Pompeii, 79 AD (it was probably October): a column of ash and lapilli rises from Vesuvius. It\u2019s like the end of the world. Everything shivers and transforms: a multiverse opens up and history stalls, allowing testimony to flow, soon to become legend: Pompeii no longer exists.<\/p>\n
1748: little by little, and almost accidentally, the ancient city is unearthed, one excavation at a time, and return to our universe as the greatest discovery in modern archaeology: it\u2019s the Grand Tour<\/i>!<\/p>\n
In 2020, more than two and a half centuries later, Pompeii has not yet been completely excavated, but once again there\u2019s talk of the end (of the human era), as multitudes of people start to move, temperatures rise, species decline and some vanish; A.I. is a reality and increasingly frequent pandemics run rife.<\/p>\n
We ask ourselves whether contemporary archaeologists and art historians might wonder together: \u201cbut how have\u2026 a vast number of fragments of soil, stone and metal, little piles of colored dust, fossilized and semi-carbonated trees, solidified lumps of liquids and gases, bones and cavities in the shape of humans and animals\u2026 managed to overturn the order of beginning and end, turn destruction into regeneration, change reality, by imagining and embodying a new one?\u201d. <\/i>And might they still do so today?<\/p>\n
Indeed, we want to try and understand what happened, but also what might still happen. And perhaps to do that we can return with you to Pompeii and explore it together\u2026<\/p>\n
21 December 2020: a new date in Pompeii\u2019s long, painful and compelling calendar: the day when Pompeii Archaeological Park launches Pompeii Commitment. Archaeological Matters.<\/i><\/p>\n
The project \u2013 conceived by the Park with a Partners Committee<\/i><\/a> set up for the purpose by the Fundraising Office \u2013 begins on the day that marks the transition from fall to winter 2020, and will continue in the years to come. Pompeii Commitment. Archaeological Matters <\/i>is in a way a momentous step for Pompeii, because it is the institution\u2019s first long-term project dedicated to the contemporary arts. It is based on the investigation and enhancement of the \u201carcheological matters\u201d preserved in the Park\u2019s excavation areas and storage facilities, and envisages Pompeii as a kind of knowledge-in-progress, and therefore not solely as a fixed legacy to be guarded. For this reason, the aim of the project is to create and share the Episteme<\/a> \u00a0which may arise from the collaboration between archaeologists and contemporary artists, through which we seek gradually to explore the very premises for establishing a collection of contemporary art for the Pompeii Archeological Park.<\/p>\n Conceived in 2017 during the preparation of the exhibition Pompei@Madre. Archaeological Matters<\/em>, which we curated with Luigi Gallo, the project will be maintained together with Stella Bottai and Laura Mariano. We prefer to use the term \u201cmaintain\u201d rather than \u201ccurate\u201d because we are aware that to define the tasks of those who will take care of this project, this work needs to be connoted as a daily responsibility and commitment, not only to imagine, but also, specifically, to maintain and preserve the results obtained. Exactly as archaeologists do with the finds they unearth, study, preserve and display. Additionally, our joint efforts seek to support an experience which is longer and simultaneously more intimate than a physical visit to the archaeological site or a consultation of its digital platforms, asserting a feeling of gradual discovery that reflects the permanent excavation, research and maintenance taking place every day at Pompeii.<\/p>\n For these reasons, the project is structured in two phases.<\/p>\n Phase one (Winter 2020 to Winter 2021) consists of the creation of a web portal. In the past year, many programs and activities have been developed and rapidly shifted onto digital platforms, particularly since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, and we have discussed extensively what it would mean to create an online site at this historic time: pompeiicommitment.org<\/a>, therefore, was conceived not as a functional or supportive tool, but rather as access to an actual research center which will publish and distribute ongoing projects, articles in written or visual format, podcasts, audio and video files by authors invited to outline \u2014 as a collective process \u2014 the very episteme<\/i> of the project, as mentioned above. Their contributions (Commitments<\/i><\/a>) will be brought together in a final scientific publication. The portal will also tell the story of how Pompeii became a means to understand modernity, initially Western and later global (Historiae<\/i>)<\/a>, accumulating a constantly evolving transdisciplinary knowledge, consisting of countless stories about the ending and the beginning of worlds, both real and imaginary (Library of Archaeology and Futurology<\/i><\/a>). For this reason, many professional experts of the Archaeological Park \u2014 archaeologists, historians, archivists, anthropologists, archaeozoologists, archaeobotanists, agronomists, geologists, chemists, architects, engineers, IT experts, restorers, maintenance staff \u2014 are invited to explore and share with the wider public their unique knowledge through a series of new texts and interviews that shed light and celebrate their unique work methodology (Fabulae<\/i><\/a>). Lastly, the portal lays the foundations for a typological classification of Pompeii\u2019s \u201carcheological matter\u201d in the form of a museum \u2014 as yet hypothetical \u2014 dedicated to it (Inventario<\/i><\/a>).<\/p>\n Phase two, scheduled to begin in 2021, will consist of a program for the commissioning, production and presentation of artworks which little by little will build a collection of contemporary art (Collectio<\/i><\/a>) of Pompeii\u2019s Archaeological Park. The collection will include artifacts, curated projects, publishing and research activities, documents, experiences and reflection on the multifaceted significance of Pompeii\u2019s \u201carchaeological matter\u201d. This second phase is informed by the guidelines for the Italian Council<\/i> program promoted by the MiBACT \u2014 Ministry of Cultural Heritage, Activities and Tourism.<\/p>\n Our intention is that the project will give rise to a wide-ranging museum which, in addition to Pompeii, will feature the sites of Oplontis, Boscoreale and Longola, the Polverificio Borbonico of Scafati, the Reggia di Quisisana and the Stabian Villas, linking the archaeological dimension with the less obvious and less visible ecosystem of nature and urban space, integral elements in all these sites. Partly for this reason, the production of contributions to be published on the portal requires ongoing collaboration between all the contributors and a comparison of their respective research methods, as well as of the digital sphere and the physical sphere of the material, which we do not intend to forgo.<\/p>\n The Modernarium<\/i> you are reading is a vade mecum, an antiquarium<\/i> whose viewpoint has switched so that it looks to the future instead of the past. It will be updated and published for each new season, to take account of the progress of the project and the need for review, implementation or \u2014 why not? \u2014 the correction of errors committed in the meantime, as occurs in all research work.<\/p>\n Evoked by the four portals imagined by Giulio Paolini<\/a> and maintained in accordance with the methodological recommendations of Mierle Laderman Ukeles,<\/a> authors of the first two contributions named Commitments<\/em>, over the coming months the web portal will showcase contributions from other contemporary artists, curators, writers and activists, who make up the research team to whom, from now on, Pompeii Commitment. Archaeological Matters <\/i>is entrusted. The author of the first of the Fabulae<\/em><\/a> is Professor Pierpaolo Forte<\/a>, who conceived the project with us back in 2017, and who is now one of the members of the Board of Directors of Pompeii Archaeological Park.<\/p>\n Furthermore, the project will also develop a series of matrix projects that began already in 2019 and 2020.<\/p>\n