Christian Norberg-Schulz was sittingat Piazza Navona in Rome after having spent the morning in the valleys north of the city. He was enjoying a Campari and watching life in the piazza, when he was struck by a sudden feeling: that the piazza and the valleys that he had visited earlier in the day, were the same. Not similar: the valley was rural with steep tufa- rock formations in the landscape; coloured yellow and brown. The piazza was surrounded by buildings, filled with fountains, sculptures, restaurants and people. In an article discussing the importance Rome had on his authorship he describes the moment:
Suddenly, I had a feeling of still being in a ‘tufa-valley’: this is the same, (despite not being similar)! So started my study of the genius loci. Because of sudden inspiration, and not at all a logical line of thougth.
(Christian Norberg-Schulz, 1999: 102)
The unedited rushes are both depicting me ordering anddrinking a Campari at Piazza Navona. I: Campari-Moment was shot with a Blackmagic Design Camera, and one Philips Radio-Microphone recording into the Zoom H4n, with the help of Mikkel Due 16 September 2014. II: Campari-Moment was shot with a Blackmagic Design Camera, and one Philips Radio-Microphone recording into the Zoom H4n, with the help of John Øyvind Hovde 15 February 2016. Language: English. The storyboard is created with references to the work of others: the poem Les Fenêtres IV (1927) by Rainer Maria Rilke, Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s sculpture Fontana dei Quattro Fuimi (1651), the film The Miracle worker (1964), and Federico Fellini’s advert for Campari (1984), as well as stills from my own footage.
Back to The Fenestral Essay Film