Let’s save one of the last symbols of peasant civilization that has become, over the years, a place of culture.
We can thus summarize the content of the appeal that the Friulanist Sergio Cecotti, professor of Physics at the Sissa of Trieste, former president of the Region and mayor of Udine, launches through the pages of our newspaper, to invite the Friulians to regain possession of the same spirit that in 1976, when Friuli was a heap of rubble, he pushed them to rebuild where they were and how they were the villages destroyed by the earthquake.
Today a new earthquake threatens to reduce the availability of the Colonos, the Rossi family’s agritourism in Lestizza, where the Colonos association has been organizing cultural events for 30 years also to promote the Friulian identity and language. The house is for sale, soon the property will be auctioned for 220 thousand euros.
Losing it would be a defeat for everyone, through crowdfunding, a fundraiser that wants to safeguard the culture of our land, we can give back a future to that place rich in history. The first to do so is Cecotti.
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In the last 30 years, the Colonos have been a light and a trench of cultural resistance for Friuli: a context where the Friulian culture has been able to show off and deal with the themes, challenges, and contradictions of “modernity” without watering down the sense (and pride) of one’s original identity.
Some of the most precious cultural experiences have passed through the Colonos, which have intertwined the present and the past of our Earth with the most stimulating contemporary contaminations.
Elio De Capitani’s stage reinterpretation of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s “Turcs tal Friûl” was born in that yard; there Pierluigi Cappello gathered the best of Friulian poetry for “I colôrs da lis vôs”; in that compendium were Elio Bartolini and Amedeo Giacomini, Tito Maniacco and Giorgio Ferigo, as well as Philippe Daverio and Carlo Sgorlon.
There the musical projects of the Flk developed and the intellectual provocations of many protagonists of the dramaturgy, visual art, cinema and historiography of our home.
We, who have lived through this 30-year season, know how much that place has contributed to consolidating in us the consciousness of a Friuli we can be proud of: a dynamic and creative Friuli, aware of itself and its (often ignored) excellences, jealous of his own roots, but for this very reason open to the world and to the challenges of the future, convinced – as Pasolini would have said – of having his own original contribution to make to the more general development of human civilization.
But now all this is seriously compromised: the building that was the theater and the symbol of this rebirth of our cultural identity has ended up at the judicial auction, and its fate is very uncertain.
It is a tile that falls on us at the worst moment. Friuli, with the pandemic, is experiencing a situation reminiscent of the post-earthquake.
There is a reconstruction to start, and our community must determine the meaning and quality of this new phase.
In 1976 the material reconstruction was preceded and supported by a civil and cultural awareness that gave shape and substance to the “Friuli Model”.
Today we cannot afford to step back from the 1976 “Model”: with a soulless bureaucratic reconstruction you are getting nowhere.
To rediscover the spirit of the restart and give it meaning, we need symbols and positive narratives, but also moments and places for comparison and elaboration.
We need laboratory places for reflection on the future of our community. It is the cultural and civil function that the Colonos have played for 30 years and which cannot remain uncovered.
We have to come up with something. The most natural choice is to commit ourselves to reviving the Colonos, re-appropriating ourselves as our symbols and places.
I hope that all Friulians – cultural operators, entrepreneurs, politicians, intellectuals, aware citizens – will feel the ideal call to launch the Colonos 2.0 project: a space of thought where the ideas-strength of a new beginning for our land germinate.
Therefore, I allow myself to appeal to all Friulians who feel such to contribute, each for their possibilities, even small ones, to fundraising to be paid by bank transfer Iban IT21Z0548464070101570001344 with reason “Liberal donation to the Colonos Cultural Association” , specifying the name and surname, telephone number and e-mail address of the donor.
The necessary sum is important, but I believe that in Friuli there is a number of Friulians worthy of this name more than enough to collect the necessary amount. Of course I will do my part too.
* Sergio Cecotti, professor of physics at Sissa in Trieste, former president of Friuli Venezia Giulia and mayor of Udine
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