“Forcella Reigns” is an immersive multimedia installation with a raw theatrical profile and the culmination of a 4-year anthropological research study in Forcella, a run-down and often avoided neighborhood in Naples, South Italy. There I embedded myself with a group of men who play cards on a corner staircase, Gradini Forcella, everyday. In these dilapidated streets surrounded by violence and organized crime, I studied the day to day story of these card games. The installation's title comes from a graffiti tag (Forcella Regna) found on site and refers to the criminal battles in the neighborhood.

 

This world can feel distant from that of these men. Yet, these two realities coincide in Forcella. Stepping in from the LA traffic, the audience is met with sudden darkness, surrounded only by the sound of Neapolitan traffic. After adjusting to the low light, they walk through a dark, black corridor, still immersed in the sound of the Neapolitan streets and interviews with Forcella’s inhabitants. Once through, they cross an imaginary boundary and are dropped into another dimension of the staircase and the men. A reconstructed black silhouette of the “Gradini Forcella" staircase stands at the far side of this room, framing a matching wall-to-wall shadowbox video projection of the men. A red glowing light box reminiscent of the “Gradini Forcella” street sign hangs just above the stairway.

​

A broom, a cement bucket filled with charcoal, and cigarette butts surround a recreated table on which the men usually play. Four sculptural paintings stand upright on pedestals to either side of the staircase, each depicting a significant moment of my experience with the men. The sound of moving chairs, cards shuffling, men talking and the game taking place are interwoven with little regard to chronology. Occasionally, the artists perform a card game at the table with the audience.

​

The different elements coexist with each other in a camera obscura – a black box theater – where the audience is invited to follow the daily rituals of Forcella's cards players while observing the social and cultural experience through the multi-sensory set-up that removes the awareness of linear time and space. After its initial test run in April 2018 at Los Angeles’ Z.J.U. Theater, the installation was presented there again in September 2018, with the support of the Italian American Museum of Los Angeles IAMLA.

​

As part of “Forcella Reigns” a limited print of the Neapolitan card deck was produced, based on hand painted original imagery. Each deck of 40 cards is individually numbered, printed on 310gsm linen finish card stock featuring a special raised embossed gloss effect. They are fully playable and come with an instruction booklet for the most popular Italian card game, Scopa, in both English and Italian. The deck is available for purchase in my Store.