ClinkerMotel: a photo-essay tells us about a factory which isn’t there any longer

Clinker Motel. Ex-Italcementi - Trento 2005-2013 is a series of photos taken by Pierluigi Cattani inside the former Italcementi of Trento, between 2005 and 2013.

The exhibition is divided into three sections, just as three are the phases of the last few years of existence of this factory, from its final closure to its demolition.

Clinker 2005 – 2006. This section tells about the factory as a place where there’s no work any longer, but where a lot of tangible marks bear witness to the workers’ presence. It’s as if the factory could be operating again at any moment; it seems as if it was dismessed just the other day. Yet, some details reveal the inescapable end of any productive activity. Shut down by the end of the ’70s, the factory’s three-metre tall metal tube is still there, completely intact: it is the rotary kiln designed to produce clinker, that is the primary element of the cement.

Motel 2010 shows how the former Italcementi became home for the homeless. Located right outside the city centre, and being isolated at the same time, this factory is portrayed with people living in it, where a kind of home tidiness is being reconstructed. You can detect a kitchen amid tableware being put in order in piles, or a bedroom, and also everyday stuff belonging to someone who found a shelter in these derelict spaces. For instance, 27-year-old Pakistani Jamil has lived in Italcementi for two years. He has invited us and a wider public to see his kitchen through camera’s objective lens. Standing in an empty space, he shows us all the site where a container used to host his bedroom and its fittings, which were finally destroyed in May 2010.

The last section, 2013, represents the demolition of the kiln. This urban area changes once again and the final decision to demolish the factory implies a new radical change. The photos document this gradual demolition; seen from the cable car leading to Sardagna, the void is striking there, on the large open space where the factory used to be. Two chimneys are left, to bear witness to the past.

In this way, Clinker Motel is an opportunity to meditate on the fate of so many big manufacturing areas characterizing our towns and cities; once they were important working places, but after being abandoned, such particular areas are always more frequently problematic.

Clinker Motel photo-essaycan be seen in Trento at the S.A.S.S. archaeological site in piazza Cesare Battisti (from Tuesday to Sunday: 9.00-13.00; 14.00-17.30. Closed on Monday); it is coordinated by the Department for Cultural Heritage of the Autonomous Province of Trento and it’s supported by the Trentino history museum Foundation.