Aperitivo Canino / Giardino Ammirato
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Free Home University
Lecce, Italy
summer 2015, spring 2016
with Alessandra Pomarico, Carla Rangel, Constructlab, Mavi Veloso, Raphael Daibert, Nayari Castillo, et al.
Since 2014, our family has been participating and collaborating at the Free Home University – a pedagogical and artistic experiment focused on how we share and create knowledge by experiencing life in common. During the 2015 program, FHU fellows started to reflect on how to involve the population and the public spaces surrounding the Ammirato Cultural House – the venue that hosts FHU sessions every year. In 2016, FHU organized a wider framework entitled Giardino Ammirato, where different artists, urban gardeners and activists, together with Construct Lab designed and built s space and programme for enlarged forms of public conviviality.
Among our participation in the wider framework of FHU, we proposed one localized action. As one of the biggest barriers for using the garden was the dog shit, we came out with the event Aperitivo Canino. As the culture of “aperitivo” is wide-spread in Lecce, but the sensitivity of the public space as a public common is not, we designed an event to happen with a certain frequency that addressed the issue. The neighbor dogs and their owners were invited for an Aperitivo: food for the dogs ; drinks and shit bags for the owners. During the event, the dogs were photographed professionally, and together with a small biography, their photos were attached to the wall of a newspaper stand, which was only a support for random graffiti. The conversations with the owners, and the acknowledgement of the dogs as an important population using the space, started a wider discussion around forms of conviviality and mutual respect as central issues to the topic of right to the square!
> short documentary by Eliana Manca
(Aperitivo Canino at 5:50)
2016 – the Giardino is open!
our dog friends show up to the party. the news stand is turned into a billboard.
None of the portrayed dogs leave their shits behind. Their owners are aware. Next step is to start a plastic-free dog shit collection campaign, to feed a biodigestor and start a self-sufficient energy system for the area! 🙂
2015 – first clean up sessions and conversations with neighbors
Yuri and Raphael engage with the dog owners
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