The island that wasn’t there

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Umberto Eco writes in his Book of Legendary Lands (2013):

There have been lands that were dreamed, described, searched for, registered on maps, and which then disappeared from maps and now everybody knows they never existed. And yet these lands had for the development of civilization the same utopic function of the reign of Prester John, to find which Europeans explored both Asia and Africa, of course finding other things.

And then there are imaginary lands which crossed the threshold of fantasy and stepped right into our world, as improbable as it seems, bursting into shared reality – even if for a brief time.

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In 1968, Rose Island stood some 7 miles from the coast of Rimini, bordering international waters.
It wasn’t a proper island, but rather a man-made platform, which had taken ten years of work and sacrifices to build. Why did it took so long to erect it? Because Rose Island had something different from other marine platforms: it was constructed bypassing or ignoring laws and permits, in a constant fight against bureaucracy. It wasn’t just an extreme case of unauthorized development, it was a true libertarian project. Rose Island declared itself to be an independent Republic.

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This micronation‘s President was Giorgio Rosa, born in 1925, who had been an engineer since 1950. In 1958 he began to shape his dream, his life’s accomplishment. Among economic and technical difficulties, in the following ten years he succeded to plant nine pylons out in the sea, on which he then had the platform’s structure built: 4,300 squared feet of reinforced concrete, suspended at 26 feet above the water level. Rosa and his accomplices even found a freshwater aquifer under the sea bed, which proved useful for the island’s supplies and to create a protected space for docking (which they called “Green Harbor”).

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The idea Giorgio Rosa had was somewhat anarchic and pacific at the same time: “my initial project was to build something that could be free from any constraint, and wouldn’t require a lot of money. On dry land, bureaucracy had become suffocating. […] We wanted to open a bar and a restaurant. Just eat, drink and watch the ships from Trieste passing close by, sometimes even too close. My fondest memory is that of the first night, on the island under construction. Along came a storm, and it looked like it would tear everything apart. But in the morning the sun was shining, everything seemed beautiful and possible. Then trouble began“, he recalls.

Yes, because bureaucracy started fighting back, in a war to chase the rebels who attempted to live over the waves, without paying the government its due.
As the second floor of the platform was finished, Rose Island gained notoriey, while ships and motorboats called there, driven by curiosity. Worried by the growing traffic, port authorities, Italian finance police and government were already on guard.

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That’s how, in the (desperate) attempt to free himself from Italy and its prohibitions once and for all, Rosa unilaterally declared his Island independent on May 1, 1968. Even if he was quite distant from hippies and countercultures, his move was in tune with the fighting spirit of the times: a couple of days later, to the cries of “Banning is banned“, the rebellious civil unrest of May 1968 would begin to take place in Paris.
The newly-born “nation” adopted esperanto as the official language. It began printing its own stamps, and was about to coin its own currency.

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But suddenly things took a bad turn. Points of order were put forward in Parliament both by right and left wing, for once united against the transgressors; Secret Services were sure that the platform actually concealed a base for soviet submarines; others thought the whole thing was an obscure Albanian maneuver.
Once the media event broke out, authorities responded ruthlessly.

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On February 11, 1969, all the concrete parts were demolished, the steel poles and joints were cut, and 165 lb of explosive were detonated on each pylon. On the impact, Rose Island tilted, bended over… but refused to collapse.

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Then, two days later, artificers applied 264 lb of charge to each pillar – a total of more than a ton of explosive. Yet once again, the Island resisted, tilting forward a bit more. Like a dream stubbornly refusing to surrender to the blows of a tangible reality.
It was not to the military that Rose Island eventually decided to give up, but to a violent storm, sinking into the Adriatic Sea on February 26, 1969.

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Today, after 40 years of oblivion, the Insulo de la Rozoj – the esperanto name of this micronation – is the object of renewed attention, through documentaries, novels, theatre plays, shows and museum exhibits, Facebook pages and blogs devoted to it. There are those who doubt the idealistic nature of the project, suspecting that the entire operation was nothing more than an attempt to build a tax haven (Rosa never denied the commercial and turistic purpose of the Island); those who, like the curators of the Museum of Vancouver, find connections with Thomas More‘s writings; and even those who think that Rosa’s feat prefigured the collapse of faith in representative democracy through a mix of political activism, architecture and technology.

Giorgio Rosa is now 90-years-old, and seems amused by his adventure’s revival. After losing his war (“the only one Italy was ever able to win“, he sarcastically stresses out) and having paid for the cost of demolition, he went on with his engineering career. “Don’t even bother to ask me, I’ll tell you: no more islands!

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But if the interest for his experiment is well alive and kicking, it means that we still find that dream of freedom, escape and independence seducing. We could ascribe its modern appeal to our impatience towards the ever more suffocating bureaucracy, to the alluring idea of escaping the economic crisis, to our disillusionment towards institutions, to fear of authorities interfering with our privacy; but maybe the truth is that Rose Island was the realization of one of humanity’s most ancient dreams, Utopia. Which is both a “perfect place” (eu-topia), away from the misery and malfunctions of society, and “non-place” (ou-topia), unreal.

