LIFE IS A WHEEL

On 26 December 1943, Mario Fiorentini, from a bicycle, threw an explosive package at the entrance to the Regina Coeli prison where 28 German soldiers were changing guard. Luckily he managed to escape the fire. The following day an order was issued by the German military command prohibiting the use of bicycles in Rome.

In those years, Gino Bartali also disguised his “deliveries” to the partisans as training to keep fit and when he was stopped for checks, he asked not to touch the bike so as not to alter its perfect setup. More generally, during the days of resistance in Italy, the bicycle was the most important means of transporting documents that coordinated the brigades. In those years the bicycle was also the only means by which workers could reach their workplace.

Even my grandmother from Milan always told me about her trips by bicycle, to go to work, to escape more quickly during the bombings but also to reach her beloved, my grandfather. She was the first to pass on my love for cycling to me, and since then it has been my favorite means of travel. Feeling the air in my hair or enjoying a descent after a climb gives me euphoria and an exciting feeling of freedom.
After having personally met Mario Fiorentini, I decided to follow his anti-fascist action on a bicycle with a performance retracing as faithfully as possible the route he took on that 26 December. The action will be filmed with cameras positioned at different points along the route, giving life to a video that will maintain its own formal autonomy.At 101 years old Mario Fiorentini transmits to me a great love for life, his gaze, the desire to communicate at 360 degrees on many topics, his experience both human and in many areas of life, are testimonies that should not be lost.
In a society that often revisits at will the historical facts that precede us, in a society that tries to erase historical memory and that risks using technology as a weapon of flattening, especially of new and future generations, I feel the duty to restore that human and civil heritage that are the basis of a healthy society, which does not forget the facts that gave rise to the ethical and moral sense that belongs to us.

Special thank
video: Lorenzo Castelli, Luigi Celebre, Daniele Garigliano, Benedetto Guadagno.
ph: Giorgio Benni, Simon D’exea, Sebastiano Luciano, Lorenzo Castelli, Benedetto Guadagno.

Life is a wheel
2019 performance and video embroidery design on tracing paper