Daily-notes
13.08.2021
The ghost of a seed in a kitchen
A balloon in the land They were not in a context of sand – in the old tower on top of the old town A balloon the moon in the water Like the brain of an oracle Almost like a pizza in heaven the sport, in water – the trail, of senses We don’t know, what has been broken, a purple ghost, living in them, and representing the true self – a friendly ghost – it’s in my guts An intricate soul a broadcast of fucked up waves – fucked up vases broadcasted through a hole – through a stone thrown away in the face. The empty cliffs – the agglomerate of juicy round rays is coming at us connecting with us connecting from far away.
Text by Leonardo de Marchi
19.02.2022
15:06 Jacopo: Telephone's signal looks more diffused than last time..
15:06 Jacopo: There's less isolation
15:06 Poni: Wtfffffffff
15:06 Jacopo: We have to sabotage the antenna.
15:06 Poni: No problem
The Holy Antenna. The cursed Antenna.
Its electricity, flowing into the transmitter, makes electrons vibrate up and down it, producing radio waves, which could travel through the air at the speed of light. When the waves arrive at the receiver antenna, they make electrons vibrate inside it. That's what happen everytime we send a message. These invisibile, but still physical flows of electricity, while creating bubbles of connections, can be absorbed in all living organisms. In Habitat's surroundings, they manifest in the bees estrangement. Mr. Billi said that bees have been moving away.
We are used to see "5G",“4G”, “3G” or “E” for “Edge", specifying the type of technology available in the area. I was really enjoying to be on the edge, with the lowest technology available. Nevertheless, today I discovered that my telephone was being reached by a never-seen-so-strong signal. My bubble of isolation has been perforated. My feelings could easily evaporate trough the hole, dismissing their roots with no more control of them,.
20.02.2022
Today we met the family running the "Agriturismo Ridiano", a farmhouse located on Tredozio's threshold. They were looking for a help in the kitchen, so Ilaria had a meeting with them. I decided to follow her to had a chance to meet new people from the place. It's always important here to get to know to each other. So we discovered that with their family-run activity, Gilberto anche Michela are preserving and handing down local cooking traditions, with a special and natural inclination on peasant's culture.
"Are you used to pull the dough on daily basis?" I asked.
"Of course I am! Look here!" Gilberto uttered back filling the room with his vibrant voice, while pointing his index finger to the top of the fireplace, where dozens of ceramic, over-sized eggs were standing in a beautiful and precarious balance. He carefully placed them in a descendant, arched composition, proudly displayed in the main living room, which was warmed up by the fire as well as by large numbers of enjoyable and presumably amatorial paintings of local fauna together with forest-filled landscapes.
"These are all the prizes I won in the last fifteen years, most of them coming from the local competition in Tredozio". But then, once, I've been also in Bologna! (for a competition)" He added with a gentle, self-confident tone.
The competition is organised as a part of the "Sagra and Palio dell'Uovo", a local festival that took place on Easter day, coming from the ancient custom of beating hard-boiled eggs as a propitiatory ritual for spring to come.
The unique and exclusive subject of the Palio is in fact the egg, both raw and hard-boiled; the competitions that concur to the conquest of the Palio are four like the districts: from the "battle of the raw eggs", which sees the couples of the districts opposed in rotation in a match of skill and precision, with the launch of 600 eggs for each round. Or "the egg in the haystack" with the search for about 200 hard-boiled eggs hidden in a large haystack, the "egg in target" competition with the launch of raw eggs towards a maxi target with the opposing team reaching out to stop their run with a wooden shovel and finally the "tug of war" competition on the river bank with the two teams positioned on the opposite banks.
"I'm able to pull the dough up to 1.2 meters" Explained as a reason for having so many recognitions.
"Apart from the past two years, that the competition didn't happen, I participated in the last edition and I didn't win. But I think I know why: the (eventual) winner stole my rolling pin.
And I could already see in my mind the dough, thinned at the point to become a flying carpet, on the quest to the missing rolling pin.
But the real discovery was about a family-rooted variation of the Bartolaccio, a local meal based on potatoes and flour.(showing picture/draw + receipt) He said that nowadays it's impossible to taste the real one, since the the poorest and original one was used to be cooked over a hot stone, accurately selected and picked up from the riverbed and eventually warmed up on the fireplace.
"It gives a different taste" he argued.
"And of course the bacon, which is actually part of the current version, wasn't in the old receipt. The meat was a thing only for rich people, something that a default family from the area couldn't afford on regular basis, but a privilege had only once in the year, when the pig was killed to sapiently provide food to the family for weeks, sometimes months.
To plan: walk to reach the Tramazzo river, find a stone and cook on it.
Monday, 21.02.2022
Today we met with Nicolò and Walter to layout a new branch of our programme, aiming to organise music related events and a video format that blends live performances and landscape in our valleys. I came up with a name for the festival: Radiale – Radial.
Sketch + explanation of Radial
Tuesday 22.02.2022
Snow may come back. Weather forecasts says on Saturday. Mr. Billi doesn't trust them. I don't know why, but he's really confident that is not going to happen.
To on be on the safe side, we decided to buy more firewood. About our previous stock, just a burnt memory.
Much sooner than we expected.
So we paid a call to Mr. Berti, woodcutter by profession. He knows the precise position of every single trees in his scattered pieces of land. We never met him before, but he's friend with Mr. Billi.
