring together all the art forms, from photography to music. From 17 to 19 March, the common thread is memory, as the Italian network and the Consulate General of Italy in Paris are participating in the biennial “Printemps de la Mémoire” organized by the Réseau Memoires et Histoires with different and varied initiatives on the Virtual Center for oral and popular history of Italian emigration. “The title says it all. A virtual center – explains a note from the Consulate – is a geo-tagged museum and an archival space in the immense universe of the Internet: it’s everywhere and nowhere. It’s practical because its spaces are elastic and extensible; it’s perennial because it gives a second life to exhibitions and events that once finished would otherwise lay forgotten in a drawer. It’s a potentially effective method to reach the Under30 population. For all these reasons the organizers invented an original concept that transform the spaces of the Consulate in a place to navigate and explore the ‘real’ elements that were at the basis of the memorial projects for the virtual center”. The halls of the Consulate welcome actors, singers and musicians who will alternate concerts, readings and performances that inspired their artistic research. Two photographic exhibitions also bring colors to the halls of the Consulate: one on the Vitti Academy, the other on “Partisans and resistants – behind antifascism” – a project by the Fratellanza Reggiana and Emilia–Romagna associations, with b/w photographs by Veronica Mecchia). There will also be a meeting with Antonio Canovi, geo-historian from the University Modena and Reggio Emilia, creator of geo-explorations in the Apennines and in the Paris region that answer questions on memory and places, using maps, archives, oral and popular sources. Canovi is also the creator of a collection of video interviews on “what it means ‘to make a memory’, which he will explain at the Consulate over the course of a dedicated conference. (Red)
