Urban Lava 2026
In the 1950s, when the young Lettrists led by Guy Debord began their “drifts” (dérives) in Paris—which would later give rise to “psychogeography” and “unitary urbanism”—the city was uniquely suited to exploration and adventure. Their notions of “play,” “labyrinth,” “constructed situation,” and “passion” unfolded against the backdrop of a city they passionately loved. Composed of bricks assembled in temporary and reconfigurable configurations, the installation presents itself as an open, transforming structure. The brick—earth transformed by fire—becomes here the minimum unit of a landscape suspended between urban architecture and geological memory. Within the context of IPER Festival delle Periferie and the theme of its 026 edition, SUPER LIEUX, the work reflects on the periphery not as a passive margin of the city, but as a space where urban logics condense, crack, and redefine themselves. Rome rests on soils of volcanic origin; many of its peripheral areas stand on deposits of tuff and pyroclastic materials originating from the ancient Alban Hills volcanic system. From this perspective, the bricks evoke a kind of urban lava.
Presented at the MAAM (Museo dell’Altro e dell’Altrove)—one of the “super places” of Rome’s suburbs—the work connects geology, the city, and living practices. Like a volcanic landscape made of accumulations, fractures, and re-emergences, the periphery appears here as an unstable yet generative field, capable of ceaselessly producing new urban geographies.
IPER Festival delle periferie
MAAM-Museo dell’Altro e dell’Altrove, Rome