The ornamental moustache, grizzle and brownish by the pipe, introduced his character before his face fully unveil from the shadow inside the truck. It was slowly arriving from the only, dirty road that reaches Cà de Monti from the main one. Mr. Billi, which was with us, could hear the noise of the truck 10 minutes before his arrival, before anyone else noticed that the silence was being compromised.
"The wood is coming"
I was just enjoying the quietness of the cigarette after the usual coffe.
I knew that some hard work was being reversed, as soon as the wood reached the ground.
With that amount of wood, we could cover the rest of the winter in terms of heat energy and hot water, but we have to be wise, discrete with the usage. Because firewood prices range between 10 and 16 € per ton and we found out to consume averagely 1 ton every day.
I got prepared, helped by an abundant portion of Risotto, dressed with finely cut slices of truffles.
I felt blessed to receive this tiny fruit of the soil dig from our neighbour, together with his dog Jack.
The day before the dog cleverly entered the kitchen and stole a huge piece of cheese, so Angelo wanted to apologise by providing us with this fragrant gift.
(Image of the Truffle)
Wednesday 23.02.2022
FIrewood has been comfortably sleeping outside last night, protected from the weather. Yesterday we built a woodshed, made the most with some panel from our Alpi Reclaimed Wood's stock. We stared the canopy to the ground by using two iron stakes, normally used in the construction sites. Preserving the dryness of the wood means to optimize the making of the heat energy.
The wood need to dry at least for 1 year. For better perfomances the wood-fired boiler's company suggest to use 2 or even 3-years-dried wood. The diameter of the pieces should be between 5 and 7 cm. The full clean-up of the boiler must be done at least twice in a year, but could be more depending on the usage.
Tuesday 24.02.2022
"When Global Tools began its activities, Italian industry and politics were going through a crucial period: the last great strike of the FIAT workers in 1973 was followed by the energy crisis with the consequent austerity measures, and this setback put an end to a period of growth and high employment rates, revealing the changes in the Italian industry, now transformed by new technologies and the development of the tertiary sector."
https://not.neroeditions.com/global-tools/
In the light of what has happened this morning, with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the pre-announced coming of a new wide-spread energetic crisis, I'm wondering if we are facing similar conditions of crisis. Italy, as much as other european countries, largely depends on natural gas provided by Russia.
Italy is the European country that most uses natural gas: a 42.5% share of the whole Italian energy need. (https://www.ispionline.it/it/pubblicazione/energia-5-mappe-capire-la-crisi-del-gas-33342) It is due to the fact that Italy produces 60 percent of electricity using gas. (https://www.ispionline.it/it/pubblicazione/energia-5-mappe-capire-la-crisi-del-gas-33342) An infrastructure-related issue, that has to deal with the morphology of the territories.
The dependence on Moscow resources is a structural and geographical fact: it is much easier and cheaper to transport gas by pipe, and in the italian case, necessarily has to pass trough Ukraine.
Today, more than ever in my personal experience, I realised what could mean to be energetically independent. Our living environment must be prepared as soon as possible to be self-reliant and sustainable. Starting from our webserver, that has to be provided by solar energy. Webservers are not used to sleep.
If full energy independence currently sounds more like an utopia, specially considering the electricity need of Cà de Monti (21kw as average daily consumption), it's also true that is necessary to give more thought to the waste, yet considered as non-necessary consumption of energy. For instance, our webserver is constantly running, even when no one is checking our website. Full-time availability has a price that must be considered, because it has a tangible impact. We could rawly consider to restrict our web accessibility for western countries only in the day-time, presuming that most of the users are used to sleep between 1 am to 8 am. In this case, we could reduce daily consumption up to 8 hours in relation to our online presence.
Sunday 06.03.2022
It was a cloudy sunday. A cold breeze, mixed with sparsely densed snow, has never given up on us. We had to light up the fire in the main living room sooner than expected, so we had a breakfast all together in front of the fireplace. With Federico, we spent the morning organising the contents for an upcoming presentation of Habitats' infrastructure at Natural Intelligence, the third part of FIBER’s Reassemble Lab in Amsterdam, which "will explore alternative internet infrastructures based on earthly dynamics, low-carbon solutions and ecological ethics". (https://www.fiber-space.nl/project/natural-intelligence/).
An occasion to present what has been done so far in terms of infrastructure in last few months.
For instance, our .index and related webpages are hosted on a server installed in Cà de Monti, specifically in the main living room. We are able to connect to the World Wide Web through a small parabolic antenna, installed outside one of the village building. This antenna uses an FWA (Fixed Wireless Access) service, a technology that uses long-range wifi, ideal for areas that are not densely populated, like ours, where 5g and 4g connections work only for one provider.
Therefore, the accessibility to our contents strictly depend on the connection (3 mbps upload) and could range according to various factors. For instance, weather conditions and consequently the geographical distance between those requesting access to our sites (clients) and our server – for example, a user connecting from Florence will get a faster response to a user connecting from Rotterdam. Fast responses, as much as full-time availability, should be deprioritize. This approach to content fruition embraces the local conditions, thus promoting other forms of sociability and sharing, no longer relying on infrastructural performativity, but rethinking alternative and experimental ways of inter-connecting local and therefore ultra-territorial meanings.
The Tramazzo Valley is a small, standing-alone valley whose infrastructures speak back to its morphology. A scarce constellation of antennas spread out the rural area, mainly covered by woods and fields. Some shaded areas escape the continuos stream of the global connectivity - provided by antennas' signal, delineating rare and often threatened free spaces. for agency to redefine predetermined fruibility conditions.
Spaces that need to be protected, saved from iper-connectivity rhytms.
