Nomicosecittà Milano
Assalti poetici / Poetic assaults

We meet Ivan some minutes before the walk starts. We are in via Bussola 4, where he and the collective Art Kitchen have recovered a space that currently hosts young artists willing to communicate their works and their way of looking at this part of the city. Milan, zone 6, Barona neighborhood. It is almost time to start, so we move towards viale Cassala to reach the meeting point at the corner with via Carlo Torre. Our walk starts here. Ivan introduces himself armed with posters, a bucket and brushes. Every word has a specific weight and a rich and dense meaning. He tells about that poem that he wanted to leave and share with everybody right there on the wall close to the petrol station: the poesia dello sciopero migrante (i.e. poem of the migrant strike).

From viale Cassala we start to walk towards Villaggio Barona. On the way, Ivan tells about “his” Barona and about other stories and lives that interweave with his. It is very hot, but the participants follow us: they are careful, curious, willing to discover what is next, stop after stop, story after story. We cross the park of Villaggio Barona, looking for a shady place where we could rest. We are surrounded by some stalls, a stage, children workshops: the Festival Scrivere sui Margini is taking place these days, a festival of literature and society.
 

We stop at the entrance in via Zumbini 6, Ivan tells us about the collaboration between the different realities present in the neighborhood and how they often collaborate for common projects aiming at redeeming that “grey Milan”, which actually is not that grey.

We enter, Manuel Ferreira from the theatre group Alma Rosè and Gianluca Nardone (K-city srl) remind us of which and how many associations and individuals contributed to create this place. A place for sociality and for active participation. We keep on walking and we meet other realities, Arci Biko and then, a bit further, ZAM. Many stories created by many people aiming at a change. We continue along via Watt towards the next stop, the area until recently occupied by Arci Bitte. Ivan stops, it is time for the “poetic assault”: a poster hanged on the fence of a construction site that hides the umpteenth transformation.

Some meters further Matteo, aka Flipper, is waiting for us in front of a gate and from there he leads us to what is left, but still for short, of Bitte, a space that has been subjected to this city and its logics. “We had to leave”, he says, “this is what is left”. But this is just partially a defeat, you can feel the will of fighting for a change.

We leave Matteo and head towards Gelateria della Musica, where Fabio and a well-deserved ice-cream (one of the best in town) are waiting for us. The last effort and we end the walk at the house of the poetic assault, before we move to the buffet prepared by Clochard alla Riscossa close by.

Ivan thanks the walkers and starts to play: “If I won a billion while playing billiards I would do nothing else than doing nothing...” and so he says goodbye with his poem that fills us with energy.


Ivan Tresoldi, (1981) aka Ivan, was born in the Barona neighborhood, in the southern outskirts of Milan. Co-founder of Art Kitchen, nowadays promotes art and cultural events in Italy and abroad. Since 2003 he has been the author of poetic assaults in Milan, where he paints and hangs his poetical lines. In 2009 his first personal exhibition was hosted by Spazio Oberdan in Milan. He has travelled bringing his Street Poetry across Europe, to Haiti, Cuba, Mali, South Africa, Lybia, Lebanon, Palestine and New York. He writes for Linus, Smemoranda, Emergency and Radio Popolare.