SILVIA PIO

Why do we write? For many reasons: to follow an impulse to tell stories or to freeze an important moment on the page. The reasons are many and so are the occasions. The Creative Writing Workshop at the cultural association La Meridiana Tempo has made the city of Mondovì the reason and occasion to write. “Ascoltando Mondovì”, Listening to Mondovì, is a writing project, some results of which have already been published in the local weekly L’Unione Monregalese.
One afternoon at the end of May 2012 the people attending the workshop met in piazza San Pietro, in front of the association’s premises, and set off in the most silent and less crowded hour, ready to receive Mondovì’s confessions and secrets. In the setting of our old city, full of history and character, in the turn of a street, near a corner of a palace, on a peeling wall, we recorded whispers (but somebody said they were roars)  and stories.
The rule was that everybody had to be totally silent while walking. We couldn’t talk to one another nor greet an acquaintance, our only tools a pen and a notebook.
With us, with a different tool, was the photographer Lorenzo Avico, who took the pictures coupled with the written pieces. These pieces are the results of an individual effort and a group’s editing.
We hope that Mondovì is glad to have been listened to and that she is going to forgive us if we have not been able to grasp the endless facets of her talking.

Lorenzo Avico:  www.lorenzoavico.it   e   www.imagevintage.it

Margutte will publish the pieces of “Ascoltando Mondovì” from time to time. La città straniera (The Foreign City) is the first one.