Berlin, 30/November/2011

For days I have been trying to write a text for this project, but I inevitably end up exhausted, watching the white wall in front of me or the cigarette slowly consuming itself in my hand. But today I realised that a project like this does not need an introductory text, but a confession. I want to confide in you about why, two years ago, I decided to begin a job that probably will never end.

It has been three years since I packed as much as possible and I moved from Rome to Berlin. I was glad. I felt grown up, freer and more motivated, but then after a while, I found the need to make a comparison anxiously throbbing within me. A comparison with “my people”. Doubts were born, questions that I could not answer. I needed to understand where I was. Not only as a young man but as a citizen. As a social unit within the vast and diverse community of Berlin.

I decided to see, chase, analyse, understand and document the lives of people culturally closest to me, of those Italians who, for different reasons and in entirely different ways, found themselves building and spending their lives in Berlin.

The project Einer unter Vielen | Uno fra tanti was, more than from an idea, born from a need.

So I went looking and I found very different lives around me, which gave me different incentives and answers: I discovered the excitement of those who have never tried mediation, the strength of those who never saved themselves in the work, the fragility of those who are anxiously looking for themselves, the melancholy of those who have never doubted their homeland, the joy of those who are planting their roots in a country not yet theirs or the joy of those who do not want roots. All, however, showed a common trait: the love for a city, that makes them proud to live in because it has taught and teaches them every day to think as free people.

All this helped me to understand where I am and (this is another confession) that the “One among many” of the title is me.

The project was designed as a video from the beginning.

The project was selected for the 2011 Venice Art Biennale – Italian Pavilion and won the Venice Art Biennale Under35 Artist Training Prize.