Tuff, Trulli, Tarantella.

Hardly a region of Italy has with its dusty image to struggle as the Salento peninsula. They start here at the coolest parties, dumbfound makers engaged with interactive art for everyone. An ode to the young and modern Lecce.

 

Lecce is the sun-rich, fragrant queen of the Baroque, a city that lascivious plays with her curves and a dress with lavish ornaments bears. But the lady who embraces the sometimes threatens to smother: "O God, how tired I am the eternal folk have," groans Mimmo, trendy DJ with the right glasses and a master's degree in philosophy in the luggage. "Tarantella and the trulli - the only thing the people of Apulia mind."

Indeed, the region has far more to offer than the famous Trulli, round houses with pointed roofs, and traditional dances - and the 34-year-old cultural workers hopes that the world is finally responsible. Especially, the dark-haired giant with the child's face in a top-up location - a villa in the middle of a giant olive grove, surrounded by lemon trees and a grotesquely large cactus figs.

While a man with a stunning resemblance to Jim Belushi Gassenhauer of the eighties under the People's will, is booming in the next room a contemporary electric sound. Already in the afternoon hundreds of fans crowd in a small space together, drinking bad wine cellar from Mamas and dance as Pogo omitted that one believes in a time machine to be advised. "Great, how are all rauslassen steam and everything," says bookseller Walther, who is also now and then turns to the controls. In times of crisis and total political apathy is the best way, sometimes off.

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Mimmo do not want to leave the hook plate and developed with friends from the club "world of Kappa" the concept for a culture magazine. Under the name "Krill" is to appear three times a year - the avant-garde in Lecce has a penchant for the unusual in Italian "K" with its crunching the consonant combinations.

Antiakademisch and easy to understand it in the booklet to "points of contact between external and subjective fantasy world" go. "Knowledge is for everyone, it must not be elitist," says Mimmo, in schools of philosophical and cultural concepts are discussed. "We see ourselves as a translator."

"Young Ideas for a better Apulia"

Friends Mimmos Maurizio and Michele, the concrete thing: They want to bring art and accessible for all. Away from the conventional exhibition in the center of Lecce, the two in an effort to "manufacture Knos" established a laboratory in the wild with all the ingredients of a modern culture cocktails will be juggled.

30 years is working metal workers and electrical engineer at the massive workbenches, the 4000 square-meter hall in the Via Vecchia Frigole. Then the training center was closed and was abandoned ten years. "When we first came, the water dripped from the ceiling and the whole room was filled with rusty machines that have not wanted to have," recalls the photographer and recycling fan Maurizio Butazzo.

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They have always had him isolated, deserted places fascinated, stood fast for him and his partner Michele Bee said: "The place is fantastic, let us revive him!" The two designed a concept for a multimedia event center and presented it to the province of Lecce. And lo and behold: It allowed them to use the premises, provided that they themselves put it back into standard Bee Butazzo and sold all the machines and made with a starting capital of several thousand euros to the work.

For months, was planned, rehabilitated, renovated and fantasises. Numerous projects and clubs emerged, until in November 2007 "Knos" was born: The giant complex, presented in a new guise - with cinema, recording studio, editing rooms, a media library, a children's library, exhibition spaces, workshops, rehearsal rooms for music, theater and dance - and, of course, a chic bar, even an in-house radio station went on air.

"We want not just art exhibit, we want to produce here on the spot," says Bee, a small, athletic man with clear ideas and stunning Hollywood smile. The concept "Knos" sit on experiments, research and education, "it could be almost a kind of Bauhaus new name," he says smiling. Anyway, it was important that people from the neighborhood to the creative processes teilhätten.

With the offer for children in the first year was significant: There were courses in creative writing and street art, had a chilling drama with the name "Calixte Hountondji Kokou" African puppets dance. In the "smallest circus in the world" could the kids acrobatics and magic tricks to learn, and true to the motto "Even scientists were times children" in laboratory experiments.

The cultural program was filled with nano-tech design, vintage digital art, architecture, evenings and short presentations. Work courses in the body ( "What comes after the exhaustion?") Competing with projects such as citizens' ideas for a boy Apulia better. "

German, French, