What is the thickness of Coloniality?

︎︎︎congress 23-28.06.2024, Lyon 
36th CIHA World Congress
(Comité International d'Histoire de l'Art) 

Panel
Desiderata of the Object: Emergent Meaning and Conservation After the Material Turn

Chairs
Annika Finne (Institute of Fine Arts New York University, New-York, NY, United States)
Emily Frank (New York University, New-York, NY, United States)
Matthieu Lelièvre (Musée d’Art Contemporain de Lyon, Lyon, France)







Cultural heritage offers insights into our past, informs our present and helps shape our identity in the future, yet the national preservation procedures move often as a bureaucratic praxis.
In Italy, the critical preservation approach appears with the theory of Cesare Brandi, according to which restoration is the methodological moment of becoming aware of the work of art and cannot operate in direct continuity with the past.

Therefore every material intervention is a statement of the recognition of a cultural value to be conveyed. However, this proposition is usually not applicable to buildings of the XX century towards which seems to prevail another principle conceived by Cesare Brandi: the re-establishment of the potential unity of the work of art without committing artistic or historical falsehoods. Although erasing the traces of time, this second principle drove the restoration of Borgo Rizza, a case of paradoxical practices.

Borgo Rizza, in the Province of Syracuse, is one of the eight 8-buildings-around-a-square villages built in 1940 in Sicily by the Fascist institution: Ente di Colonizzazione del Latifondo Siciliano to colonise and modernise the so called underdeveloped population.

In 2002 and 2012, without any methodological approach, but supported by European funds, two renovation campaigns brought back Borgo Rizza to a sense of unity as requested by Soprintendenza ai Beni Culturali —a institution responsible for protecting and promoting cultural heritage in the Italian context.

Nevertheless, today the plaster crumbles.

The paper stems from the crumbling plaster phenomenon and hypothesizes that the failing preservation processes can be traced in how the fascist ideology materialised and in the western epistemology of aesthetics.
Despite being identified as a modern architecture, and officially constructed by the north-Italian, groundbreaking expert-in-concrete company Ferrobeton, Borgo Rizza features traditional volcanic load-bearing walls, on the ground floor, and tuff masonry, on the second floor, hence only a few structures are in reinforced concrete.

In relation to a wall section of approximately 60 cm, the fascist modernity is embodied in solely 2 cm of red-colored concrete plaster, which played a pivotal role in strengthening the modernization ideology of the fascist regime against the Sicilian context.
And yet, despite materially irresponsible for technical incompatibility and culturally difficult to sustain for the continuity with the fascist past, upon the guidance and the supervision of the Soprintendenza ai Beni Culturali, two campaigns of restoration have underpinned the performativity of the fascist regime.

Ironically, it is behind the crumbling plaster that is possible to appreciate the material complexity of Borgo Rizza: a mix of techniques that evoke many more stories than the fascist narrative and still today perpetuated in the cultural heritage rhetoric. Behind the surface of the plaster lies the intricate entanlement of the colonial past where new imported technology intersects with local materials and building techniques.

What if instead of being an issue to be fixed, the crumbling plaster performs, in agential materialistic terms, as the framework for a demodern/decolonial epistemology committed to social justice able to acknowledge the colonial legacies and ultimately passes down narratives otherwise excluded?

︎ MATTER-MATERIALITY For the 36th CIHA ( Comité International d'Histoire de l'Art) World Congress the topic is “Matter and Materiality” as they are inherent to the conception, production, interpretation and conservation of artifacts in all cultures across all period. It focuses on issues relating to the world's cultural heritage in the diversity of its creation, study, conservation and promotion.

The theme Matter Materiality focuses on the object and its uses over the centuries and across cultural areas.

This theme taps into the fundamental origins of art while inviting reflection on the major issues of our time: management of resources, sustainability, the environment, new technologies, digital dematerialisation, and more.

Matter and materiality are inherent to the conception, production, interpretation and conservation of artifacts in all cultures across all period. It focuses on issues relating to the world's cultural heritage in the diversity of its creation, study, conservation and promotion.

The congress has provided five intense days of scientific exchanges, with several programmes of conferences, round tables, debates and visits to cultural institutions and historic sites in and around Lyon and its Metropole.