Ultradizione

Cities evolve. They grow, develop, often expand in size, sometimes they depopulate but they are never still. Cities that are always the same exist only in the dream catalogues of the mass tourism industry.

Timeless places for which fascinating stories can be told, varying according to the taste of those who can afford to buy a part of them.

The city becomes a stage for events built on the expectations of an audience, a product like any other to be sold with certain standards demanded by consumers. The past and a supposed “tradition” take the form of the only contemporary reference, with the sole purpose of selling more “authentic” experiences, completely forgetting the role of the subjects acting in the present: slogans lose their meaning and symbols are accepted uncritically because they are part of a rhetoric that often benefits from institutional approval or widespread custom.

What is true in the past? What is authentic today? Which symbols of the past still make sense to innovate today? What can we do to prevent the musealisation of cities?

The work of Canemorto, MOMO, Studio Antani, Ultravioletto + Dottor Pira is the first exhibition of the TAM Tower Art Museum, the museum-that-now-exists.

If it’s impossible to read the Greek and Latin classics without a dictionary of classical allusions, then for the Materan tradition a dictionary is also needed, necessary to decode what is true, what is plausible, and what is false (semi-quote).