About US: Me and my work
Paesaggi delle Mafie Lab is a voluntary class aimed at exploring mafia landscapes and the bi-directional relationship between these landscapes and people. The Lab has been instituted two years ago at University of Catania, with a focus on urban studies. Activities have been organized in various phases: lectures, archival research and fieldwork. The presented clip is an excerpt of the assignment for this year. Credits refer to the people whose perceptions we tried to understand and portrait. We blend their perceptions with ours, in order to share the complexity of the landscapes we walked through. We pose ourselves questions such as: what is a mafia landscape? How do people perceive these landscapes? How do these landscapes influence people’s life, social and family relationships? What are the criminal dynamics highlighted through these landscapes? A mafia landscape is that milieu where Sicilian organized crime has a strong control and power; where mafia exploits economic and human resources. Places are not strictly a cause for determining criminal dynamics, but certain factors make a street or a district more critical than others. Surely the absence of services, activities, public and vibrant spaces worsens a neighborhood. When those factors are missing, people perceive only a widespread lack of care. This creates a physical and cultural distance from the rest of the city, intensifying problems. This distance may exist in other European and Italian suburbs. This is so evident in many suburbs in Catania, and we have experienced that. We perceived how these Landscapes are, currently, platforms for criminal activities, where people are easily controlled. People are the main actors: few are connected with the cause of the problem; many suffer. We tried to get the point of view of those suffering. Our fieldwork has been conducted in San Giovanni Galermo, a suburb not so far from downtown Catania. Here, the criminal power has literally built a cultural distance from the rest of the City, such an invisible wall. People we met and interviewed are aware of the mafia presence: “some areas are inaccessible for licit business, some problems must remain problems, so it is better to stay at home instead of living the few public spaces”. We focused with a specific group of actors: mothers. They, together with their children, are involved in activities carried out in a non-profit center, that works as a “hopeful suburb inside the suburb". There, everyone has no fear and can freely ask for help. We do believe this is necessary for families and for the future of society: children. Suburbs like San Giovanni Galermo exist everywhere; these are places that often Institutions do not want to look at, where few people control daily life of the most with violence. Fortunately, there is also who take care of suburbs. These are points of lights; these points must become a network of lights, a network of Love. Suburbs are the weak part of cities. Suburbs need Love.