11/14/2024
Franco Perazza, former Director of the Mental Health Department in Gorizia, emphasises that Basaglia Park is our natural and cultural heritage.
"Basaglia Park holds tremendous environmental, architectural, historical, and symbolic significance. Thanks to the European Capital of Culture initiative, the long-awaited project to develop the park as a cross-border cultural space is now set to begin," says Franco Perazza, a key figure in the Basaglia project.
Perazza, former Director of the Mental Health Department in Gorizia, is now Secretary of the Gorizia Democratic Party and an active member of the EGTC GO General Assembly, where he advocates for cross-border collaboration. Though primarily a psychologist, Perazza is also engaged in political and academic fields.
The Basaglia project, honouring the centenary of Franco Basaglia, the pioneering advocate for mental health reform, launched last week in Trieste with Lettura ad personam, an event featuring readings from letters written by former psychiatric hospital patients in Trieste and Gorizia. A similar event is planned in Slovenia next year. This month, Ljubljana will host further events, including a performance by the Trieste-based Academy of Madness, a screening of Erika Rossi's documentary, and a debate with Perazza, Professors Roberto Mezzina and Vito Flaker. In 2025, we will travel around Slovenia with the Blue Horse, open a cinema in the Basaglia Park in Gorizia and, of course, write letters.
Perazza emphasises that Basaglia Park is our natural and cultural heritage. Like all parks that have been the site of psychiatric hospitals, it should have experienced a renaissance after the turn of the century and the deconstruction of the 1970s, but this did not occur. The park is therefore still waiting to take on a renewed identity that takes into account the fall of the border between Slovenia and Italy, and which will serve new purposes while preserving its important memorial role. Its location on the former border of painful memory gives the park an exceptional strategic value, while at the same time it plays an important economic and socially beneficial role by bringing together people on both sides of the border.
Photo credits: (C) Le TALEE / Agherose 2024 (ph. Claudio Cescutti)
