Porous Cartographies is an artistic research project conceived by the duo Franca Petroni and Leonardo Ruvolo, which aims to rewrite the symbolic and material geographies of public space. Through site-specific practices of mapping, writing, documentation, and archiving, the project develops an ecological and relational approach to the urban landscape, aiming to reawaken a sensitive and emotional gaze on the places we inhabit.
Born out of the urgent need to rethink urban space in a historical moment characterized by profound transformations—including gentrification, intensive touristification, and privatization—Porous Cartographies champions public space as the political space par excellence. In an era where every inch of the planet is observed, measured, and digitized, this research criticizes the dominant use of digital maps, which reduce the experience of the city to predefined itineraries and calculated times. Instead, it proposes a sensitive cartography that opens up new possibilities for discovery.
The project translates this research into a practice structured into three phases:
1. Drift and Cartography
Exploration begins with the observation of bodily movements in urban space, prioritizing often overlooked marginal, service, and functional places. Through an ethnographic and psychogeographic approach, affective maps are drawn that reveal a density of encounters, voids, conflicts, and communities. Drift practices remove the gaze from the abstraction of digital maps to foster an embodied experience, made up of sensorial elements and collected objects: oral memories, ambient noises, analog images, texts, and small artifacts that provide a lateral and intimate reading of urban routes.
2. Writing the Performative Protocol
From observation, a performative protocol is born, an open score of actions, instructions, and micro-dramaturgies. This poetic-political tool reinvents public space as a place of coexistence between the diverse presences—human and nonhuman—that inhabit it, negotiating new relationships between agents, observers, and territories. The protocol interprets the collected traces and opens up possible ways of inhabiting the city, inviting a rewriting of urban dynamics.
3. Creating the Archive
The final phase consists of building a critical and poetic archive, which documents not so much concrete events as a different narrative of urban space. Through audio tracks, emotional maps, visual notes, and textual fragments, the archive offers an imaginative and transformative reading of the territory, suggesting what space can become beyond its apparent form.
BIO
Franca Petroni is an artist who lives and works in Naples. After studying Visual and Performing Arts, she developed an interdisciplinary path integrating video, sound, and performative action. She has participated in national and international residencies and festivals, focusing on site-specific practices and the relationship between body and space.
Leonardo Ruvolo is an artist and researcher, active between Berlin, Amsterdam, and Naples. His work focuses on archiving, performative action, and writing. Co-founder of MACAO in Milan, Ruvolo investigates the connections between urban space and artistic practices, producing research that challenges established narratives of space.
Porous Cartographies is the residency project at the ZK/U Center for Art and Urbanisms in Berlin, winner of the call for residencies aimed at Italian architects, artists, designers, and researchers working at the intersection of architecture, public space, and performative practices.