Gli spiriti del Castel Menardo –
the Spirits of Castel Menardo (in Serramonacesca, Italy)
Castel Menardo in Serramonacesca is a ruin located in the national park Maiella in Abruzzo (Italy): A castle built around the 13th century, probably for the purpose of protecting the monastery of San Liberatore a Maiella, not far away. The far ruinous state hardly allows to investigate what superstructure the castle must have had, which would have given us deeper insight about the way of during that time.
Following an archaeological research of my family, I continue the investigation, still at the beginning, with drawings.
In 2022, I hiked to the castle every day for over a month, using the technique of frottage on the one hand to explore the holes in the ground inside the ground plan that must have held the former piles, and using the same technique on the other hand to explore the walls of the ruin. This resulted in over 300 drawings of various formats (from about 20×40 cm to about 100×150 cm), which I will now make the object of my own research in various ways over the next few years.
Already emerged is a series of about 50 drawings so far, which responds directly to the frottages: Rubbing the walls revealed the creatures that hide in the ruins directly on the paper.
In this series, I deal in drawings with every single plant, ghost, and glimpse of a bodily form that I encounter in the frottages.
Later I return the spirits (in form of their drawings) in different stages to the monastery of San Liberatore a Maiella, which they once guarded, to listen to their stories on place and record them.
–> Installation at the Abbazia di San Liberatore
In addition, I have made frottages of the holes in the ground inside the ruin to install them in a further investigation in different constellations and thereby develop various utopias about the architecture of the castle and therein also the life in it.
