Tiburzi

narrated and sung by witnesses on video

Theupper floor documents how, well over 100 years after his death, tales about Tiburzi are still recounted and shared in the places he used to visit and where his “myth” caught on. Through the use of multimedia stations, 70 videos, selected from longer interviews, describe deeds, love affairs, adventures, pranks and heinous murders carried out by Tiburzi and his crew. The set up for this floor is the product of extensive field research conducted over the course of many months by a small crew whose goal was to go through the provinces of Viterbo and Grosseto in search of stories (true? false? plausible? Actually narrated, which is enough to inhabit people’s imagination) with Tiburzi as their protagonist. Scattered above, hanging from the ceiling, fantastical beings, often monstrous.

Those were the protagonists of local fables.

That suggests the idea that brigands weren’t just real people, but also figures that were (and often still are) given a consistency typical of fictional characters and main characters of popular oral stories (the witch, the wild man, the coalman).

Three particularly evocative stories, which highlight the three faces of the brigand Tiburzi (the assassin, the rescuer of the poor and the prankster) have been staged in three different rooms, like little theaters full of objects and stories.

The itinerary ends with an ethnographic installation , Tiburzi revived, that is both a homage to the birth of cinema (which coincides approximately with the death of the King of Lamone) and a way to imply that Tiburzi is still alive (at least in the stories and imaginations of the people of the maremma).