Il suo buio speciale/ Its special darkness is an artistic project that stems from Villa Filanda Antonini’s desire to build a network of people and processes capable of interpreting the material and immaterial specificities of the Veneto territory.

The investigation began with two questions: What is the identity of the Veneto territory? How do we represent an anthropogeographic landscape in crisis?

Starting from here, Villa Filanda Antonini invited Mattia Balsamini to identify some people who were born in the region and have distinguished themselves in the field of scientific research and cultural production. Balsamini chose to be joined by writer Pietro Minto, the perfect interlocutor to get in touch with the different figures to be involved.

Through thirteen landscape photographs and thirteen individual portraits, a path of research is undertaken on the identity of northeastern Italy, a territory that has undergone a profound cultural and social transformation in the last fifty years. The project maps an anthropo-geographical landscape through the images, faces and words of thirteen illustrious Venetians who have distinguished themselves in the arts and sciences. The portraits and landscapes become a tool through which to enter into dialogue with the territory and tell the story of a place that has always been characterized by the competitive logic of making, of producing, and that today, having exhausted the possibilities of exploiting only material resources, must transform sweated labor into another kind of commitment, giving new and legitimate dignity to “thinking.”

Text by F.Bergamo