Reading a country in crisis through the exclusive lenses of superstructural and economical logic has proven not to be a successful engine of change. In the case of Italy the common condemning analysis severely underestimates the many forces, primarily cultural and social, which might be worthy change factors. A different portrait of the country becomes then necessary in order to see what is relevant or dangerous for a possible future.

I collected one month of Italian newspapers (La Repubblica) from abroad. The pictures of daily newspapers have been grouped by themes (Architecture/buildings, Advertisement and Politics), decontextualized and recomposed in 5x2 meters big collages, describing three ideal italian cityscapes: The PIAZZA, The CITY OF DESIRES and The POLIS.

These compositions have been then brought back in a real context, pasted in real cities: searching for the contrast between the media-images and the reality which originates them, the clash between the fictional and the factual cities, nodes of Italian society. This highlights the gap between information and imagination, between the factual and the emotional, the difference between the perceived and the actual reality where the very core of the country lies.

Information Design MA graduation project, Design Academy Eindhoven