Torino 1938 | 1948

The installation, created in the basement of the Palazzo Quartieri Militari by Filippo Juvarra, is based entirely on the use of interactive technologies and the creation of strongly evocative audio-visual environments.
The particular use of interactivity and the production of the visual and sound material makes it possible to get close to the visitor on an emotional level while providing a large quantity of information and background detail in a very novel way.

Thanks to interactive technology the visitor embarks on a journey in time and through the history of Turin from the introduction of the racial discrimination laws (1938) up to when the Republican Constitution came was enforced (1948).

In the basement, a hypothetical underground line, drawn on the floor, suggests the issues that have been chosen for this journey: daily life, living under the bombings, living under a regime, living in a state of occupation.
At each terminal station there is a video-projection and two interactive portrait-interviews.

The underground lines converge towards the main hall where there is a large interactive table. On the table top, arranged along the metro lines and in conjunction with the stops, there are documents, sheets of paper, postcards, photographs, maps. These objects, that are initially white and silent come to life as soon as they are skimmed through and brought to life by the video-projections through which they tell the history of the various places of Turin.

The visit continues in an air-raid shelter, located 12 metres underground, where a sound installation recreates the atmosphere of the city during the bombings while voices of eye witnesses recall fragments of their life experience during those dramatic moments.

The last terminal, living free, presents four portrait-interviews that describe the delicate and controversial moments that followed the Liberation.

Before climbing back up to the exit, a final interactive video-installation living the Constitution invites everyone to consider the rights of citizenship and how these are exercised in today’s contemporary world. A very effective play of mirrors puts the visitor face to face with him/herself and the fundamental concepts included in the Constitution: the visitor’s reflected image is superimposed on that of actors performing quotations and comments of people who lived through this period and wrote the Italian Constitution.