Inspired by the tradition of Ekphrasis, the art of describing a work without it being present, Ludovica Carbotta carries forward her research focusing on the relationship between imagined place and real place, in an attempt to build an ideal environment for an imaginary community.

A motorway is a very strong wind, conceived within the space of Careof, is the result of a call for contributions from numerous Italian and international contributors, whom the artist asked to intervene by providing their own description or story of what they perceive as an ideal place for a community, based on experiential models, real or imagined. The result is a long process of reworking and integration that Ludovica Carbotta activated at Careof throughout the month of March, constructing a multifaceted space, a sum of the suggestions of each involved subject.

An environment, a room, a house that rises, an object or a word that makes concrete in form the symbols or artifices of this ideal place. It is about imagining something that can contrast and subvert the common way of experiencing the world, making the place the starting point for the foundation of this hypothetical community. The idea of community relates to the idea of society, configuring itself as a scaled model of it or as an alternative response. Society inhabits a preconstituted world, difficult to reimagine except by constituting another, pervaded by new rules and conventions. A motorway is a very strong wind is this different place, the shaping of an ideal of coexistence that shares with Careof its need for renewal.

The brick wall that for three months facilitated a process of transformation at Careof—engaged in rediscovering its own identity and communicative potential within the artistic and social context—has been torn down. Ludovica Carbotta’s exhibition arrives as the explosion of this unveiling.
A project of construction and refoundation that injects new narratives into the real space, suggesting countless other realities. The stories, used as instruction manuals, fused and hybridized, come from distant planets, appear as terrestrial landscapes enclosed within the frame of a box, oases of dissuasion, SD cards hidden among ephemerals scattered around, finding in the imaginative potential and the persuasion of truly existing their possible materialization.

How does this community manifest itself? How does it materialize and in what time?
The collected descriptions sometimes concern a well-defined space, often addressing its overall architectural structure or that of a single element, a detail, or simply its function. In certain cases, instead, it is a useful rule, or a linguistic system, a way of speaking that characterizes the lexical habits of a group, up to constituting new meanings within everyday life.
A motorway is a very strong wind translates these words into visual space, from written form to three-dimensional. Some visions take shape as the echo of a past, imaginations affiliated with the utopian dimensions of “free love” and radical movements, only to foreshadow immediately after the visual “futurology,” which finds its activation in today’s virtuality.

These are the simple rules that inspired the stories:

• you can write me your own description but also use texts and descriptions from others;

• try to be as accurate as possible, adding every kind of detail that helps me understand what you are talking about;

• remember that I will have to translate your description into form, so try not to refer to overly abstract concepts to allow me to visualize them.

Contributions by: Alis/Filliol; Sally Alexander; Pau Ardid; Blauer Hase; Camilla Candida Donzella; Cecilia Canziani; Andrea Caretto/Raffaella Spagna; Davide Cascio; Jota Castro; Stefano Collicelli Cagol; Francesca Colussi; Hannah Conroy; Davide Daninos; Valerio Del Baglivo; Sara Enrico; Eva Fabbris; Luigi Fassi; Carlo Fossati; Dora Garcia; Francesco Garutti; Ilaria Gianni; Adelita Husni Bey; Invernomuto; Mary Kelly; Janice Kerbel; Mark Lewis; Andrea Lissoni; Matteo Lucchetti; Sebastian Melo; Simone Menegoi; Rosario Montero; Laura Mulvey; Valerio Rocco Orlando; Serena Porrati; Filipa Ramos; Theo Reeves Evison; Caterina Riva; Alberto Salvadori; Remo Salvadori; Marinella Senatore; Aria Spinelli; Nico Vascellari; Jim Woodall; Italo Zuffi.