The “City of Women” project, with the section “Out of the Maze – A Room of One’s Own,” is aimed at the world of schools, with the purpose of contributing, in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goals 2030, No. 5 Gender Equality, to the reduction of the gender gap in the popularization of women’s literary writing, and of their cultural productions in general, which are scarcely present in school books and beyond.
The beginning of the journey in the City of Women
The idea that presides over the project “Out of the Labyrinth – A Room of One’s Own,” in fact, is to emphasize and overcome the exclusion of women writers’ voices from literary and cultural transmission in general, an exclusion that today is no longer justifiable thanks to the conquest of the idea of gender equality, a recent conquest but basically consciously or unconsciously prepared by the contributions of all women writers who find on the island NoiLab (OpenSim Craft Word. org:8002:noilab) their “room of one’s own,” an ideal and concrete legacy of Virginia Woolf’s reflection.
The profile of Virginia Woolf, the inspiration for the project “Out of the Labyrinth – A House of One’s Own.”
The project involved the construction by builder Tonino Lane of ten visitable buildings designed to house women writers from different historical periods, predominantly poets, in their rooms. The evolution of the ten structures is paralleled by the contemporary evolution of culture toward a more equitable assessment of the contribution of women writers to the evolution of literary models and stylistics, resulting in the gradual emergence of women figures, not only in production, but also in literary dissemination.
The choice of women writers, more than one hundred, is guided by various motivations; in fact, both the literary and symbolic value of their writing has been taken into account, as well as the critical and innovative force of the models they proposed. The city is continually updated with the inclusion of other women writers and artists in connection with specific educational activities. These photographs are intended only as examples of continuously updated paths.
Already addressed in the nineteenth century, in the twentieth century and in the year two thousand, the issue of the gender gap in the transmission-dissemination of literary productions of women writers in the European context has emerged in all its force, thanks to the efforts of women journalists and polemicists, as well as educators, with the intention of reducing it in educational pathways by enriching them with profiles of women, and by activists of women’s and feminist associations, with the aim of bringing about the recognition for women of human rights, starting with the right to vote and continuing with legislation geared to guarantee their full and concrete enjoyment.
The real representational challenge was the Duemila, which we eventually interpreted with the wandering houses in the woods, on the instructions of architect Fabio Fornasari, who refers to the Japanese Terunobu Fujimori, who wants to bring nature and hyper-technology into harmony. In Two Thousand, the center of the City of Women is the house of storytelling, wooden but fully technological, where I narrate, with the digital media that technology makes available to us, about many women writers, all to mention, from Anna Stexon to Elena Ferrante and so on.
Among the projects carried out with schools, interesting is the one dedicated to Martha Gellhorn, war correspondent, which featured teachers and students from ITIS Einstein – De Lorenzo, Potenza-Picerno.
Finally, the project “The City of Women” stands as a cultural space open to other “creators,” in this perspective it hosts the LAP Public Art Laboratory, Visual Anthropology Laboratory and Urban Exhibition, whose creator and curator is multimedia artist Elisa Laraia, a lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts and the Federico II University of Naples.
The LAP location in Noilab – Craft World
I want to emphasize, in conclusion, the in-progress layout of the project, and its educational value, well made visible by the Laboratory, an area near the sea bordered by a colorful soap bubble, an ode to creativity.
Then there is my home, where I host friends and girlfriends to chat and strengthen the community atmosphere that characterizes Noilab and Craft World.
Lorenza conversa con amici e amiche nella sua casa sul mare
“The City of Women” is waiting for you! See you soon!
