Ex-scenic laboratories of La Scala. Two interiors.

Some doors are open, protected only by a grating, to prevent anybody to go in. By the time the place is inhabitated, there must be open doors on the back. It’s of my interest to discover the state of the place, to ensure it can be visited and find out if inside there are any objects that recall what the place was. This place gives positive answers to all my requests. It’s possible to go in, you can peek in with no problems, and specially it’s full of stuff. The first thing i do is to look inside one of the openings protected by grating. It wouldn’t be anything special, cause it’s only a boiler room, but it’s in such perfect conditions that for a moment i feel moved. Until now i never had the chance to see an abandoned place with machineries inside still in good conditions. The room is dark, the walls are encrusted, but everything seem to resist, probably waiting for Ronconi to come back every year. The other room i manage to see is a deposit. It has many objects inside, as wooden boards, boxes, furniture and forgotten trash, like beer bottles and cans, trying to hide themselves in the corners. Thousands of images and thoughts pass through me, trying to wonder for which shows they were good before they were thrown there like junk. Maybe that’s what it is, only junk: they might not have been part of any show, but only leftovers of that nothing that’s there today. The wall in front of me seem to have accomodate many pictures of the strangest shapes, or it looks like a very old wall done with giant stones. They migh be only humidity stains left by objects that were there before. It was a magic world, magic that tries to tell us something today.

Water ways

Once i won my fears, noticing how less my presence has worried the clandestine that disappeared behind the scenes, i stop and observe one of the most often seen abandoned courtyards in Milan, because of the yearly show of Ronconi. There aren’t many weeds, and the gravel helps to give a tidy view to it all. Here and there there’s some trash keeping company to the visitor curious to know more about the place. Before i notice the building side, i admire the inside side of the wall, full of small treasures that give a romantic atmosphere, althought it’s a very sunny day. The first water way i encounter is a small sink, so simple, but it it seems very luxurious, as an antique piece. I don’t know why it looks so special, it seems like it come out of the wall, in the same materials and colour. It looks like while they were covering the wall they covered the metal sink with it. The drain pipe gets lost under the gravel, letting me imagine the maze of pipes that probably lay underneath me. The faucet is completely absent, but i wonder if there ever had been one. This might be the reason i at first thought of a fountain, cause that only hole in the wall is the only way the wate can come out. As every fountain the machanism that makes it work is hidden, so i have the feeling it could start at any time, althought it probably won’t. Stains of rust are ruining the small structure, and i would like to save it from the sure decay. The object is so static that disturbs the disorder of the coating of the wall. The simmetry doesn’t match with the sense of abandonment around. This place fascinates me cause, althought it’s an industry, i can see strange characters walking around, as if they left behind thousands of traces. It was a place of production, but of theater scenes, where fantasy and imagination are necessary to build something nice. Mime ghosts and good joiners drink from this small source. Few steps insider there are other fountains accompagning my visit. The next one i see is anther sink, a bit bigger, but less deep than the first one. This one seem even more son of the wall: the drain pipe disappears inside it, letting me imagine a whole series of pipes running around the perimeter, connecting all the sources. Dead climbing plants are a frame of this scene. The faucet seems like it has been pulled out with violence, leaving a big hole in the wall, with the full bricks raped, with might be the cause of the long crack. Underneath the sink two metal arms come out, as to support something that is not there anymore. A bed of dead leaves serves the rest of a sources not good anymore. The next one is for sre the most fascinating and romantic: a real fountain, with the basin and the statue in the middle. It’s condition makes it even more beautiful than when it was new, or at least this is my feeling, as a lover of ruins. The perimeter of the basin seems baroque, with curves giving an elegant touch. The statue in the middle is of a little boy: there are no wings to make me think of an angel. Time had no pity, taking away a leg and an arm, leaving the the steal parts free, the bones, i’d say, of a not such romantic cement flow. Humidity has covered the boy with a layer of bright green musk, as to greet the cascade of ivy around it. Ivy that has taken the place of water, giving us a much more florid show, if it wasn’t for the wind that brought inside the basin any kind of waste and dead leaves. But infront of this image i can pretend there’s no trash at all. After the fountain, between two trees, another sink, the same of the second one i’ve seen: same structure, the drain pipe disappears in the wall, the faucet has been pulled out with violence leaving a big hole. But there’s a small pipe, from which the water used to come out. The sink is covered by dead leaves and branches and pieces of concrete. The humidity goes down, staining the wall with yellows, blacks and reds, because of oxidation. The presence of all these sources really  makes me curious, sweetens the image of the abbandoned industry and it probably made gentle the job of the workers, which had to create beautiful images.

