Gibellina Heartquake VR was born out of a desire to tell the story of Gibellina and the Belice region, deeply affected by the 1968 earthquake. Using a VR headset, this immersive experience allows users to actively engage with key moments during and after the earthquake. The users are not mere spectators; they are invited to interact with the scenes. The virtual imagery combines computer-generated content with authentic television and radio recordings, poignantly narrating how the identity of an entire community has been shaped over generations. In the exhibition The Presence of Absence, Gibellina Heartquake VR is showcased alongside the photo project Il Cretto è casa mia by the Associazione Gibellina Parco Culturale and the film Il Grande Cretto di Gibellina by Petra Noordkamp, highlighting how memory can be kept alive through art.

The VR project was funded in 2021 by the municipality of Gibellina. Some of the town’s residents and survivors can be heard in original recordings, including the activist Danilo Dolci and then mayor Ludovico Corrao. Despite the great support of the community and the donation of the final version of this virtual work to the Museum of Contemporary Art “Ludovico Corrao” in 2022, Gibellina Heartquake VR is being shown to the public for the first time at the Frankfurter Kunstverein.

The memory of Gibellina and its destruction by the Belice earthquake more than 55 years ago has had a lasting impact on the whole of Sicily. It must not be forgotten. Gibellina Heartquake VR was created to give future generations the opportunity to learn about the experience not just as a distant, historical event, but to experience it for themselves, to be touched by it—and thus to understand the wounds of the people whose lives were changed forever by the force of nature.

The first part of the VR experience shows the historical events of January 1968, beginning with TV images of Gibellina immediately after the earthquake. Users then find themselves, virtually, in an elegant living room in Rome. On television, they see original TV reports and breaking news about the earthquake. In another scene, the dramatic moments of the disaster can be experienced virtually from the perspective of Gibellina’s inhabitants. The contrast between the prosperity in the capital and the poverty in Gibellina illustrates the profound inequalities between southern Italy and the rest of the country at the time. The narrative takes the users to tent cities and huts where the survivors tried to lead a normal life for years under precarious conditions. A thunderstorm rages over the fragile huts and water seeps in. In the background, we hear historical recordings from the community radio station “Radio Libera”, in which activist Danilo Dolci publicly denounces the failure of the Italian authorities to provide decent living conditions in the emergency shelters and to rebuild the city.

The second part of the VR experience takes you into a dreamlike, surreal world. Here, the works of art and architectural landmarks of the new Gibellina stand in an empty landscape, abandoned and waiting to be discovered. Many of the buildings are unfinished. Unlike what they are in reality, this dream world stands for the utopia of a city, Gibellina Nuova (New Gibellina), which was created on the drawing board in the 1970s, 18 kilometres away from the ruins of the former city. The hope of a new beginning was to be symbolised by works of art. In addition to the famous Cretto di Gibellina by artist Alberto Burri, which was created on the ruins of the destroyed old Gibellina, numerous other artists from all over Italy donated works, monuments and buildings to the small town of Gibellina Nuova. But the dream remained an unfinished utopia.

“The vision of the rebirth of the destroyed city through art and architecture is combined with my personal dream of being able to show the VR experience Gibellina Heartquake VR to the public. Both dreams share the fate of having somehow remained unfinished or been thwarted by circumstances. And both thrive on the confidence that they will be fully realised. Gibellina Heartquake VR is being presented to the public for the first time at the Frankfurter Kunstverein. It is my great wish that this project, which was created at the insistence of the residents of Gibellina, will gain new life and visibility not only in Italy but also abroad. In this way, the story of Gibellina can be made known to a wider public so that they can reflect on how to deal with wounds and loss, but also with the hope and the will to transform that dramatic events generate”.

Alberto Stabile

Alberto Stabile (b. 1994, Gibellina Nuova, IT) is a 3D artist and VR developer. His family experienced the 1968 earthquake in Gibellina and is one of the people whose fate has been shaped and changed by it to this day. Since 2018, he has been working as a 3D artist and VR developer, collaborating with architectural firms as well as international automotive companies. After years of working in 3D visualization and full CGI animation, the project Gibellina Heartquake VR represents a return to his roots – an attempt to revive the collective memory of his community through digital art.

