ZRAlt! or, in Italian, “Zona Rossa Alt!” (which may be translated with the semi-acronym RZAlt!, “Red Zone Alt!”).

The dramas, or rather the tragedies behind that ban, have been bitterly experienced worldwide by millions and millions of people. Caused by natural, environmental, civil disasters (wars, famine and epidemic diseases) and, above all, the psychological distress. Feelings of fear, helplessness, and the incessant questioning “when will that damned icon-sign be removed?”, are the main elements of the individual or collective equilibrium  that, most of the times, is abruptly interrupted  in just a few seconds. This is what recently happened with the devastating earthquakes that shattered L’Aquila and Emilia Romagna, Haiti or the Japan tsunami. How to react, or rather, how did the individuals and the entire communities respond to the existential devastation as a consequence of the inevitable death and injury toll, the complete destruction of villages, neighbourhoods, and even of cities (e.g., Lisbon and Messina in the past, L’Aquila in 2009)?

It was no coincidence that the first type of medication administered or self-administered  in order to somehow relieve the suffering were and still will be spiritual (in particular, religious or artistic).

ZRAlt!: all-round creativity versus hopelessness and death. A genuine and, why not, cathartic reaction to the emotional and physical distress by which both the individual and the community are surrounded. More precisely: surrounded and besieged.

One of the first sacrificial victim of every catastrophe is the individual and civil memory, which has been historically preserved in every single “core place” of the town, now destroyed and cordoned-off within the RZAlt! Preserved and preservable only by Mnemosyne, daughter of Uranus (Sky) and Gea (Earth), and mother of the nine Muses.

The preservation of memory in its multiple aspects, by following the traumatic traces that every post-disaster “genetically” tends to let fade away, is the main aim of ZRAlt!, an open, monothematic and multimedia quarterly published online by Angelus Novus Edizioni, a L’Aquila-based publishing house, which deals with the hardly investigated relationship between “Catastrophe & Creativity”. Privileged successor of its precursors, News Arte Contemporanea (1988) and Bérénice (since 1997) produced by the same publisher, it can also be read and consulted on the Web site (www.angelus-novus.it).

L’Aquila: right! The medieval “Magnifica citade” (i.e., magnificent city)  which, after more than four Earth’s orbits around the Sun and whose  historic centre still lies disrupted and abandoned, completely deserted, has become a latter-day Pompeii.

Thus, it will be the paradigmatic “ bad conscience” of one of the most stunning Italian cities rich in historical monuments, architectural, artistic and natural treasures – largely destroyed by the quake, and afterwards stabbed in the back by the attested institutional haughtiness and inertia, strongly imbued with political propaganda and mass media falsehood  – to play the main role of hypocenter and epicentre of those relieving creative waves captured by the ethereal digital pages of ZRAlt!, also widely enjoyed extra-moenia.

The texts (articles, essays, creative writings), featuring images, reportages, videos and catalogues, shall enable the reader-Internet user to smoothly windsurf through the different titles included in the referential “binary index” of the first issue.

On its pages, visual arts, photography, documentary films, essays and news top stories intertwine, boasting important collaborations with Pino Bertelli, Antonio Gasbarrini, Anna Maria Giancarli, Antonio Picariello and Giuseppe Siano, along with the multimedia contributions by several and qualified co-authors.

In the name and under the thaumaturgic aegis of Mnemosyne: “I am parched with thirst and I perish: but quickly / grant me cold water flowing forth from the Lake of Memory. / And of themselves they will give thee to drink from the holy Well-spring, / And thereafter among the other Heroes thou shalt have lordship.”

INDICE BINARIO *

Pittura scultura installazioni performaces
AquilAbruzzoTendAtelier di Antonio Gasbarrini
3 reportages + 3 video
Dalle 3.31 alle 3.33 di Antonio Gasbarrini
1 reportage + 2 video + 1 catalogo

Fotografia
Sulla fotografia di strada di Pino Bertelli
1 portfolio

Poesia
La parola che ricostruisce di Anna Maria Giancarli
11 poesie

Saggistica
La percezione mediatica delle catastrofi (I parte) di Giuseppe Siano
1 video

Docufilm
Schola di Antonio Picariello
1 docufilm

Chronica
L’Aquila 5 maggio 2013: Ella fu (Manifesto degli storici d’arte e video-intervento di Salvatore Settis)
1 reportage + 1 video

Wikipedia
Il portale delle catastrofi
Numerosi links testuali, fotografici e video

Per gli apporti multimediali al n. 1 di ZRAlt! (estate 2013) si ringraziano, tra gli altri, YouDemTV, News Town L’Aquila, Associazione Culturale Kaleidos Pescara……

ALCUNI  TITOLI DEL PROSSIMO NUMERO DI ZRAlt!

Pino Bertelli Sulla guerra del Mali. Immagini da un campo profughi Tuareg in Burkina Faso

Sekiguchi Toyoshige Message from L’Aquila. Peace walk to abolish nuclear weapons

Walter Tortoreto Massimo Cacciari e il “Recupero della Bellezza” a L’Aquila terremotata

Gabriele Lucci Catastrofi naturali, cinema  e effetti speciali

Antonio Gasbarrini La deriva debordiana alle 99 Cannelle

Giuseppe Siano La percezione mediatica delle catastrofi (seconda parte)