Rome contains fragments and dreams, palimpsestic projections of desire where the world has been made and remade throughout centuries. That Rome has also been invested—as the locus of power for various empires—in the promulgation of its own images and mythologies is without debate. Rome and its histories have conditioned so much of what we see. Rome was the vanishing point from and toward which so many movements would flow—of people, beliefs, power, and culture. Our past work operates as a kind of overwriting, acknowledging the site- and social-specificity of context yet often projecting another imaginative space overlaid on this environment. Our proposal for Rome is to look for evidence of superimpositions in architectural contexts—sites of simultaneity through which cultural meaning is made. We aim to make large-format drawings, short films of public life, and models of projection systems that draw out various forms of overwriting in the city. By examining public spaces and image construction in Rome, we hope to reveal depths within the social geometries that condition this place.

The photograph of Jennifer Newsom and Tom Carruthers is © Rik Sferra 2021.