Via Baldinucci. Back in Bovisa.

I’ve found this place absolutely casually. From far away i’ve seen this building a bit higher than what was around it, grey, lonely and with broken windows. Althought what really hit me was a small house right next to it, completely ruined. First of all i try to reach this small building, also because untill now i’ve seen any kind of construction, beside an abandoned house. I pass a gate: on our right there’s a deposit, and right in front of me at 20 meters there’s another gate, with two big dogs that stare at us curious. Right next to them the owner appears, looking at us not too friendly. He opens the gate and lets the dogs free to come close to us. Alessandro loves dogs so he starts cuddling them right away, so i feel a bit safer too and i let them walk around me sniffing my clothes. The owner comes closer, he’s young, more or less of our age. He askes us suspiciously what we want and proud if we are afraid of the dogs, as if we have to. I ask him about the industry next to his property. It was where the scenaries for La Scala use to be produced, close for a long time, cause they moved in a better place. Now once a year there’s the exhibition of Ronconi, Infinities. This news make me appreciate even more the place behind the wall. Obviously, he tells us, clandestines live there now, many of them. So i ask him about the house inside his property, hoping that he’ll invite us in to see it. Instead he doesn’t seem to happy about my question, he says it’s not abandoned, but only in bad shape and nobody lives there, cause it’s to expencive to restore it. Althought it’s not abandoned i would have visited it anyway, but the guy doesn’t seem so friendly after all, as if we touched his dignity. Politely we say goodbye and go towards the main entrance of the abandoned area. The gate is slightly open, there’s no chain. Right there there’s a guy, i’d say from north-Africa, talking on a mobile phone. I guess right away that he must be one of the guys living there, cause he looks at us suspicious when he sees we stop right there. In the same moment an old man stops and tells us “here clandestines live, we can’t take it anymore!”, without us asking anything. I, who always need to justify whatever i do, explain that i’m concerned about te area for my final work in university. The man nods, still upset for what he told us. He goes away the same way he arrived. In the meantime the guy with the mobile phone pretends we’re not there, but with a guilty face, but specially with an investigative look, to assure his home is not in danger. We look inside the gate. Nothin’s moving. I ask Alessandro to stand next to the gate while i take some pictures. But the situation is really calm, so at the end we both enter. I go right, he goes left. In the meantime the guy with the phone enters too and disappears inside the building. No way i’ll go inside knowing there’s somebody in that won’t appreciate my presence. I have to admit he seemed to be ok and for a moment i thought of asking him to guide me inside for a tour, so i wouldn’t invade his space. But the courtyard is beautiful enough, without any need to risk my life.

