"Arrexinisi": faces and voices of the elderly at the San Sperate Crudo Museum

Faces of elderly people who look like tribal chiefs, thanks to an invisible make-up passed over the expression lines and which then, in the light of the reflector, produces fluorescent effects on video.

Chief and tribal chiefs, the role was really the same: women and men directing daily jobs for a lifetime, from sowing to bread, from managing food to that of the animals, when the world was different, when history had the pace of the epos of communities, of countries, without other needs.

Again on Saturday 10 and Sunday 11 June, from 10 to 19, at the Museo del Crudo di San Sperate (free admission), you can see “Arrexinisi”, a site-specific video installation produced by Ginko Film, Noarte Paese Museo, Officineveda.

In the proliferation of videos, reels, stories, those who work as a professional around a camera, and the concept of witnessing something, make a difference. This is the case of Beatrice Favaretto (Venice, 1992), an artist who uses video as her medium of choice, while also channeling her research into archival photography and independent publishing, and Andrea Mura , director and producer (Ginko Film): together they built this delicate 17-minute work (sounds by Giacomo Salis), four elderly people of San Sperate interviewed about death, the afterlife, whether it exists or does not exist .

Enrichetto Schirru tells us that if he happened to be in the Hell area, it wouldn't be so bad, being able to roast eels. Listening to them, Enrichetto, Gesuina Seu (in the meantime missing from their land), Fiorenzo Pilia and Ida Pillittu, not only restore a certain simple serenity, but also give the sense, which is the sense of Favaretto's work, that his identity, the language (subtitled Campidanese), are, in fact, the roots that bind to a community, within which death was a natural fact, which each one elaborated within himself without terrors and anxieties. Maybe just a vague disturbance: "I'm a little fragile," admits Gesuina. An applause to those who turn their delicate and creative gaze to old age, so as not to make it appear the most thankless of seasons.