The City of Happiness – San Salvi

In the former psychiatric hospital of Florence, Benno Steinegger asks the poet Alberta Bigagli what happiness is for her.

“Without the hypothesis that another world is possible, there is no politics, there is only the administrative management of men and things.”

G. Decrop

For the Estate Fiorentina, Benno Steinegger created The City of Happiness – San Salvi at Chille de la Balanza in San Salvi, the former psychiatric hospital of Florence. For years theatre and social organisations have worked to turn this green, quiet island into a place of “different happiness”, where the diversity of the people who once lived there is a chance, not a threat.

There he met Alberta Bigagli, a Florentine poet who collects the stories of disadvantaged people. He asked her what happiness is for her, and how it lives in her everyday life. The result is a video and sound installation: photographs of her days, spent mostly in her small flat in the historic centre of Florence, and sound. A life that might seem simple, and that vibrates with a force coming straight from the heart.

The installation is also about their encounter: two generations, two artists, two forms of expression. The surprise is that the questions burning inside are the same for both. Maybe because they are the fundamental questions of our existence.

The work is part of The City of Happiness, a wider public art project on the idea of happiness.