Externum Historia
asphalt, 100x100x100 cm
view at the exhibition Externum Historia at FARM CULTURAL PARK, Favara (AG)
private collection, Roma
2011

Externum Historia is the work that Giuseppe Lana realizes during his residence at the Farm the Cultural Park of Favara. The project name is derived primarily from the Latin phrase ex and ternum, or “out of the triad of time”: past, present and future. The word Historia, however, focuses on the narrative of events, which in this case have to deal with the history of the surrounding landscape. The artist, in fact, primarily through direct comparison with the locals, gives life to a project that moves between the “landscape” and “memory”, focusing on a common road of the province – the state highway 640 – that , besides being the main artery connecting land, has become the subject of significant events, such as the assassination of the judge Saetta and Livatino, “legal infrastructure” at the service of the community, which fell on the asphalt of the state highway 640 through the hands of mafia.
The project involves the construction of a cubic sculpture made from slabs of asphalt taken from the state highway 640. The wearing course, which covered the main road, is considered by the artist as “skin” and reused to form a “body” which documents the history with nostalgia, a “naòs” to preserve the memory of the past, present and future.
The form of the work refers to the cubic meter, which is the basic metric unit used to measure the volume, space and landscape. A cubic meter of asphalt that wants to be a monument created to preserve the history of this road of the province, which now gives way to the main highway in the hope that this enhances the economic development of the whole territory of Agrigento.