Page 203 - Beyond Decommissioning

184 Beyond Decommissioning

Fig. 6.15 Gasometer cuff, gold-plated bronze, Rome.
Photo by M. Laraia, 2018.

Museums are usually crowded places that fall silent when the doors close at night.
But one museum in Rome’s eastern suburbs has no working hours: it is home to 200
squatters, including many children, who live among and protect the artworks.
In March 2009, the former building of the salami factory Fiorucci, located in
Rome’s eastern suburbs, was occupied by homeless migrants with a dual purpose:
solving housing problems for many people on one side and as a demonstrative act
against a giant construction company, on the other side.
In 2011, curator Giorgio de Finis began to organize art events and performances
there. These, in collaboration with the inhabitants and artists, grew spontaneously into
the Museum of the Other and the Elsewhere(Museo dell’Altro e dell’Altrove di Met-
ropoliz, or MAAM, in Italian). It fast became one of Rome’s most important contem-
porary art spaces, with murals, paintings, and installations by more than 300 artists
from all over the world. Many of them embed relics of the site’s former use as a
slaughterhouse or, seeking inspiration from its residents, address themes of discrim-
ination, xenophobia, and nationalism. A room once used for stripping carcasses dis-
plays a huge mural of hung-up pigs. Livestock cages serve as representations of the
lives of prisoners and migrants. All artwork is donated in support for the illegal
museum that works cost-free.
But visitors often express more interest in MAAM’s residents than in its art. Since
occupying the abandoned factory in 2009, the migrants (from such countries as
Morocco, Peru, Sudan, Eritrea, and Ukraine as well as several Roma families) have
converted factory buildings into homes, painted with murals.