Il Futuro è già Iniziato (The Future Has Already Begun)

"Il Futuro è già Iniziato" explores the layered identity of a small village in Central Sardinia, called Ottana, investigating the relationship between industrial heritage and tradition through a collective emotional perspective.

Ottana is primarily known for a deeply rooted cultural identity, embodied by the traditional masks of the ancient Carnival, and the generational transmission of its rituals. Starting in the Seventies, it underwent a sudden and massive industrialization, whose unmet promise left deep living marks across the territory that echo throughout the community.

What had first struck me about this place was a subtle feeling of ambiguity, suspension and unresolved tension that led to a simple question: how could such different aspects coexist within the same identity?

The project wants to move beyond the idea of an identity fracture, offering instead an image of stratification and complex continuity that keeps building the present. I focused instead on collective memory and its narrative of time perceived as a cycle, marked by the continuous alternation of glory and disgrace.  This idea is reflected in the very structure of the work: a circular construction in which the opening and closing images respond to each other, underlined by repetition of visual elements.

The title comes from a document written in 1969, at the very beginning of industrialization. It reads : “…we came together, driven by the belief that today’s citizens , all citizens, cannot mortgage the fate of future generations out of inertia or fear. Action is needed, and urgently, because our future has already begun.”