Sottovoce: Le persone nelle città
Basic information
Project Title
Full project title
Category
Project Description
Sottovoce is and indipendent magazine that aims to give space to those voices that are hided and lost in the loudness of everyday life. Through eleven issues, each one taking inspiration from one of the eleven "Invisible cities" of Italo Calvino, Sottovoce discovers, tells but most of all listens to the cities and their people.
Project Region
EU Programme or fund
Description of the project
Summary
Words, faces, looks. There are so many of them who meet and there are so many of them who often remain unspoken in the everyday maze. Sottovoce is an independent magazine with a confidential nature which puts itself into the cracks of others’ stories to frame their emotions, making them vibrate in front of the eyes of the reader. The magazine aims to plumb the intimate folds of the life of the most common people in the texture of their urban fabric. Stories, photographs and texts that interact with the poetry of everyday life to return its most anthropological character which palpitates in the silent narration of stories unbuttoned in a whisper. A thematic collection of exquisitely human portraits that relate to the territory constituting the most representative part of it, explored through eleven urban scenarios inspired by the eleven famous Invisible Cities of Italo Calvino. In fact, the Cuban author writes "Cities are places of exchange, exchanges of words of desires, of memories" and of these ones Sottovoce wants to be the most accurate and profound radiography. Therefore there will be eleven issues, each of which will be composed of stories of a beauty made of habit, chosen on the basis of the theme present in the book and referring to the cities. The magazine, with a six-monthly release, gives voice to the words of the subheadings, to unknown faces, to the looks of the most fascinating human normality throughout the rhythmic alternation of articles, interviews and galleries.
Key objectives for sustainability
The editorial staff is careful to obtain a sustainable and wary production toward the environment. We know the cost of the production of paper magazines on the environment, but we think that today more than ever, is necessary to give a concrete and physical space to people that don’t have it.
We want to solve this problem, at least partly, by using light and recyclable papers, using as much as we can every piece of scrap giving it a new life.
Our choice is to use papers made in Italy, that care about the earth and sustainable production.
The usage of local materials and the reuse of scraps allows us to help the planet in such an important moment for Italy and its people, an important moment of rebirth in which we want to be the voice of the daily city normality.
Key objectives for aesthetics and quality
Aesthetics and quality of experience constitute a fundamental part of SottoVoce project. Born as a physical space for stories, SottoVoce has also the aim to create an empathic relation with the reader, hence the attention given to paper and material choices. A big format of 30x40 cm and a print process able to enhance the photographs that fill the magazine are part of the main characteristics. Main selected paper has a lightly rough touch and a warm white color: Fedrigoni Arena Natural Bulk 100g. Other papers are characterized by color or film finish, in fact a light blue colored one has been chosen for the first issue and a coated paper to give value to the printed images. In the end, each element of the magazine has been curated in order to have the maximum quality for the result of the beautiful and charming stories that people has told.
Key objectives for inclusion
Inclusion plays a key role in our Magazine.
Our aim is to give voice to all those everyday stories which usually remain unheard. The nature of Sottovoce is profoundly social, wanting to give and leave space to all those people’s stories which develop themselves within the everyday life. In fact the magazine doesn’t focus on the voices of people who have done or said something to be remembered for but who need to be remembered because of their being extremely unique in their normality. In our first issue the theme is the desire to create aggregation between people, to make everyone feel at home. All people from Rimini have this kind of desire in order to create a space in which all their hosts could feel comfortable and well accepted despite their origins and different cultures. Therefore, we have interviewed different people with different roles, from the director of the film “Solo cose belle” to the greengrocer who comes from Albania.
All those different voices come together in order to reveal us a part of the city of Rimini that always remains sub-heading.
Innovative character
Sottovoce will feature other 10 issues in addition to the number 0 regarding Rimini.
The editorial project indeed, inspired by the eleven “Invisible cities” of Italo Calvino will investigate profoundly the beauty of normality of other ten cities of Italy.
Each issue will be released every six month in order to collect the all the materials. In the In the first issue all the contents were unpublished and we want to maintain this objective by giving space to young writers and photographers of the chosen cities. In fact, on the one hand, we would like to validate the work of those talents not yet fully emerged and on the other hand, we believe in the beauty of discovering those secrets of everyday life that every person and every place carries with it. And no one can keep these secrets better than those who live them every day.
