Cortona On The Move 2021

COTM 2021
Curatorial Statement

Without a doubt, 2020 was one of the most complex and uncertain years in the recent history of the contemporary world. It still is. Doubts about the future, personal and global, economic, political, social and sanitary, are still deeply rooted in the minds of all of us. They are real.

As a container and producer of stories that narrate our world, Cortona On The Move strongly believes in the importance of documenting what is happening in an attempt to understand it better, but also not to forget. From this belief, in the spring of 2020, the COVID-19 Visual Project: A Time of Distance was born; a permanent archive, but still in progress, on the pandemic linked to the new coronavirus.

Right now we are all still trying to make sense of the new normal, our changed lives, uncertain expectations about the future. Surely this global, almost universal experience also has a very intimate and personal side. Each of us, in recent months, has had the opportunity to reflect on their existence: we were forced to stop, slow down our activities, focusing on some simpler and more essential aspects of life.

The family, relationships, friendships have become the nerve center, even if at a distance, of our daily lockdown. Contact, affections, encounters have turned into a virtual experience, but often more profound. We re-evaluated some behaviors, rediscovered distant friendships, paid attention to small gestures and simple words. Suddenly, on the phone we no longer asked “Where are you? the usual standard greeting of our mobile calls, but “How are you?”. And it wasn’t just so to speak.

The human being, alone, but in planetary company, has returned to center stage. This global crisis therefore becomes an opportunity to rethink and restructure a social and economic system that has forced and accustomed us to never stop, to compulsively want more and more.

It becomes necessary, almost vital, to reestablish contact with ourselves, as human beings, in the fragility and strength of every day, in the intimate sociality of the closest relationships, in the innate necessity to be together, in the inexplicable need to connect one to the other, and in the inextricable desire for emotions and values that unite us.

For Cortona On The Move 2021, we want to tell stories that reconnect with ourselves, with the human essence of our being. Stories in which the human being is the protagonist, in his/her everyday life, with his/her emotions and values, idiosyncrasies, genius, defects. Almost a tribute to our existence, with sweetness and sincerity.
Who knows, even with a touch of atavistic nostalgia. An inner look towards a world that was or will be. Without forgetting that our actions, however unique, are part of a great global network, a game of cause and effect, a set of inevitable connections. For better or for worse.

We are humans.