And it’s always pleasant to cherish an impossible, unattainable idea – even though, or provided that, it remains a fantasy.

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Giorgio Rosa’s quotes are taken from here and here. (Thanks Daniele!)

La città dell’oscurità

Immaginate una città che si sviluppi senza alcun tipo di controllo urbanistico. Immaginate le strade e i palazzi come un organismo vivente, arterie e cellule di un corpo la cui biologia interna è completamente impazzita. Immaginate appartamenti che crescono di giorno in giorno, uno sopra l’altro, come un tumore che aumenti a dismisura, piano dopo piano, senza che alcuna intelligenza centrale abbia mai messo mano a questo incubo architettonico, totalmente anarchico e sregolato.

La cittadella in questione era Caolun (Kowloon, in inglese), e quest’anno ricorre il ventennale della sua demolizione; dopo la difficile opera di evacuazione, con il crollo degli ultimi mattoni, finiva nel 1993 la storia stupefacente dell’unica città al mondo senza legge né regole.

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Sorta prima dell’anno 1000, la città fortificata di Caolun, in Cina, era stata abbandonata e poi ricostruita a metà dell’800 dagli inglesi che controllavano Hong Kong. Abbandonata nuovamente, cominciò a ripopolarsi e divenne ben presto una zona autonoma, sviluppandosi velocemente grazie a un inspiegabile “buco” amministrativo e politico.
Le Triadi mafiose locali presero il potere proprio quando la cittadella, abitata da profughi della Seconda Guerra Mondiale e da dissidenti del regime Maoista, si stava ingrandendo; ma per fortuna nel 1974 una task force di 3.000 poliziotti sgominò le bande criminali, “liberando” Caolun dal giogo della mafia. Fu allora che la popolazione cominciò davvero a crescere.

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Nel giro di dieci anni, il numero degli abitanti era aumentato vertiginosamente: 33.000 accertati, quasi 50.000 quelli stimati, in una “cittadella” che in realtà potrebbe benissimo essere definita un quartiere, viste le sue dimensioni ridotte (soltato 26.000 metri quadrati). Con un rapido calcolo vi accorgerete che la densità della popolazione a Caolun era davvero impensabile: quasi due milioni di esseri umani per km2.

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Le case venivano costruite a velocità folle, senza ingegneri o architetti, sopraelevando, occupando qualsiasi spazio libero: la mattina avreste potuto svegliarvi e scoprire che la vostra finestra non dava più sul consueto panorama, ma su un nuovo muro dell’edificio vicino. I cortili si chiudevano progressivamente, fino a diventare dei piccoli pozzi di aerazione, i vicoli si restringevano di giorno in giorno, e la luce del sole si allontanava sempre di più, sottile linea a malapena visibile fra le case che arrivavano a più di dieci piani. Caolun cominciò ad essere chiamata HakNam, la città delle tenebre, perché nei suoi vicoli era notte anche a mezzogiorno. Vennero istallati dei tubi fluorescenti lungo le claustrofobiche stradine, tenuti accesi costantemente.
Le case che continuavano a salire in verticale, accatastate le une sulle altre, fermarono la loro folle crescita per un solo motivo: evitare le rotte di atterraggio degli aerei del vicino aeroporto Kai Tak.

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Eppure, al contrario di quanto si potrebbe pensare, la vita all’interno di questo caos architettonico era sorprendentemente tranquilla, e l’integrazione fra le diverse etnie presenti piuttosto pacifica. Sui tetti più alti erano stati piantati alberi e piccoli giardini dove i bambini potevano giocare; una settantina di pozzi garantivano l’acqua agli abitanti, finché il governo di Hong Kong non decise di portare acqua pulita e corrente elettrica fino ai margini della cittadella. La criminalità non era poi eccessivamente elevata, nonostante case da gioco, bordelli e droga fossero comuni, e lungo i vicoli nacquero negozi, piccole fabbriche, ristoranti e persino asili, scuole, anche una specie di tribunale.  Proliferavano gli studi medici senza autorizzazione, che però talvolta avevano un discreto livello di professionalità; ma, in generale, l’aspetto più disastroso era senz’altro la terribile condizione igienico-sanitaria.

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Alla fine degli anni ’80 i due governi di Hong Kong, quello inglese e quello cinese, si accordarono per mettere fine alla situazione ormai insostenibile, ed evacuarono la zona autonoma per demolirla infine nel marzo del 1993. I lavori terminarono nel 1994, con alcuni scavi archeologici che riportarono alla luce le antiche strutture preesistenti; oggi il sole finalmente splende nel parco cittadino ubicato proprio dove sorgeva l’oscuro e labirintico alveare di case.

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(Grazie, Michele!)

R.I.P. Ken Russell


All’età di 84 anni si è spento Ken Russell, autore di film controversi, visionari e allucinati. Lo ricordiamo per la lunga carriera all’insegna dell’assenza di misura, dell’anarchia, della spettacolarità.