QuaranTeens
QuaranTeens
2021 Audio installation
Work in Progress
Launched by MAD Murate Art District in collaboration with the Assessorato alla Cultura and the Assessorato alle politiche giovanili of the Comune di Firenze.
“The project was born with the experience of my teenage daughter struggling with distance learning since March 2020. My daughter, as all students like her, spend all her day in front of a monitor to attend classes and to do her homework, she talks to her friends on chat or on an online platform, and if she has spare time, watches TV series. During the first lockdown the effort has been great, but there was hope that everything would be quickly resolved. Now, a little less than a year later teenagers start to show significant signs of discomfort. This impression of distress was confirmed when we met some middle school students who said they were anxious about their parents’ and grandparents’ health, concerned about the economic situation of their family, scared for the future. For the first time in history what our children are experiencing affects millions of children. In the world there are 1.2 billion teenagers, about 18% of the world population. They are our future, those in charge of planning and making a change for the survival of our planet. Solitude, isolation, lack of physical contact are a great deprivation for every human being, but are particularly hard for young people. Peer interaction has enormous importance in the formation of personality and learning. The feeling of distrust toward the future, the fear of the next catastrophe, the sense of powerlessness and guilt are likely to have disastrous consequences on an entire generation. Kids need to be heard”.
Benedetta Manfriani
The participatory art action proposed by the Call for QuaranTeens collected voices of young people from all over the world living the hardships and the dramatic condition of the pandemic on their own skin. Through the call, they have been invited to send words, sounds of the environment and/or emotional sounds so that young people could leave a sort of emotional mark, united in a cry crossing the limits of space, communicating through sound how they perceive themselves, how they feel, who they are.
The sounds will be turned into a sound installation in collaboration with Tempo Reale and exhibited in a public space in the city of Florence in the month of September 2021. The audio track will also be broadcast on radio and Facebook streaming.
A short clip of the audio tracks:
The call:
Installations / Sound Sculptures
4th June 2021