The two fortified farms, Torre Coccaro and Torre Maizza, were built in the sixteenth century to protect themselves from attacks by the Saracens. Those same defensive constructions are today luxurious five-star lodgings and residences for artists. Roberto Paci Dalò, who arrived in 2011, chosed to enhance the only part that has remained unchanged since the restoration: the dovecotes. Located on their roofs, the dovecotes were once used to collect the doves used to exchange information between the two respective fortresses. Roberto Paci Dalò chooses to intervene on the dovecotes because they are “hidden from the eyes of most”. Moreover, letting himself be carried away by the strong suggestion aroused by these singular spaces has transformed them into places of contemplation that welcome visitors with light areas of light (filtered by the openings created by the artist) and with the intoxicating scent of essences collected in the surrounding fields. This is how the installation The Color of the Pomegranate was created in Torre Coccaro and in Torre Maizza, not by chance, the one called The Conference of the Birds.

The collaboration of local craftsmen is fundamental for the realization of both works. Through the opening of the ceiling of the dovecotes, gaps are created to see the sky. On the walls, the opening of slits of different shapes is able to isolate various portions of the landscape. The “shelves”, which once housed pigeons trained to transport dispatches, are transformed into “classifiers” containing precious materials such as oil, textiles and flora. The cultivations surrounding the tower provide the materials themselves, in particular the pomegranate.

The floor is made up of a “carpet” made of specially designed tiles in which the main colour reference is purple to evoke the Armenian tradition. A seat has been created to allow travellers to stop.

For the vernissage of the double installation in Torre Coccaro and Torre Maizza, the architectural audio-video performance Ordan karmir is presented for the first time and especially created for Torre Coccaro. Ordan karmir, “purple red”, was the essential colour, characteristic of Armenian carpets and precious fabrics, praised with accents of amazement by Arab historians and by Marco Polo, refined ornaments of the courts of the caliphs in the domains of the Half Moon and the Caesars on the banks of the Golden Horn. The entire Masseria Torre Coccaro becomes a three-dimensional projection surface of the work, transforming the entire building – thanks to a specially created mapping – into a transfigured place where, among the video materials, there are shots taken by the author during his residence together with abstract images. There is also the irruption of the animal world thanks to high-definition shots taken at the ZooSafari in Fasano.

Some animals become the protagonists (on a scale of 1:1) of the performance, creating an extraordinary place, but paradoxically built with images of everyday life and the place itself.

The music is an encounter between new electronics, pulsations, loops, the sampled voice of Boghos Levon Zekiyan who interprets fragments of Armenian poetry and archaic sounds (thanks to the use of clarinet) that directly evoke the tradition and performing practice of the Armenian tradition. Music linked to trance, prayer, ecstatic states. A sound that, thanks to the use of the lowest frequencies and the acoustic impact, is able to make the building itself resonate as well as to penetrate the very body of the public. It is in the encounter between the power of images and sound that this performance is born with such particular characteristics and an irreproducible form elsewhere.