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02 December1973
Austerity
Author
Fondo del Museo ATC
Format
16mm
Duration
2'26''
Credits
Music & sound design by Michele Manzolini

For the first time we stop after decades of racing, after having learnt to be in a hurry, to always overtake and never stop. The cause is the energy crisis more than the awareness of an unsustainable future that is perhaps beginning to be discovered. Sunday 2 December 1973 is the first of the Sundays on Foot, which then, as we see in these sequences shot in Bologna, that day is an opportunity to try out other means. First and foremost are the buses and the public service, as these 16mm images were produced by the Azienda dei Trasporti di Bologna. There are also double-decker buses, there is room for everyone, but we are not in London, here they are green. They will be short-lived. But then, as in other cities, we see horse-drawn carriages again, and even centaurs, who for today are not motorised, but figures between man and horse that have just arrived in the city. But the most rediscovered and indeed never forgotten means of transport is the bicycle. At last, urban space on a bicycle and pedestrian scale. As usual, it takes a crisis to see that another world is possible. But in the end it is just an illusion and in the long run science fiction is always right.

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