ARIA
2012-2023


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Aria, man and the will to reach for the sky as a metaphor for an irrepressible instinct.

A mythological character, Icarus, had dared to challenge the gods by building wax wings that melted miserably near the sun. A yearning that never died down, with so many projects conceived by brilliant minds that remained on paper until 19 September 1783, the day when the first aerostatic balloon hovered over Versailles.
“Aria is musical air, a detachment from the ground - explains Velasco Vitali - The hot air balloon is the first flight project, still existing and practiced. A metaphor of freedom and an invitation to look at the world from above. The hot air balloon is the simplest flying machine ever built by man. Well-sewn fabrics, a basket, hot air and weights to drop on your way, only in this way can an adventure begin. It is also a symbolic representation of the deadlift and is connected to an innate desire to fly, which is the only true action capable of contradicting our natural dimension of anchoring to the ground. Connected to the idea of the aerostatic journey is a call for a slow detachment from the earth towards freedom. During the ascent, however, we will discover that our real interest is not in infinite space of the sky, but in the earth seen from another point of view. We will suddenly come to see it as a vast territory free from the boundaries we had set. The expansion of the concept of freedom becomes amplified as the distance from the ground increases. Duchamp captured the air of Paris in a glass ampoule, perhaps with the precise intention of materializing what is elusive and trying to transform the air into a work of art. as if the freest of thoughts could be anchored to the reality and delivered – wrapped - within everyone's reach. To be ready to reopen when needed to satisfy a desire for flight and freedom. Like music, an air”.
In Memorial do convento by José Saramago, Father Bartolomeu Lourenço de Gusmão, a victim of the Inquisition, wants to build an aerostat mixing science and mysticism "made of sun, shadow, closed clouds, magnets and iron plates" to achieve freedom.
Father Bartolomeu is a real character who was nicknamed "flyer" precisely because at the beginning of the eighteenth century (a few decades before the Montgolfier brothers) he managed to lift some medium-sized balloons from the ground.