Radio Papesse

PLOTTING THE URBAN BODY is an ongoing project by Maria Pecchioli.
 

It is an interdisciplinary and cross-media research that investigates the urban space as an organic body. It investigates the energies of the city and its transformations through the gaze of the Taoist cosmogony of the 5 elements - fire, earth, metal, water, wood - traditional Chinese medicine and the I Ching Book of Changes.

Plotting the Urban Body [PTUB] was born with the aim of renewing the image of urban environments by increasing collective and individual awareness of local transformations, community life and the impact of gentrification and mass tourism on collective living. Community practices and the interconnection with different cultural sectors are a founding element of this project.

Exploring the city in its energy flows, means considering the precarious balance between urban transformations (processes of gentrification, mass tourism and commercial desertification) and the practical and emotional needs of the local community, in the conviction that artistic practices can and should narrate territories, give voice to communities and raise awareness of both citizens and administrations on these issues. Inattention to this fine balance between transformation, renewal and local life risks leading to the uprooting of micro stories of communities from collective history.

The recent upheavals in the scenario and in spatial and urban fruition, following the Covid-19 pandemic, also make evident the need to place the community at the centre of the city's life and to understand the artistic-cultural practice as a cohesive bridge and agent of self-determination of the citizenship.

As part of Radio Papesse's Benjamin 2020 project, we invited Maria Pecchioli to bring PTUB back to Florence, in the city where she was born and where she lives. The project is thus evolving with:

• an audio itinerary through the Rifredi district, a narration that follows the energy meridians of the city, combining personal memories and collective history;

• research materials, such as the interviews with Lorenzo Tripodi and Silvia Del Conte;

• a set of six exercises that, thanks to the power of sound frequencies flowing through the organs, help relaxation and healing of the body.