not destroy the history of NANOFIRE .
The interview with photographer James Saviozzi
second point of the trip in the structure of the former psychiatric hospital in Volterra. After 30 years of complete surrender to the risk by Oreste Fernando Nannetti, also known as NOF4 or NANOFIRE. At his recordings have been interested in different artists and photos of his graffiti are found in the Art Brut Museum in Lausanne. San
Lazzero is a small village located a few hundred meters from the walls of Volterra. He climbs on the slopes of a hill on top of which stood the old psychiatric hospital. Looking for, with his eyes upwards, but without success, the trees seem to have swallowed, as if to protect him. I do not need to ask questions, the lady who comes to meet me, surely, is accustomed to such scenes: just shows me how to get to the halls of the former asylum. I enter the grove and unexpectedly discovered that the area is not deserted in my way I find people they run, others walk with your dog. I greet all, but in a voice barely audible, as if they had fear of breaking the silence that surrounds us.
The trees open up and reveal to the sight of the three historic buildings, iron, and Charcot Maragliano. Long corridors cluttered with old furniture stacked, floor covered with debris that creak with every step, big rooms empty and only occasionally illuminated by the light that filters through the railings of the tall windows. The dark and dusty atmosphere puts forward, I must confess myself to want to flee. "Solitude", "FEAR", "depression", "RAGE" others have visited these places before me and have left these words written in large letters on the walls. Seem want me to remember what was this place a home for psychiatric patients. Mindful of stories read and seen documentaries in the past, I try to imagine these rooms of new people: human beings uprooted from their places and their loved ones, confined and isolated from the rest of the world, hidden from view, also subjected to torture, because crazy, psychopathic and insane, or maybe just because they were considered such. Stories of lives erased, whose only memories remain in medical records classified.
Esco by Ferri, the most impressive of the three buildings, and the voltage drops, soothed by the calm that reigns in the garden. Two old men sat chatting on one of the stone benches. I was told that they are often to spend their afternoons here, seeking refuge from the bustle of the city. Like all Volterra, are tied to this place and say they are disappointed that the complex was abandoned to its fate of decline. I ask them directions on where to look for the reason that really pushed me to take my trip to Volterra.
Better target the eyes and finally realized what I faced: a real book, engraved in the plaster. Gasps, work is immense, 180 feet long for an average height 160 cm. Someone described it as a pastime of a poor fool, a way like another one of the patients found to spend his days in the structure. His name Oreste Fernando Nannetti, known as NOF4 or NANOFIRE. Born in 1927 in Rome, Concetta Nannetti and an unknown father, he spent his childhood in a charitable institution then transferred to a psychiatric facility for the handicapped. In 1948 he was accused of insulting a public official, but was acquitted for insanity. In 1958 he left the hospital Santa Maria della Pietà, to get to Volterra, where he remained imprisoned for several years, first in Hall Ferri, the old judicial department, then in Charcot. It took twelve long years to carve, using only the buckle of his uniform, to look at this immense work that suggests the hand of an artist more than to that of a sick and returns an image of NOF4 very different from what we could read the medical records of his alter ego. What we are left pages of drawings and poems, created by an artist who wants to chat, leave a message that can break down the walls of his enclosure. Nannetti page after page describes not only himself but also the life within the asylum, where, for example, draws what he calls a mobile chart metric to describe the mortality within the hospital: "10% for radiation Magnetic televised 40% for various diseases transmitted or caused 50% for personal hatred and resentment caused or transmitted. "
The unity of style, rhetorical devices he uses and his poetry are such that, today, still living recycling Nannetti the dignity that perhaps had been removed in psychiatric hospitals. His work has been concerned other artists, including internationally famous by Mino Trafeli, Ugo Nespolo, with Simon Webbe, and today is among the engravers, the real ones, so that the photos of his graffiti are found in the Art Brut Museum in Lausanne. Convinced of the artistic value of NOF4 and the need for enhancement of his figure, is perhaps more than others, James Saviozzi, Lucca photographer, who wanted to dedicate the "Saint of the photodetector," Oreste Fernando Nannetti, a DVD, "Delusions visual "made in collaboration with journalist Marco Marsili. We interviewed him.
What are inspired by the work that has made NOF?