Perspectives and symmetries

Since i’ve starter my final work i don’t get bored anymore when i have to wait. Anyone who takes the subway towards C.na Gobba always feels frustrated: if you have to go to Cologno, you can be sure enough that first will pass one for Gessate and two for Gobba. The same thing happens if you have to go to Gessate: you’ll probably see first the Cologno and the two Gobba pass by. It never happens that you go down in the cold, damp, dark gallery of the subway and your train arrives first. Most of the people to pretend they don’t have to wait so long, hop on the first train that arrives and get off at Crescenzago, where the directions split, and there they wait for the right train. There are many reasons why people do this: there is who wants to smoke a cigarette while waiting, being that it’s prohibited in the galleries, and Crescenzago is outside; there’s who suffers of claustrofobia and can’t wait to breathe fresh air, althought it comes from a very polluted street right behind; there’s who looks at the watch and realises that the sun is going down, so they might not want to go back to the surface and find everything dark: there’s nothing better after a hard working day than to go home with light still outside; there’s who sees that the train for Gobba is almost empty, so they go on so they can sit for at least few stops, being that the other two trains will be full for sure. Personally i catch the first train for all of these reasons. In February i attended my last exam in university. I was very happy. As soon as i got down in the gallery of the metro with all the noise and everything grey, i started to feel uneasy. So i caught the train for Gobba to reach as soon as possible the fresh light air, so i could start calling everybody to give the good news about my exam. The wagon was almost empty, and i started to feel empty too, trying to keep back my tears, which i couldn’t understand if they were of happiness or sadness. At the Udine stop i started to feel claustrofobia rising. I was sitting, alone, feeling my heart beet, agitated, when suddently a red warm light surrounded me. The world started smiling at me again, anxiety disappeared and my tears from melancholy became of joy. So I got off at Crescenzago, i turn on a cigarette, i’ve made a few calls, sent some messages, and still the train for Cologno wasn’t there. So i started looking around, walking back and forth. The sky was really clear, cars passed by fast in Palmanova and i looked at them as if they were music notes of a dodecaphonic score. The train arriving from the opposite direction seemed to me like a long pause, dark and dull, for then start slowly again untill it reached the fast rithm again. Being that i had to get off at Cologno nord, and the exit of that station is at the beginning of the train, i waited for it to come at the end of the platform, where the view dives in a horizon of tracks. The platform is so long that it becomes small and far the more i tried to reach the exit with my eyes. It was early afternoon so there weren’t so many people waiting with me. The platform, of a gold colour from the sun, was even more beautiful with nobody on it. I took few steps out of the roofing, to let the light embrace me completely. I was exactly in the middle. Behind me two men are chatting, and i observe lines running after each other, trying to reach the others.

Derganini

Once i get back to the main open space, where the workers have to pass to get to the only restored building, i feel reliefed and protected. On one side there’s an area completely fenced. It’s also surrounded by trees, that, althought naked because of the winter, try to hide what’s behind them. There are many low buildings, all the same, all abandoned. While i’m observing this view, one of the lady i’ve met at the beginning comes towards me. She stops for a chat and tells me how hard it is to work in such a place. Her voice is melancholy and desolate. She tells me it’s the old Derganini, a hospital for infective diseases (the official name is hospital Bassi) and the area is divided in many low buildings to keep the different diseases away from each other. It’s very fascinating for me to here this, cause i had no idea i could encounter such a piece of history during my wandering, so close to the center. It’s a wonderful testimony of the past, and looking around i can still feel life coming from it, i can see nurses and doctors, worries and sorrows. I tell the woman that it’s strange that they keep the gate wide open, althought there is one building restored. So i find out it is this way only once a week, on fridays, because not far from here there’s a place where thousands of islamics meet to pray, so they needed a place to park all the cars, so the traffic doesn’t stop. She tells me that if i wait a while i’ll see the area get full of cars. She’s not very happy about it. She doesn’t feel safe and before she goes away she tells me “Italy is falling apart”. Just to be sure I ask her if i can keep on going around the area, it’s to nice to be true. I start looking at the fenced area again. The façades have wide windows, almost completely walled, from the bottom till where the arched part starts. A red line follows the whole perimeter, embracing the arches. The coating has horizontal lines, as to delete completely the verticality of each building. Some of the glass in the arched parts is still there, but their destiny is signed if someone doesn’t restore the place fast. Nature is trying to take a hold on the place, growing also on the roofes. I get closer to the fence to see if it’s so impossible to get inside. What divides me from the area is a fence, a row of trees and another fence. I get closer to the restored building and i notice that beyond another fence there’s a small park, but probably still part of the area of the old hospital. At the moment there’s only an old man, playing with his grandchildren. Now i’m between an old building and the new one. I feel a bit astonished cause in few seconds i see the time going back and forth, from new to old.