10:33

The story of an airplane crash happened near Bologna in 1990 is a starting point to think about chance, coincidence, and those lines that cross all of our lives.

10:33 by Camilla Marrese and Gabriele Chiapparini

On December 6, 1990, at 10.33 A.M., a military aircraft on an engine failure, no pilot on board anymore, crashed into the window of class IIA of Salvemini High School in Casalecchio di Reno, Italy. It killed 12 fifteen years olds, and wounded 88 people. The trajectory of the airplane was modified right after the pilot’s ejection at 10.31.40: after that, the engine flew for more than two minutes, with no control.

A first day of may at the beginning of 2000 I, Gabriele, was on an airplane shaken by strong turbolence. A few days earlier, the mother of a friend had forseen its fall, though saying that her dreams hadn’d been coming true for a long time - and that therefore, we could have taken the flight. That was the first, and not the last time, I perceived that one of those events about which we always hear talking, was about to happen to me. I was 100% sure the airplane would fall.

We read news, look at pictures on our screens, and can’t really elaborate them, as if paper and screen were a physical border separating us, from them: as if “us”, as compared to “them”, were living and acting in an environment following different physical laws.

With 10:33 we ask ourselves if it is possible to overcome this distance, bringing events back to their everyday, collective dimension: lines that cross everyone’s lives, marking a “before” and an “after”.