The exhibition is part of the TUTTOLIBERO project, planned for the spaces of the Lancia-Chiribiri car park, with the aim of spreading art even in those places that are not created as containers of art, but that prove to be ideal spaces to make it approachable without preconceptions and formalisms. TUTTOLIBERO (‘All free’) because it refers to the idea of the car park as a place open to all and everyone, while ‘TUTTO’ evokes a concept of struggle; feeling one’s rights denied and fighting to recover them. Concepts that recall the working-class world and the sense of community that united, and unites, Borgo San Paolo, remembered as the ‘Red Village’ for its sense of social and political struggle.
Mio caro padrone domani ti sparo (My dear boss, tomorrow I’ll shoot you) is the title of singer-songwriter Paolo Pietrangeli’s first album, released in 1970. In those years, as the episodes of social conflict grew, the ‘padrone’ was evoked through songs, with the workers’ demands being broadcast loud and clear while, at the same time, these formed the sound background during moments of struggle.
The variety of social themes renew their persistence within the San Paolo district and thus in the history of both the car park and of the Fondazione Merz itself. These are places which, having been factories and industrial spaces, have welcomed and recognised a working-class and social identity. The exhibition thus also becomes an opportunity to think about issues concerning the neighbourhood, the meaning of what it means to live outside the city centre, in communion with different cultures and histories. The area of San Paolo has its own strong identity, not only in the environmental connotations linked to the architecture, but for an immaterial dimension, generated by its inhabitants, by their feeling rooted to a place. One can still find that community atmosphere, created by the relationships between people and their way of experiencing urban spaces, polarised by the silent protagonists of the socio-environmental scene. Markets, shops, bars, but also squares, boulevards, streets, are all realities that welcome and encourage encounters, preserving that neighbourly relationship that is not so frequent in many other areas of Turin deprived of their own socio-political history.
