What is so compelling about ruins? Italian houses degrade artistically, sure, so do wooden barns.
Modest ruins, ruderi in Italian, tell a story in a way that the freshly plastered mansions of the rich do not. Their narrative wavers over time. Someone died, someone abandoned a house to head for the city in hopes of finding a job, a son inherited a house he didn’t want.
A man named Francesco Nicola Perra, known to the music world as Perry Frank, spent two years in the southern territory historically called Iglisiente making a music video called Ruins and regrets. Haunting music plays over video scenes in which i ruderi stand motionless while the trees sway in the wind, clouds scud across the skies and the cicadas drone on and on. Evocative stuff indeed.
The Iglesiente is a traditional historic territory of Sardinia. It encompasses what used to be the northern province of Carbonia-Iglesias and the south-western province of Medio Campidano, both provinces now combined into the western province of Sud Sardinia. The main town is Iglesias. It’s been mining country since forever, important to the Romans as well as to modern Sardinians as the scene of a last-ditch effort to extract enough coal to fuel the factories of the industrial revolution and eventually those of the military during WWII. See a Sardinia Provinces Map
The theme of the video but also of the SOUNDSCAPE BOX 1 disk is centered on the memory and regret of what was, what could be and is no longer. Nothing more than the ruins of an abandoned village can significantly represent this message.
Mr. Frank goes on to suggest:
Many villages are unfortunately inaccessible if not with an off-road or with long walks and I had to plan the job well. It was wonderful to reach places like the Village Asproni, Grugua, where there is the Villa dei Modigliani, Malacalzetta etc. In my opinion they are all structures that are waiting for only another opportunity for re-use. Ideas are not lacking, politics is missing. — Perry Frank: la nuova dimensione del ballo sardo con Làcanas.
Ruins + Regrets | I Ruderi dell’Iglesiente
Here’s Perry Frank’s video, followed by a few of my pictures of Sardinian ruins, modern and ancient.
Ruins | Ruderi
