Off Stage
by Elena Prola
portfolio shortlisted call 'Urbanautica Institute Awards 2025', 2025
Category: People and Communities
Review by URBANAUTICA
The Carroponte of Sesto San Giovanni is a vast post-industrial structure of the former Falck steelworks, originally built for handling heavy materials and converted in 2008 into a concert venue. Anyone who grew up here, like me, knows it for what happens at night.During the day, however, the place changes.
The stage structure remains, but the audience disappears. The Carroponte empties out and becomes a large urban space shaped by silence, light, and the absence of function.
In these hours, young people arrive.
They sit, lie down, lean against the structures. Some stop briefly, others stay for the entire afternoon. Here, being present does not mean being seen. This is why I keep returning as well.
I was born in a city where the industrial landscape never truly disappeared, continuing to shape ways of living even after the factories closed. This led me to reflect on the gap between the legacy a place carries and what happens when its function ceases or is suspended.
Each time the lights are switched off, the Carroponte opens up to something else, a residual space where moments of creepy beauty make room for provisional forms of presence.
This body of work observes what happens within this temporary and fragile truce, before the show comes back on stage.