Germano Facetti and the Sign as a Necessity of Memory

Abstract

The experiences of war, of death, of pain, unspeakable by nature and perhaps due to the very limitations of language, must at some point be recounted, through interpretable narratives. This text attempts to reconstruct the complex experience of some of the protagonists of deportation, who, however, were not immediately, due to the pain caused by that event, active participants in the construction of memory, allowing everything to remain in the intimate sphere of affection. We refer to the story of Germano Facetti, a graphic designer of international fame, deported to Gusen, who after choosing silence for years, only began to recount his experience at the end of the 1990s, at almost 70 years of age. He does so by entrusting his 'yellow box', a Kodak photo paper box, in which he had kept a notebook for all those years, with drawings of the concentration camp and some documents from the Lager. The result will be a cinematographic narrative, which will trigger a long and active participation on Facetti's part to try to leave a testimony, to provide evidence, as he himself says before disappearing or committing suicide like the others. An attempt will be made to retrace the construction of his documentary memory, trying to enter into his personal expressive form, but also to tell, through his, the story of others such as Ludovico Barbiano di Belgiojoso, his point of reference, not only artistically, and part of the Milanese architecture studio BBPR.