Abstract

Urban vegetable gardens and green zones of Bologna are the protagonists of Proiezioni ORTOgonali exhibition. It is of general knowledge that urban vegetable gardens are soil plots that are intended to be cultivated and whose use is regulated by the municipality. It is also known that urban vegetable gardens deliver the same ecosystem services that are recognized to soil by FAO. Just to cite a few of them: urban vegetable gardens may produce food, create employment, improve the life quality of people working therein, preserve the biodiversity by housing insects and animals, provide job opportunities to disadvantaged people and serve as open-air didactic laboratories to all effects. Urban vegetable gardens beautify our town and ameliorate our life by remembering the time flowing along the seasons and in the perennial sequence of sowing and harvest, of sleep and awakening. The idea of the exhibition was born while I was visiting Giardino Savioli and the urban vegetable garden of via Saragozza with the aim at making the citizen to experience the same sensation I had. The world unveiled to me was made of hospitality, consideration, willingness to explain the reasons of many done and ongoings activities. A world made of practical projects but also of worm coffee, words, smiles, sounds, scents, and colors. Each urban vegetable garden is a community inside the community with its own characteristics, rules, and hierarchy, where plants, insects, animals, and humans cohabit. This the context I would like to represent thanks to the contribution of several artists and specialists. The ironic poetry in the shots of Erica Zanetti, the magnificent elegance of the insects in the photos of Serena Magagnoli, and the careful look to the day and night life of animals inhabiting plants and soil in the images of Francesco Grazioli lead us by the hand into the vegetable garden life. Moreover, urban vegetable gardens of Bologna make the history as it can be seen in the cartographic reproductions of different ancient periods selected and commented by Francesca Vaccari. The scents of officinal plants, of the sounds and of the views of our urban vegetable gardens can be experienced thanks to the installations of Giovanni Bazzocchi, Gianpietro Lazzarin and Andrea D’Aprile, respectively.