Campo Space Exhibition: The Flooded Cow-Lumbarium
In this exhibition a select few students were chosen to visualise Rome in a theoretical context centered upon rituals. We challenged the modern conception of ‘ritual’ as ‘work’ by contradicting it, visualizing a world emancipated from such norms and re-imagined the city of Rome as overburdened by sacred wildlife, including the sacred monkeys and cows.
Site Location: Tiber River
Status: Summer Exhibition and Research in Rome
Status: Summer Exhibition and Research in Rome
In Collaboration with Sophia Tabet
Responding to a brief written by Andrea Branzi
︎︎︎ Campo Space’s Website
Responding to a brief written by Andrea Branzi
︎︎︎ Campo Space’s Website
In the now barred Tiber River, our project theoretically invited the Romans to engage with the stream of water that they had abandoned. As a result, the once critical part of ancient Roman processions, the Tiber River now inundated the emblematic Circus Maximus, commanding a new presence in the city of Rome. We devised a ceremony that celebrated the procession of death, as a counter to the modern notion of ‘ritual,’ welcoming it as the inevitable destination of mortality.
It began with the yearly flooding of the Circus Maximus, now successfully connected to the river through a hidden underground tunnel that now surged a steady tide of water. Signifying the opening of the yearly burning of Roman corpses, the flooded Circus was then reconstructed in a series of crematoriums in a manner that mimicked its original structure.
Photos by Jacopo Valentini