Giovanni Cocco – Displacement « burn magazine

I perceived what displacement can mean while strolling down the busted roads of L’Aquila, Italy, with the writer Caterina Serra. The earthquake of the 6th of April 2009 converted the historical town into a building site, in an undistinguished non-lieu of new buildings that resurfaced from the dusty debris under the guise of refurbished hotels, coffee shops and wine bars, as if these were the only suitable places for social life. The population meanwhile has been shifted and exiled into the New Towns, dormitory suburbs with centers that are nothing but the roundabouts of shopping malls, where one can feel a material and spiritual disorientation. A community has lost its public space, and all its places of individual and collective memories