Installment I: L'albero Falcone

The first installation I'm working on is a project 

L'Albero de Falcone' on Via Norarbartolo in Palermo

on L'albero de Falcone - The Falcone Tree, a spontaneous shrine created immediately after anti-mafia prosecutor Giovanni Falcone's assassination on May 23, 1992. The death of Falcone brought Sicily to its knees. The Italians remember Falcone's murder the way Americans remember where they were when JFK was killed.Sicilian culture is not synonymous with mafiosita ('mafia-ness') and Sicilian activists long fighting against the grip of mafia violence were joined by many who had long been silent. Falcone and his comrades shattered the myth of rustic chivalry- that Sicilians are suspicious of outsiders and like to settle disputes on their own terms -  that there is no mafia. John Dickie writes of the pervasive power of rustic chivalry and its press against Italian consciousness in his book, Cosa Nostra. In his opening, he links Pietro Mascagni's opera, Cavalleria rusticana (rustic chivalry), a simple tale, set in Sicily, of jealousy, betrayal, honor and vengeance to a myth that was just about "akin to the official ideology of the Sicilian mafia for nearly a century and a half" (xiv). Dickie reminds his readers that everyone knows a little of the music from Cavalleria & everyone associates the music with Sicily and the mafia.  Remember the slow-motion title sequence in Scorsese's Raging Bull? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXdvq1JZfWA Or Coppola's The Godfather III's climactic scene in the Teatro Massimo?  (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXdvq1JZfWA

And, everyone, especially Americans, think of honor and perverse forms of family loyalty when they think of the mafia. Falcone, who grew up with mafiosi, assembled mafia history, showing that indeed it does exists. For this, he was among their greatest enemies.   

The thick, heavy branches of this Magnolia tree impose on the entrance to the apartment where Falcone and his wife, Judge Francesca Morvillo lived and  where Morvillo's mother continues to live(that is another story). This shrine stands in contrast to the national monuments erected in memory of Falcone, Morvillo and their body-guards (see below). As you drive to Palermo from the Falcone and Borsellino airport along the stretch of highway where the bomb was detonated that killed Falcone, Morvillo and their escorts, you will find, standing on a hillside, the people's monument that states: "No More Mafia!" (see photo above).     

The National Monument in honor of Falcone, Morvillo and their escorts.