Flag

2024

Single channel music video, 8' 40'', black and white, QuickTime Movie, 2160p at 60 fpm, 5.1 surround sound.

Second Lieutenant Nevio Artioli (1920–1942) of the “Val Chiese” Alpine Battalion was reported to be the first Italian born in Tarvisio (Udine) and the first from Tarvisio to fall on the Russian front, though both statements seem unlikely. My mother kept a letter, now lost, in which the military chaplain briefly informed her uncle of the circumstances of Nevio’s death. Enclosed was a small black and white photograph that showed a wooden cross in the snow carved with his name, and was inscribed on the back: “Belogorje, 20 dicembre 1942.” Following Gorbachev’s perestroika, his remains were repatriated in 1992 and officially reburied in Tarvisio ossuary.

Flag explores how history and narratives, personal experience and memories intersect and affect one another. The sound remixes three songs that share the same melody and similar references but were produced in different contexts. Sul ponte di Bassano remembers the Alpine troops in the First World War that crossed the bridge over the river Brenta to reach the Austrian front. Sul ponte di Perati celebrates the “Julia” Alpine Division, first decimated in the Italian invasion of Greece (October 1940 – April 1941), then annihilated on the river Don, during the retreat across southern Russia and Ukraine (December 1942 - January 1943), or in Soviet imprisonment. Finally, Pietà l’è morta is a parody of the previous song, written in the spring of 1944 by Nuto Revelli, an Alpine officer who, after returning from the Russian front, joined the Resistenza and later became a celebrated author. The video sequence was shot in a field near the Brenta, where I live, on the anniversary of Nevio’s death.