Iorio & Cuomo: Logica del passaggio

Maria Iorio & Raphaël Cuomo, winners of the tenth Premio Furla, are presenting at Fondazione Querini Stampalia during the Venice Biennale the first step of their long-term research project Logica del passaggio.
In Logica del passaggio, Maria Iorio & Raphaël Cuomo analyse the phenomenon of Italian “economic” migration to Switzerland in the Sixties, which was characterized by immigrant workers being restricted to the sphere of production, by discrimination and xenophobia, and by the use of “health risks” as a strategy to control emigration and the legality of border crossings. Through a film and a spatial installation, Maria Iorio & Raphaël Cuomo reread and write up this chapter of history without ever slipping into a mere documentary, working instead to reveal the replicable structure and logic behind it.
Logica del passaggio thus emphasizes the discrepancy between official, institutional portrayals of Italian migration and the subjective views of the migrants, trying to construct a ‘history from below’.