Cagliari

Life in the city is also made possible by daily practices of keeping each other safe and well. This experience of care, helping children travel around the city, reminds us how cities are also hostile places for some, as Alessia’s tale shows.

This experience of care as part of urban – and human – life is also portrayed by Serena, who contrasts an iconic place in the city to the simple act of reaching out. Cities are sites of vulnerability and privilege, woven together.

Likewise, care can be expressed in the attention given to observing others, and visually narrating their lives. Fabio’s visually stunning portrayal of home and belonging brings to mind these lives lived in the margins, inhabitants making space and place in precarious surroundings.

Safety and security in place is something that is lived and experienced differently, rooted in our own bodies and positions. Emilia’s sensitive portrayal of safety reminds us that cities are constantly tamed, and bodily autonomy cannot be taken for granted. Places are imbued with real and imagined dangers, experienced differently. There is nothing universal about the experience of cities.

Vulnerability is experienced differently. Narrating the vulnerability of others and experiencing empathy in visually representing it requires care. Representing ourselves telling the tale is one step in making this exchange meaningful, showing how stories are shared, not stolen.

Such attention to detail and care can also be found in the simple witnessing, and narrating, of small episodes, as Elisa reminds us. Ambulances and caring bystanders as also part of the caring fabric of the city. Likewise, if cars can permit movement and exploration, they can also bring danger and threats to bodily integrity.

An attention to care and vulnerability can also be expressed at different scales, from the body to the physical integrity of the earth itself, and each of its human and non-human inhabitants, as Alice reminds us.

But care can also be more mundane, expressed in the simple need to clothe and protect our own bodies. Shopping is thus both frivolous, pleasurable, but also deeply meaningful. Without well-fitting clothes, our bodies are naked, bare, and vulnerable. Camilla’s joy-filled shared excursion can also remind us of that.

Likewise, Maddalena’s tale of the Mensa – the cafeteria – reminds us that bodies not only need clothing but also feeding. Food is central to place in many ways, and eating alone or with others is also a way of making meaning in place. Eating together is also one way of feeling at home in the city.