Casa Cametti, 2015 - 2019
Project created during the Dolomiti Contemporanee residency
Action: art in exhaust
Simone Cametti arrived at the former Eni Village of Corte di Cadore in February 2015, to get to know and explore the Village and its Colony, one of the most important structures of the complex, today transformed into a large artistic and cultural construction site. Immediately, the practice of making art became intimately connected with that of being in the world, and Cametti involved his family in the project. Being an artist is not a job, but a way of being attentively present while living. Beautiful black eyes always fixed, like a nut to tighten on concepts and objects. The former management offices, one of the pavilions part of the enormous Cologne, unused since 1991, have thus begun to be transformed. Once the binders and documents disappeared, Gellner's precious furniture and furnishings arrived, along with the Colonia's household appliances, produced by many important companies of the time (Fantoni, Lanerossi, Flos, Ginori, Pirelli, Agipgas). The abandoned workspace, renovated and equipped with utilities and services by the artist himself, has therefore become a domestic environment, now composed of a living room, kitchen, three bedrooms, bathroom, terrace, fridge and television. Every year, the Cametti family leaves Rome and joins Simone in Casa Cametti for their summer stay. Leonardo, three years old, Mattia, eleven, his partner Sonia, the dog Nora. Sometimes, Simone's students also come to the RUFA Academy to develop workshops or projects. The rhythm in the House is the ordinary one of the life of a family group on holiday in the mountains. While Simone carries out research in Cologne, and works (bricklayer, electrician, plumber, thinker) on the house, his children play. We go mushroom picking in the woods and cook risotto. You drink white wine on the terrace, among the pines and fir trees. Nora barks at the roe deer and deer that are at home here. When there's time, she goes walking, or to the lake. During the Open-studios, the public invades the house, without disturbing its intimacy. Casa Cametti is not a set: it is a self-sufficient production site, governed by a vital and regenerative idea, stubborn and quiet. It is, like Progettoborca, which contains it, a sort of responsible and autarchic rebellion against the destinies of inertia and commemorative laziness (don't whine, screw up). It is an occupied space, inhabited and open to open people, in which the artist knows how to unload.
Gianluca d’Inca Levis
Casa Cametti is the result of a three-year period of residence during which the artist together with his family moved to the former Eni Village in Corte di Cadore, choosing a single-storey building, the former Management Offices, as his summer home. of the Colony. New voices have thus revived those places, the colony has started to live again and the Camettis have dusted off the memories of the place, reactivating it, both materially in the restarting of the house, starting from the essential things, appropriating that history and connecting it to a contemporary experience, until ownership is established in all respects. The house is the place and means in which to build the research project, from 2015 to today the family's holidays have been documented through videos and photographs. The life of the mountains, with the thin air, and the dense practice, of Casa Cametti, where the pretentious and opaque boundaries between the aforementioned areas (art, work, life, commitment, holiday) are broken, and life flows in a flow.
Selection of images from the first year of residency
Casa Cametti, 2017
// 5 artists in 5 acts” complex of Sant'agnese, Vitorchiano, Viterbo
8 mivar televisions, video documentation of the Cametti house 2015/2017
Casa Cametti, 2017
// video documentation