Courtesy Giuseppe Ippolito (Photos) and Giovanna Giordano (Text)

Il Cretto è casa mia (The Cretto is my home) is be shown publicly for the first time at the Frankfurter Kunstverein. The photographic work was brought to life in 2024 by the tenacious determination of Nicolò Stabile, who initiated it as part of his tireless work to preserve Alberto Burri’s Cretto and the history of Gibellina.

On display are portraits of people who survived the Belice earthquake, which shook and destroyed western Sicily several times in 1968. They are the last witnesses to this traumatic experience. The people affected lost relatives and their homes. The earthquake and the inaction of the authorities left them homeless and alone with the loss of their entire existence. After years in temporary barracks, Gibellina Nuova (the new Gibellina) was built 18 kilometres away. Artists and architects donated works and it became a city of a modernist utopia, which over the years was once again abandoned to decay.

In 2024, the participatory project Il Cretto è casa mia was created as an attempt to heal and reappropriate a place that, in its entire presence, bears witness to a deeply felt absence. More than fifty years after the earthquake, people have come together to have their portraits made, as they stand in front of the former ruins of their homes. In the 1980s, Alberto Burri’s landscape artwork, the Cretto di Gibellina, was created on these remains as a place of silence and remembrance. The artist succeeded in transforming the pain into a form of sublime beauty through a respectful creative act. His white layers of concrete shrouded the remains, like a burial shroud, preserving them in the secrecy of their interior.

Nicolò Stabile, himself a survivor and founder of the Associazione Gibellina Parco Culturale, is the driving force behind a visionary and monumental endeavour not to abandon this place to decay, but to preserve it and mobilise collective forces to do so. For years, he has been committed to preserving the art and the memorial site. In 2024, he invited the photographer Giuseppe Ippolito to take portraits of the survivors on site. The photo campaign, conceived as an ongoing process, now comprises 60 portraits, 34 of which are printed and shown for the first time as part of the group exhibition The Presence of Absence. The people whose faces we see belong to the last generation to bear witness to this shattering event for Sicily and the whole of Italy.

They look at us from the photographs and do not shrink back from the violence of history, but emerge as individuals. They tell their stories to the writer Giovanna Giordano, excerpts of which can be read in the exhibition. They are proud that Alberto Burri created one of the world’s most important monuments and his masterpiece from the ruins of their houses. A living place of landscape, memory and culture.

Nicolò Stabile (b. 1966, Gibellina, IT) worked in the 1980s alongside Ludovico Corrao (*1927, Alcamo, IT; †2011, Gibellina, IT), the former mayor of Gibellina, on the reconstruction of the city after the 1968 Belice earthquake. In the 1990s, he lived and worked in Brussels, BE, where he worked as a playwrighter, organiser, press spokesperson, and translator for various theaters, festivals, and artists, including Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Brussels (BE), Kaaitheater, Brussels (BE), CharleroiDanses, Charleroi (BE), and Needcompany, Brussels (BE). He also worked as a producer for Thierry Salmon. In 2000, Stabile returned to Gibellina, where he led the Compagnia Caterina Sagna and realised numerous co-productions with prominent institutions such as Théâtre de la Ville, Paris (FR), Théâtre de la Bastille, Paris (FR), Festival d’Avignon (FR), and Venice Biennale (IT). From 2006 to 2010, he was responsible for public relations and the Ente Promozione Danza at Fondazione Romaeuropa, Rome (IT), as well as for the programming at Teatro Palladium, Rome (IT). Since 2010, Stabile has been dedicated to preserving and documenting the public art collection of Gibellina, particularly Alberto Burri’s Cretto. In this context, he has collaborated with artists, photographers, directors, researchers, dramaturgs, archives, universities, and institutions to document the city of Gibellina and its contradictions. Collaborators include Thierry de Mey, Marzia Migliora, Petra Noordkamp, Elisa Giardina Papa, Onorato & Krebs, David Williams, Maya Bosch, Christian Lutz, Pablo Fidalgo, Alexander Rosenkranz, Istituto Svizzero, Rome (IT), Accademia Tedesca Villa Massimo, Rome (IT), Fondazione Sandretto Re Baudengo, Turin (IT), and Archivio Pietro Consagra, Gibellina (IT).

