Plans and Projects

During this “holiday” week, Pietro and Marlene have been frantically busy. A good part of this has been my fault, as my house purchase triggered a swarm of bureaucratic tangles and tense meetings with lawyers and mediators that nonetheless raced along to a happy ending. But beyond that, they have been constantly involved in planning the next six months of ICBIE courses, projects and events, requiring a dense agenda of meetings, phone calls, emails and passionate discussions that filled each day from breakfast until late at night. What follows is a brief overview of the hottest issues.

1) The second semester of formal courses is set, with three Brazilian computer literacy teachers giving beginning and intermediate lessons, Marlene’s beginning and intermediate Italian, Pietro’s advanced Italian and choral singing, and a promising new teacher, Mary Overby, from North Carolina, who will be giving a two month session of beginning and intermediate English. The highly successful Hapkido lessons will also continue unabated. A steady stream of kids are enrolling every day.

2) Pietro has been busy pestering both the Faculty of Fine Arts of the Federal University of Bahia and the Mondrian Foundation in Holland, hoping to organize an exhibition of works by the fascinating photographer Angèle Etoundi Essamba. A native of Cameroun, she is a UNESCO Prize winner whose giant works powerfully convey the dignity of African women, breaking their stereotypes as mere water carriers and child bearers.

3) More negotiations have secured two important cultural events that Pietro has concocted for the city of Salvador. On November 1st, the Italian Consulate will sponsor an Exhibition-Conference to celebrate the five-hundredth anniversary of the first use of the word “America” (not the “Indies”) to describe the New World. In 1507, the term appeared on a map by the renowned Martin Waldseemüller, who coined it from the first name of Amerigo Vespucci, the Florentine-born explorer who was the first European to arrive on this part of the Brazilian coast; on November 1, 1501, he named the Bahia de Todos os Santos, to honor All Saints’ Day. On December 10th the city will hold a similar event honoring the two-hundredth anniversary of Giuseppe Garibaldi’s birth, underlining his groundbreaking role in Brazilian independence, when, in 1836, he allied with the gaucho rebels, the farrapos, to form the short-lived Republic of Rio Grande do Sul. During those struggles, he met Anita Ribeiro da Silva, who accompanied him on his subsequent Italian campaigns. The Italian writer Lisa Ginzburg, author of the new book Malía Bahia, will be a keynote speaker at the event.

4) Pietro is also attempting to bring the famous Italian photographer Franco Fontana to Salvador. Born in Modena in 1933, Fontana is recognized as the pioneer of color photography, which was previously considered as a gaudy and non-artistic rival of the sacrosanct black-and-white. His work has been shown around the world and in the most prestigious publications dedicated to the art, and Pietro hopes to arrange an exposition in Salvador’s Rodin Museum, if he can convince the Federal University of Bahia to sponsor the event.

5) A confirmed event is set for mid-December, when Anna Clementi arrives at the ICBIE to perform a concert of contemporary music. A fine singer, Anna is well known in Italian musical circles for her exciting performances that combine voice with flute playing and percussion, and her concert will include works by John Cage and Dieter Schnebel. We hope that Anna’s father, the venerable composer Aldo Clementi, will be able to accompany her on this visit to Salvador.

6) A more ambitious, long-term project intends to create a new museum here in Ribeira. Negotiations are underway with a colonel of the Brazilian Air Force, a general in the Navy and the Brazilian Embassy in Rome, to transform a big abandoned building on the seafront that was formerly the historic hydroport where, just a few weeks before Lindbergh’s flight in 1927, João Ribeiro de Barros arrived on the first solo crossing of the Atlantic Ocean. His record was discredited because his non-stop flight began from the island of Capo Verde, off the African coast, and ended at the island of Fernando de Noronha, off the Brazilian coast, before his arrival in Ribeira. There is a strong Italian connection in the story, as de Barros used a Savoia Marchetti SM55, which resides today in the Aeronautical Museum of Vigna di Valle, near Lake Bracciano. Furthermore, the Ribeira hydroport was a preferred destination of Italo Balbo, Mussolini’s minister of the Italian Air Force and Governor of Libya, who stopped here on the famous trip in 1930-31, when he led a fleet of twelve SM55s from Orbetello to Rio de Janeiro. If all goes as planned, a “Museum of the Atlantic Crossing” will be a prestigious addition to our neighborhood.

7) And last but not least, numerous meetings in City Hall have pretty much assured the first international expedition of our wonderful resident graffiti artists, Julio and Bigod. The city of Salvador will pay for their plane tickets to Italy! Salvador has an enlightened city superintendent, Edvando Luiz Castro Pinto, who has spearheaded an innovative project called Salvador Grafita, that treats street paintings as bona fide artworks, and provides paid positions to many young artists. Our boys plan to stay with Guido Daniele in Milan before their appearance at the Bahia Festival in Bassano del Grappa on September 29th, where they will create a new mural. Then they will go to Reggio Emilia, making a presentation at the local ARCI center, to Modena, where they will encounter school kids, and to Rome, where they will meet with the students of the American Overseas School of Rome, visit the ICBIE headquarters, show their works at Garbatella, and meet with Roman artists at the Forte Prenestino social center.

And this is only a highlight of the many projects being planned. More exciting news will follow!