Andrea Bagnato: Terra Infecta

Southern Italy, now a glamorous tourist destinations, was long haunted by associations with disease and uncleanliness on the basis of frequent epidemics and of its inhabitants’ alleged barbarity. This narrative study shows how sanitation and its metaphors were constitutive of Italy’s internal colonialism, and how the notion of a pathological “south” opposed to a functional “north” persists there just as elsewhere.

Terra Infecta is a counterhistory of the urban and rural landscapes of Italy. It charts the disappearance of the Venetian wetlands, urban renewal and displacement in Naples and Matera, and protocols of containment in Milan. It is at once a critique of modern hygiene, and a collection of revelatory moments of community, healing, and resistance.