I made two jobs of former mental hospitals. The first is a book, "The switch in the dark," a photographic reportage that covers all of Italy, from Aversa in Turin, passing for Volterra. The other is a DVD entirely dedicated to Anne. It premiered last year in Volterra, but it is still a work in progress and will take shape soon, thanks to the collaboration with the Museum of Art Brut in Lausanne. Will be titled "Holy Nannettaicus Meccanicus the photoelectric cell" which is nothing more then a mention of what he wrote of himself on the wall
How did your interest in psychiatric hospitals?
are born in Lucca, Lucca and the asylum remained far from the city, both physically and psychologically, it was quite an abstract entity, embodied only through the writings of Mario Tobino, who worked in it but that was more fame as a writer and as a psychiatrist. When I moved to Volterra, I did a little 'like all Volterra, I had the mental hospital as a place for a stroll in a cool, they were "horrified" at certain points is not a real attraction. I said, this could be a story to tell. Hence the book "The switch in the dark, "in which the images, I tried to explain how he could live in psychiatric hospitals and what's left. Coming in Volterra, of course I knew, even before the asylum, Nannetti, I immediately interested in him, I tried talking to others who know him before I had discovered, Mino Trafeli first.
Genius or madness? That idea has made Nannetti?
From art lover, I immediately thought of the work of an artist more than a pastime of a fool. I tried to understand what he wanted to communicate on this wall for so many, like me is a real book, which has a plant: Nannetti tends to build pages within which to write. The graffiti has this uniform shape and has a special feature: when it arrives at bottom of pages, is headed by reversing the letters, instead of from left to right, the letters are written from right to left. Play not only with graphics, but also with the words in poetic form, for "whistle whistle railroad" or "spinaceo dark brown, dry mouth close up 1.65-brother ', two ways in which he uses to describe, are buildings that hardly suggests an illiteracy.
tells us a bit 'better as he analyzed the character in his "visual delusions"?
I tried the DVD to relate Nannetti with four fictional characters: a girl, a poet, an artist and then a sort of alter ego, the connection to the madness, the last guest who returns in the irons and cleans the inside and 'outside of the pavilion with what it finds with your feet, with a mirror. The child with his innocence is that which binds Nannetti and artists in general with the madness and the poet because his is a form of poetry, the artist because art is about, and then alas, alas, he or rather, the crowds because it was classified, so he spent the years of his life as a boarding school. I tried to do this visual experiment, which I call "delusions" because I try to approach what is his view, that space to live. I was told that a person who was silent, did not communicate with anyone and continued all day with its buckle to affect this wall. There is one bench, where he always sat catatonic patients: it is said that even despite continued to affect the people were sitting, turning around their heads. Method acting with words. When you do something like this for years, for 180 yards, buckles and time consuming, beyond the fact of having perhaps too much time to eat, for me it is creating a work of art. He built his own style and its specific language, the wall of Anne and all the effects work art. What then is placed in the so-called Art Brut, this is the critics or those who want to give this connotation. I happened to read a textbook on recordings of 900, where the critical Pisa Nicola Miceli, has devoted four pages of the 900 as an engraver, he acknowledged in every respect an artist, not to be relegated to the Art Brut .
This is a picture of Nannetti, which was built based on his artwork. He got to talk to someone who worked in the building and that he personally met the man Nannetti? As the two figures are similar?
I made a personal impression, and I imagined a person who lives secluded substantially from the time, even as a kid, first in orphanages and then mental hospitals. A person who in my opinion look for a contact with the outside. This side of his being found several times on the wall but never sent in postcards. Through that wall shall maintain contact with family, real or alleged to be. Describes the physical traits of his relatives as if they belonged to a tribe: all high, the Moors, with his nose to Y, continues to call and send their news, which seem strange but that is true, with his telepathic system. A person only extremely strong but felt the need to communicate with the outside. As for the
Nannetti man, we know neither the diagnosis nor treatment to which he was subjected, we do not know exactly why it has been locked up there. We know of the conviction for insulting a public official, he would have to serve two years. But years of Volterra has passed 12. Instead, what happened inside I got to see an 8 mm uncut, filmed by a nurse Volterra scenes nothing short of horrifying acts of sodomy between patients, I saw naked people, tight corners in the dirt , pick up the butts on the ground and Furmia, subjected to a shock that it breaks ribs for seizures. I had seen movies and documentaries, but they were nothing compared to this. Nannetti has lived in a similar context and achieve a work under these conditions like his own, beyond the artistic value, is history. It is a way of communicating: "I live here, but nonetheless still exist. In a place where you come and you have no right, I'll know that there are, but I'll let you know forever, this wall must fall because my cry be deleted. "
And even when this wall falls, Nannetti continue to let the world know that there is, thanks to the artists who will introduce his work and he understood that.
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