“This exhibition is as a dialogue between two authors who more than others represented, for me, not just experiences, rather devices given to the community to achieve the freedom of movement”. The exhibition project “The distribution of the sensible” shows the work of the photographer Antonio Ottomanelli in dialogue with works by Luigi Ghirri and Gordon Matta-Clark. Strips of rough fir, panels of OSB and poster paper are the materials which comprise the set-up of the temporary “work site” that the Bari-born artist has developed for the Universoassisi festival. The exhibition has in fact been conceived as an instrument for the – semantic, rather than physical – recovery and transformation of an abandoned building which lies at the centre of a debate, a common space.

The title refers to an essay by the French philosopher Jacques Rancière, The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible, which focuses on “that system of evidence which makes visible a common dimension of reality and, at the same time, its division into parts”. Photographs by Luigi Ghirri from the Atlante Week End series are displayed. The shots by the Emilia-born artist are an imaginary journey across maps, where “all the signs of the earth, from the natural to the cultural ones, are conventionally represented” (1). If photography has the capacity to alter relationships with reality, the works of Ghirri are an invitation to the free imagination of the landscape. With his cuts, Matta-Clark acts in every-day spaces: “places where you stop to tie your shoes, places that are just interruptions in your daily movements. These places are also perceptually significant because they make reference to movement space”(2). Tying together the work of the two apparently distant artists is that of Ottomanelli, who uses photography, video and maps to reconstruct a fragmented common space. Signs, memory, conflict, perception, action... these are the key words from the colourful posters which further unite the works exhibited.

From the ordinary to the conflictual, from the calm of Ghirri’s geography to the violence of Matta-Clark’s cuts, Ottomanelli seeks to reveal the complex tensions existing within the urban territory. Conflict is in our daily lives and we are by now accustomed to this. One only needs to consider that the Jersey barriers depicted by the photographer in Afghanistan and Iraq in situations of conflict have become a fixture in all of the town centres in Italy and a part of an urban vocabulary.

Public space is now controlled, partitioned and offered to the highest (private) bidder. Its nature as common space is no longer. The art sociologist Pascal Gielen responds to the erosion of public space with the definition of civil space which, while not completely open to the movement and thoughts of people, is a type of space which escapes normalisation. Gielen is interested in environments which are capable of becoming expressions of a community, and which require constant maintenance. Ottomanelli, instead, invited the public to revolutionise the way they see things. Understanding how to read the signs and examine in depth the material and immaterial landscape that surrounds us is the first fundamental step in re-conquering and reconstructing cities, rendering public space unpredictable, open and transparent.