Diario di una fenice irrequieta
Francesca Berardi
This work was made possible thanks to the Lucia Prize, a collaboration between Radio Papesse, Lucia Festival and the Fondazione Archivio Diaristico Nazionale di Pieve Santo Stefano.
Diario di una fenice irrequieta[Diary of a restless phoenix] is an audio appendix to the diary Inchiostro, storia di un’adolescente oltre l’anoressia that Caterina Minni wrote when she was 14 years old. It is an attempt to talk about anorexia through some of the words Caterina wrote and that Francesca Berardi underlined, because that diary could have been hers as well.
The glossary is built around an intimate dialogue between two women of different generations. Caterina is 21, Francesca is 37, and they both know that rather than having gone beyond anorexia, they have survived its harshest manifestations. They met last spring in Verona, where Caterina lives and studies. For four consecutive afternoons, they met on a park bench. Their dialogue touches on issues concerning the body in its rawest dimension, but also the emotions and sensations that run through it, the cold, the fear, the sense of disgust, the need to escape… until the return home and the discovery of desire.