A personal view of the main feast celebrated in Reggio (Calabria, Italy), best known as "Festa della Madonna della Consolazione" (Feast of Our Lady of Consolation).
This is a work based on the holy procession (which takes place on the second Saturday of September each year) that is deliberately stripped of religious component that characterizes the event, to focus on less known and more interesting aspects of the event, a folkloristic and cultural perspective that sounds like a cross-section of the society.
Reggio feast is literally a mirror of its people that cannot be changed by the modern globalized society. For better or for worse, they seem to prefer only what they have.
The italian word Consolazione comes from the Latin "Consolatio" which means precisely consolation, but also comfort, compassion. However I find amazing the extraordinary connection between the word Consolation with the way of of life of this people who live in Reggio.
Thousand of years of history made Reggio a stronghold of Greek culture in Italy. This has resulted, unlike other places in southern Italy, a closed and impervious attitude to new things. People here do not seem to have particular needs, they seem to be fine with what they have. Beacuse of natural disasters and invasions, Reggio needed to recover their identity many times, and every time this place almost never has expressed openness to the outside world. Someone consider this as a social illness, a common feeling that afflicts people hostile to modernity, but Reggio people love today to consolate theirself with patron's feast almost did not need anything but that week of September each year.
Whether it's a religious factor or not, they love their "Mother of Consolation" that takes care of them. It's a total participation of the people, regardless of being believers, there's no person in Reggio that never went to see the procession, even if only for a few times in his life.
So in this bodies stretched towards the Vara I see the real soul of the feast, looking at the strong expressions of emotion and desire for social redemption I see the Consolation of Reggio.
This is a work based on the holy procession (which takes place on the second Saturday of September each year) that is deliberately stripped of religious component that characterizes the event, to focus on less known and more interesting aspects of the event, a folkloristic and cultural perspective that sounds like a cross-section of the society.
Reggio feast is literally a mirror of its people that cannot be changed by the modern globalized society. For better or for worse, they seem to prefer only what they have.
The italian word Consolazione comes from the Latin "Consolatio" which means precisely consolation, but also comfort, compassion. However I find amazing the extraordinary connection between the word Consolation with the way of of life of this people who live in Reggio.
Thousand of years of history made Reggio a stronghold of Greek culture in Italy. This has resulted, unlike other places in southern Italy, a closed and impervious attitude to new things. People here do not seem to have particular needs, they seem to be fine with what they have. Beacuse of natural disasters and invasions, Reggio needed to recover their identity many times, and every time this place almost never has expressed openness to the outside world. Someone consider this as a social illness, a common feeling that afflicts people hostile to modernity, but Reggio people love today to consolate theirself with patron's feast almost did not need anything but that week of September each year.
Whether it's a religious factor or not, they love their "Mother of Consolation" that takes care of them. It's a total participation of the people, regardless of being believers, there's no person in Reggio that never went to see the procession, even if only for a few times in his life.
So in this bodies stretched towards the Vara I see the real soul of the feast, looking at the strong expressions of emotion and desire for social redemption I see the Consolation of Reggio.
