Evidence from surfaces

Learning from walls in the Italian village of Bussana Vecchia - a self-built artist commune on the ruins of a medieval Italian village.

This place was destroyed by an earthquake in the 1880s and had been abandoned until a few local and international hippies moved in and started rebuilding, to make it into an artist commune.

The historical narrative is that this happened in the 1960s, but some of the wall markings inside the church ruins go back as far as 1942. "Carlo Barbesino 1942" must have been an immigrant from the south, who were the first to come and 'illegally' occupy the abandoned ruins - zoom in on the last shot. "Occupiers" and not "residents" is still the status of the present-day Bussana community.

Today there are a couple of cafes, some artist studios and shops, ongoing litigation with the Sanremo municipality about property deeds and safety, and a dazzling catalogue of self-built, interconnected properties, co-designed with ruins and overgrowth 🌱🧱🌱

"Bussana resilient", a documentary about the village, came out in 2017. The director Leonard Sommer was born in Bussana.