Reportage
Mutonia, a collective artist settlement in Romagna, faces demolition
The great value Mutonia brings – from its mammoth structures shaped by ancestral and utopian visions to its ethics of reuse and its experiment in community living – has been well understood by Santarcangelo's local administration.
“None of our buildings are permanent; we could just load everything up and go away. But I ask myself why, since we are a beacon of positivity in the area. We live a dignified life, under the banner of reuse,” says Andy MacFarlane, Scottish guitarist and resident of Mutonia, the arts community in Romagna that is now in danger of being demolished.
For the artist-dwellers who settled near Santarcangelo in the early 1990s, a surprise Council of State ruling has once again made their situation precarious. The Mutoid Waste Company had been established in London some years before, when a group of young people close to the punk scene began creating artifacts, giant sculptures and putting together fiery art performances by reusing waste materials such as car parts, aluminum, and anything else that might prove useful.
History tends to ebb and flow, however. In the late 1980s, when Margaret Thatcher declared war on rave parties, the group sought a more welcoming location across the Channel, and settled on Santarcangelo, where they arrived at the invitation of the historic theater festival. Since then, part of the community has settled on the banks of the Marecchia River, building their mobile homes and steel “monsters,” which over time have become a local attraction and a means of earning a livelihood, between stage sets, exhibitions and commissions.
They have built a deep relationship with the village of Romagnolo, as shown by the support from the local residents, who have rallied around Mutonia every time it faced a threat.
“Thirty five years is a long time. Children live here and go to school in the village. Many of us have Italian citizenship. We are of certified local origin, just as much as Sangiovese wine. Most of the inhabitants support us: they took to the streets with ‘Hands off Mutonia’ T-shirts. Of course, we can't please everyone, but that's also part of biodiversity,” MacFarlane says. He is referring to Giorgio Ricci, a “next door neighbor” of the artists, who has been waging a battle to have them evicted for more than a decade, first with a complaint to the municipality, then turning to the Regional Administrative Court and finally to the Council of State.
The case offers an opportunity to reflect on the relationship between art and legality, which is not always an easy one when the former aims to push beyond the frontiers of what is established. But also on the fact that living differently, outside the patterns of hyper-productive society, is found to be bothersome as an act in itself, even if it doesn’t actually bother anybody: “We might have made some noise at the start, with music and parties, but we have been living immersed in a great silence for 25 years. When I arrived here, it was '93. I’d just graduated in art from Glasgow University. I liked to use the hoods of cars to paint on instead of canvases. I was 20 years old, now I'm 54, and we are our own employers. Mutoid things mutate.”
The great value Mutonia brings – from its mammoth structures shaped by ancestral and utopian visions to its ethics of reuse and its experiment in community living – has been well understood by Santarcangelo's local administration. This makes it an outlier, considering all the evictions that took place in Italy in recent years, including the case of Xm 24 in nearby Bologna, where the municipality’s position ended up being decisive.
In this case, former mayor Alice Parma (now a regional councilwoman) and current mayor Filippo Sacchetti, both very young and elected as PD candidates, have come out strongly in favor of the artists. In 2013, when Ricci first filed his complaint, the administration drew up a Municipal Operational Plan (POC) under which the village of Mutonia would become a protected art park. The Regional Administrative Court took note of the direction chosen, which was subsequently confirmed by the Superintendencies of Bologna and Ravenna that recognized the Mutoid community as a “city asset.” Now, however, the Council of State has found that the lack of approvals for some structures is incompatible with the POC, which it ruled to be invalid, paving the way for demolition.
The response from the City Council came quickly: “The Mutoid Waste Company has not been a guest of our city for 35 years, but is part of Santarcangelo. It is one of the beating hearts of our community, one of the realities that make it, and us, what we are [...] We respect every ruling and we will do so in this case as well, but we will immediately get to work with the relevant offices to ensure that this ruling will become an opportunity to enshrine a permanent stable presence for the Mutoid Waste Company.”
For his part, McFarlane says he isn’t worried: “I’m speaking to you from a small rehearsal room I built myself, and I pride myself on living well on little. We are here to take care of a disused area with art and positivity, living side by side. Even the Marecchia River left us alone during the 2023 flood. Karma is on our side.”
Originally published at https://ilmanifesto.it/tuteliamo-unarea-in-disuso-ma-mutonia-rischia-lo-sgombero on 2025-02-02