The Teatro Continuo, a work that Alberto Burri had designed for the Milan Triennale in 1973, was returned to the city in 2015 following its demolition. The theatre, situated on an imaginary axis running through the park, between the Arco della Pace and the Castello Sforzesco, is entirely at the community’s disposal.
The work documents the theatre’s reconstruction through to its full installation, showing us the faces and moving bodies of those who actively participated in the ongoing work: workers are the leading actors in an invisible theatre, the stage is set.
By questioning the knowability of things and the way we perceive them, I attempt to document what escapes our gaze, what is erased by the automatic ways in which we experience space. The stage once again symbolically belongs to the city; it is a people’s stage that invites us to act out life within the urban fabric. By framing the actions of those who tread upon it, it transforms every person into a stage figure and every simple action into an exemplary gesture, destined to dramatise the space. In this way, the Teatro Continuo, like photography, highlights individual and social agency and enables a rediscovery of the meaning of each person’s roles and gestures.