This Land of Stones and Stories

It is a response to listening to the people who belong to that place talk about their experiences of it, over time (e.g. Tracy Mackenna’s own childhood memories, Luciano Bucci, curator of the Winterline Museum in Venafro), but also listening to stories about bigger histories of the place (the ravages of extreme poverty and mass migration, the Second World War, the Battle of San Pietro), as well as to conversations between fellow residents about what was being read and made then and there.

The writing celebrates the blur between fact and fiction, history and memory. Inspired by Saidiya Hartman’s concept of Critical Fabulation, and Doreen Massey’s definition of place (as unfixed, contested and multiple), this was written in honour of Collemacchia. A ‘situated fabulation’ perhaps.

Tracy’s drawings were made in response to Emily’s writing.

The publication is free. Sold Out.