Workshop site: The fieldwork will be carried out in a neighborhood – Porta Capuana – on the eastern edge of Napoli’s historical center. The neighborhood is named after the city gate built in the 15th century under the Aragonese domination, as well as the nearby Norman castle – the major Court in Naples until a few years ago. The Court’s closure produced a ‘void’ (of users and economic activities) that gave way to new populations and place-making practices. Porta Capuana is a vital and controversial place, densely populated, with a high concentration of historical heritage and active street life, with traditional food and scrap markets and retail shops. In recent years, the neighborhood also became one of the main destinations of newcomers, mostly migrants from Eastern Europe, Africa and Asia.
 

A relevant social connotation of the place is informal economy, that combines local culture and immigrant life style. Illegal activities (prostitution, narcotics, street crime) are also present. Porta Capuana is also a place of social and cultural mobilization, with artists and community organizers renovating old buildings to make art galleries, theaters and cafes.

Pippo II- il Gallo Urbano di Napoli

Case study- Project description

 

Introduction:
When walking in a city like Naples, one should be prepared to be surprised by several little unusual events. During our fieldwork, we ran into many animals: most of them were usual “urban and domestic animals” such as dogs, cats, pigeons; some others were very typical for a sea city, like seagulls…and then there was a roaster!

This unexpected presence in an urban context took our attention and after a moment of surprise and entertainment, this moment was enough to brought many questions to us until we decided to have a deeper investigation.

The roaster happens to live in a pet shop located in via Foria, one of the main streets of Naples. The owner of the shop does not make it live in a cage but he rather leaves it strolling around the sidewalk, freely, and it became soon its territory. In this way, the roaster became used to the human presence and it lost its wilder behavior. Passers seemed not surprised by the presence of the unexpected animal: some of them greet the animal, some stop by to feed it with seeds, others don’t even notice it.

The project:

Once we noticed this, we had a talk with the owner of the roaster who told us that the animal was actually brought to him by an old woman who couldn’t take care of it anymore. He didn’t know what to do with the animal and he decided to leave it in the store. As you can listen from the recording of the interview, he explains the story of Pippo …

Pippo’s fame soon got big in the neighborhood because of its uniqueness. One day he was kidnapped, as you can hear from the interview, a policeman found the poor animal in Piazza Carlo III, some kilometers away from its usual territory, and immediately returned it to the its owner.

As you can see from this story, Pippo created a community sense because its entanglement with the area and the community, it brought intimacy with it and created identity for this very local environment. But at the same time, it also has expanded its presence in the neighborhood and even further. During the interview, a lady joined the conversation as soon as she heard we were talking about Pippo. She said she works nearby and that’s why she knows about the animal and she commented that also in her neighborhood Pipoo is well known. She also told us that this is actually a “second” Pippo. The first one was killed by a dog and the owner felt the necessity to take a new roaster to reinforce the sense of community that was spreading from it. It is clear at this point that the focus it is not anymore, the roaster as unexpected animal in an urban context but the value it represents for the community.