Giuseppe Ippolito (b. 1987, Novara, IT) is an Italian photographer specializing in portrait and reportage photography for the publishing and advertising industries. His reportage work has been published in both national and international outlets, including The Guardian, Vanity Fair, La Cucina Italiana, Business Traveller UK, The Creative Brothers, Athleta Magazine, Suq Magazine, and Trentino Magazine. Ippolito is well-known in the food and beverage industry as a photographer of celebrity chefs, and he has collaborated with La Repubblica, Panorama, Dispensa Magazine, and Fine Dining Lovers by San Pellegrino. In 2017, he received a special mention from the World Photography Organization and was shortlisted for the Food Photographer of the Year award. Recently, he expanded his work to include the creation of institutional campaigns for Regione Sicilia, SIAE (Italian Society of Authors and Publishers), and MiBAC (Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities). Ippolito’s parents are from Gibellina.

Giovanna Giordano (b. 1961, Milan, IT) lives and works in Catania, IT, where she teaches philosophy at the Accademia di Belle Arti and works as a journalist and author. Giordano is known for her literary journeys from Sicily to other places beyond Italy. She studied African art history and regularly writes for publications such as La Stampa, Il Giornale di Sicilia, Il Mattino, and currently La Sicilia. She has received numerous awards, including the Premio Recalmare Sciascia for her novels, such as Trentaseimila giorni (1996), Un volo magico (1998), and Il mistero di Lithian (2004). In 2020, she was shortlisted for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Her work Il profumo della libertà (2021) was nominated for the Premio Strega in 2022.

Petra Noordkamp is an artist. She works with photography and film and explores the influence of experiences, memories, films and dreams on the perception of architecture and the urban environment.

In 2015, she was invited by the Guggenheim Museum in New York to make her film Il Grande Cretto di Gibellina. Noordkamp dedicated it to the landscape monument by the Italian Arte Povera artist Alberto Burri (b. 1915, Città di Castello, IT; d. 1995, Nice, FR). The construction of the Cretto began in 1984 and was completed in 2015. Today, the work covers an area of 90,000 square metres.

The history of the Cretto di Gibellina (The Crack of Gibellina) by Alberto Burri is complex. Burri began working on the idea for the work in 1979. Between 1985 and 1989, he had a 1.50 metre high layer of white cement poured over the rubble left behind by the great earthquake of 14 January 1968, which destroyed the town of Gibellina and the lives of its 5,000 inhabitants. Streets, squares, houses, shops, schools, churches, a theatre and the 14th century Chiaramonte Castle—everything collapsed, burying people and their belongings. Around a hundred people died. Everyone else lost their homes and every family had victims to mourn. A traumatising and fundamental experience of the inevitability from the power of nature. Burri’s work, created eleven years after the event, preserves the ruins and covers them with a white layer of cement.

It is a place of absence, remembrance and silence. Burri’s greatness lies in the fact that he felt and respected people’s pain and grief. He gave it a form. Burri expressly chose white cement. For him, the colour white was a symbol of light. A light that resists the darkest experiences of destruction and death in this place. The seemingly hard material is itself vulnerable. Time makes it brittle. Caper plants take root and blast cracks in the surface, algae and moss decompose it, wind, sun and rain: all this reminds us of the human form of life, which is always vulnerable. The cement and the man-made form would disintegrate in the eternal cycle of growth and decay if the survivors of the earthquake had not dedicated themselves to the task of caring for the sculptural body of the Cretto. The people who founded the Associazione Gibellina Parco Culturale know how difficult it is to preserve the white of the concrete. Their care defies time and oblivion, because the Cretto should remain in its sublime beauty. As a symbol of an absence and at the same time as a sign of the power of beauty, this has great value to some people from Gibellina.

