Milan, Itay
Mission Title: The Park Generation - Parco Lambro
Mission By: Serena Vestrucci, Donato Fusco
Mission Finished on Date: 09-07-2008
SCRIPT
- Visit Parco Lambro.
- Check out the skate park and interview the skaters. What is the park to them? How do they live it?
- Hang out with the skaters, find out about them personally, who they are as people, as characters. Get good footage of them skating.
- Find out how their subculture has evolved in public space. Interview Gianlu and Diana from Spaghettochild and ask them about the scene in Milan and their activities, also in relation with the Park, including videomaking.
- Take a look around Parco Lambro and show other realities animating the park with different people. What is the personality of the park today?
TRAVEL BAG
How does a place reflect evolutions and changes in counterculture?
Imagine thousands of people in their twenties, butt-baked in the sun, singing along their favorite songs, hopping on a stage to share a thought with everybody else and being at peace, only finally rioting over food prices – just because food ought to be for free. The images of hippies from the 1976 documentary by Alberto Grifi depict an atmosphere - that of the fourth and last meeting organized by the countercultural magazine Re Nudo - not likely to repeat, not in Parco Lambro. Re Nudo, after a long pause due to its director's spiritual enlightening, has become a different magazine with articles about eastern philosophy and holistic medicine along with political and social issues. Parco Lambro remains a place where young subcultures gather, but around very different stimuli.
A new generation gathers in the park. New bands play, new events are organized by new people, only some of the old ideas about being conscious of your own time and sharing passions survive. Clothes are different though, and the skate park built in 2003 is a hint to a completely different imaginary and youth. Our cynical, postmodern generation cares little about paying for food and doesn't consider bare skin stylish enough to sport it. Too bad. We prefer to watch people get hurt on the internet or on a skate ramp, feeling an elbow snap or a nose pop. Maybe hearing too much talk about love raised us this way.
Mission Report
Facing the scorching sun we arrive at Lambro park, where we have an appointment with a guy from the SpaghettoChild group. We meet him right at the skatepark and sit in the shade with him to chat about the group’s activity. Next to us, tireless and unfailing, the guys who every day liven up the place are jumping, training, having fun. They sometimes seem to fly naturally, with no effort.
Between questions we get to know of the existence of a cultural association interested in supporting skating as a form of sociability besides that of a sport. SpaghettoChild in fact has been organizing meetings, courses, parties, exhibitions, contests, concerts, video pro-jections since 2005...
We are told of the actual lack of interesting places for skating within the area of Milan, unlike for example places like Barcelona, where a true and real urbanistic plan thought for the skate world is being worked out. Milan still has to settle for few areas, from the by now famous Central station’s square to this little gathering in the Lambro park.
Serena Vestrucci, Donato Fusco
