INSPIRATION

Minus ten. The countdown has begun. In Ussana, on the south-eastern edge of the Campidano, no one is waiting for me and you know what? I’m very happy.

On a sunny day, I pedal leisurely to see what’s in this village surmounted by a couple of giant water tanks, the classic ones you see around here, concrete towers with a huge red and white polygonal cap.

Passed the parish church of San Sebastiano, I enter some tiny alleys, passing houses built in mud brick, the ladiri, some reduced to ruins, and I arrive at the small church of San Saturnino, from the 12th century, but a closed gate prevents me from approaching the structure.

It seems to me that there is nothing more interesting to see in the village, so I go out towards the cultivated fields, and I arrive at an ancient bridge, dating back to the mid-nineteenth century, the Sega Fenu bridge. The sign reminds me that this replaced an old Roman bridge that has now disappeared, and that at the end of the same century it suffered serious damage due to a terrible flood, s’unda manna (the big wave), or sa noti de is dimonius (the night of the demons) or s’unda de Santu Sperau (the wave of San Sperate, because people from San Sperate died in the event).

Finally I arrive at an interesting archaeological site, the remains of Roman baths, among which I can even walk once I put down my bicycle. I’m tired, I sit down to think and fantasize about my arrival in Cagliari in ten days. It seems unreal.

SOUND FRAGMENTS

SARDINIAN SHORT STORIES

Go up a dirt road and arrive at the top of a plateau, also visible from the village. Here I find Campidarte, a row of sheds within a vast area. Giorgio and Rita carry on the project of ‘making’ contemporary art in a natural context. Today, together with the foreign students of Workaway, they are dedicating themselves to organising the external spaces to build walkways, common areas and even a pond: a cultural park including the works of artists who have passed through here in the past, scattered among the low vegetation .

But the fulcrum of Campidarte are the four sheds frescoed by contemporary artists: one for events, one for artists’ accommodation and work, one for creative workshops and the exhibition of works, the last one for the storage of materials . A contemporary niche in the Ussana countryside, embellished by the design furnishings conceived and created by Giorgio, pieces of wood, plastic pipes, old tools converted to new functions.