Produced by the Cultural Department of the Municipality of Ancona, on the occasion of 2400 years from the date of the founding of the city, Lapidarian is aimed at the recovery of interest on the historical value of commemorative plaques in the municipal area. These artifacts, actually "minor objects" within the urban landscape, have a great value as a civil witness, while the older are news sources of inescapable historical value. Plaques and epigraphs, endured by the ravages of time, often made illegible from the carelessness of men or "hidden" from view simply by custom, can once again become the center of interest of the community, not only by their historical and scientific cataloging. The action of art can indeed renew their original function of mass communication tool ahead of its time, by proposing their textual contents on contemporary mass media toos. The words of 27 inscriptions, transcribed and typeset as they are in their original stones, are the contents of 3 video animations. The sentences flow, one after the other, overlapping the backgrounds (taken from the relief of some decorative motifs on real stone surfaces). Three video are projected on a three dimensions screen, a textile volume that alludes to the stony of architectural artifacts. (The art of weaving embodies the symbolism of speech and memory, starting from their common linguistic Sanskrit root: aw-). The entire procedure is calibrated around the number 9 and its multiples and submultiples: 3 video sequences containing a set of 27 epigraphs-texts; 27 seconds is the duration of each textual sequence; the screen volume consists of 9 main modules…This numerological structure, its components, express the symbolic meaning peculiar to 9 that is to indicate the metaphysical path in being and becoming, the being in itself and its manifestation. The plaques, then, as parts of a living and changing organism that is the city itself.
Nine is also the key to the photo-historical section (curator: Giampaolo Milzi), that integrates the art installation and provides further interpretation. Nine large format photographs reproduce the more significant Ancona plaques and epigraphs (for the events they celebrate or to their dating and historical and artistic value). Brief comment provide the visitors with historical information on the events that those inscriptions celebrate.
In the absence of a specific city museum where collecting definitively plaques and epigraphs (a lapidarius, in fact), Voyagerlab intervention (Massimo Cartaginese_ Oskar Barrile) is the attempt to set up a temporary and virtual one.