Burri searched for beauty. For him, it is the form that speaks to us in a strict balance of sensual and spiritual imagery. It is not the concept of beauty that conceals and glosses over the ugly, the incomprehensible, the hurt and the fragile, but rather the conviction that art absorbs them and makes them meaningful.

Petra Noordkamp spent many months in Gibellina. For her, it was an essential part of her work to experience the silence of the Cretto, to spend time there and to find a way, on film, to bring this place closer to people far away. She looked through historical photos and film footage that showed her the people who had survived the earthquake. She was moved by the images of times gone by and the life that is absent today. She incorporated this archive material into her film as a tribute to the friends and residents of Gibellina. For example, we see a scene featuring the father and brother of Nicolò Stabile, now organiser of the Associazione Gibellina Parco Culturale and activist, who became a close friend.

From the sky, Burri’s minimalist design looks like a white square, like a canvas that covers the entire hill, furrowed by deep fissures and cracks. These are reminiscent of the streets of the destroyed town of Gibellina. They are also evocative of the furrows caused by earthquakes. And they symbolise the cracks in the lives of the people who lost everything in Gibellina.

Petra Noordkamp deliberately chooses a point of view (alternate camera angle) at eye level. It is as if her film leads us through the paths of the Cretto di Gibellina. Her work evokes a sense of presence. Noordkamp gives the viewer the impression of walking through the place and feeling what may have happened there.

Petra Noordkamp invited the Dutch sound artist Nathalie Bruys to create the soundtrack for her film. She recorded ambient sounds on location—the sounds of the sheep, the wind and the birds—and integrated them as sound fragments into the final soundscape of the film.

Burri himself had stipulated that the Cretto should remain a place of silence. Only elements of nature should be heard—the birds, the wind and the crickets. No tourist hustle and bustle, no marketing should disturb. Moments of self-reflection. The experience of the individual as an expression of the here and now in the face of the eternity of space and time is created in this special place.

Noordkamp’s entire oeuvre is influenced by Finnish architect Juhani Pallasmaa’s thoughts on silence. According to the architect, the world is losing its mystery, its poetry and its sensual presence. The loss of silence and darkness symbolises man’s alienation from a spiritual relationship with the world and nature.

Petra Noordkamp’s film illustrates how Alberto Burri’s Cretto stands for its own history and as a scar in time. It is a reminder of the catastrophe and at the same time shows a place of beauty in the midst of the eternal hilly landscape of the Belice Valley. Here, art has fulfilled the task of covering a wound. To protect and preserve the wounded. The presence of the absent.

Petra Noordkamp (b. 1967, Losser, NL) is a Dutch artist and filmmaker who lives and works in Amsterdam (NL). From 1996 to 2000, she studied photography at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam (NL). In 2012, Noordkamp presented her first short film The Mother, the Son and the Architect, filmed in the Chiesa Madre by architect Ludovico Quaroni in Gibellina (IT), in a solo exhibition at the Foam Photography Museum in Amsterdam (NL). The film was screened at numerous international film festivals. In 2013, she was an artist-in-residence at the American Academy in Rome (IT). In 2014, she returned to Gibellina at the request of the Guggenheim Foundation, New York (US), to create the short film Il Grande Cretto di Gibellina about the land art piece Cretto by Alberto Burri. This film was shown at renowned institutions such as the Guggenheim Museum, New York (US), K21, Düsseldorf (DE), and the Centre Pompidou, Paris (FR). Her film When You Return I’ll Be Living by the Waterside (2017) had its world premiere at the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) in 2018. In 2017, Noordkamp created the diptych installation Fragile – Handle with Care, commissioned by the Museo Nazionale delle Arti del XXI Secolo – MAXXI in Rome (IT). In 2020, she began the project Better Not Move in Tokyo (JP), which resulted in a book, a film, and several exhibitions.