COMMUNITY ART
BÄRAKKÄ in BORGO TACCONE
Community project for Matera Basilicata 2019 Foundation
Borgo Taccone, the heart of Basilicata and of the agrarian reform of the 1950s. Borgo Taccone, the place chosen by the Constituente Contadina to unite, in 1977 , young people who asked to exploit public lands and develop an agriculture more sensitive to the territory and closer to the needs of the community and nature.
Borgo Taccone, an agricultural village in a state of semi-neglect where only four families have decided to stay. A few kilometers away, those same houses emptied by the Italian emigrants of the past, today without electricity, water and sanitation, are repopulated by foreign laborers.
Abandoned voids. Emptiness lived.
In this context, the community project funded by the Matera Basilicata 2019 Foundation was born. A project that led to reliving the places of abandonment, weaving a network of memories and relationships with the community that remained within the Borgo and with those, mainly from from sub-Saharan Africa, they live seasonally in other abandoned agricultural residences not far away.
Conjunction vectors: the individual and collective memory of the inhabitants of the Borgo and of Ibrahim, a former laborer from Burkina Faso employed in the seasonal tomato harvest; the correspondence of the State Archives of Matera.
The instructions for building BÄRAKKÄ were developed together with Ibrahim and a group of Burkinabé workers residing in abandoned houses in the Montemilone area, according to the procedures used by African workers.
Together with the Borgo Taccone community , BÄRAKKÄ came to life at the entrance to the town. The same community later decided to use the installation as a nativity scene for the town.