A tough challenge – the architecture of the infinite, designing of Emptiness, the short-circuit between the rules of nature and transportation, goods and containers. In the middle lies the power of the sea, the vastness of the sky, the changing shapes of the wind and the energy, curiosity and passion of mankind.

Ultrafragola tells the story of the Ocean and a voyage on a cargo ship with words by Marco Ciriello and pictures by Maria Vittoria Trovato. An exciting installation built around a container, the perfect space that glides across the seas, a nexus of the many contradictions of modernity, a cult object for the most sophisticated architecture, unadorned life and hospitality for those with no roof of their own, a carrier of goods along the highways of global production. A mental and functional space.

The long journey taken by the two authors begins in Buenos Aires and ends in Hamburg.
The words and images depict wide, absolute spaces and minimal life, the interiors between the ship’s sheltering, looming plates, the people involved in a special, extreme everyday experience. The 3 x 6 metre video installation is set up in a container that has sailed the seas. Beyond the side walls, the ocean, in front the bridge, the crew, the details of the voyage.

The sounds, the writer’s words, the seawater smell, the breaking waves reproduced by a nebuliser effect, and the seats on old marine cable spools create a sensory performance for the visitor. Amid the triumph of production, the extreme abundance of objects and messages, the Ultrafragola installation offers a spare, essential space of reward, contemplation and silence, offering intimacy, not deprivation. Through the medium of a metal animal the eye travels to the slim thread of the horizon, beneath arching skies, with clouds inventing geometries and changing architectures in the landscape, human relationships that challenge the limits. This awareness recalls the clouds and skies that Ettore Sottsass loved, an example with his simple yet never banal thought, his inquisitive nature that has enabled him to play with space and to bring the seen, recognised world into his buildings and objects.

After the video installation “Refugee Hotel” presented in 2009 at the Bovisa Triennial, dedicated to the American motels that welcome refugees, Ultrafragola continues its investigation of spaces creating human and formal boundaries, in the folds between nearness and distance, and chooses a non-involvement with the obvious and the present to inspire and reintroduce hope, with the power of the ocean giving meaning and direction to many lives that may otherwise seem to be little more than a series of empty containers.

“This project, inspired by an idea shared with Cristiana Colli – says Didi Gnocchi, director of Ultrafragola – confirms our editorial line, open to the challenges and artistic experiences of writing, photography and installations. Of course, the projects and places are above all metaphors, linguistic matrices that describe life stories”.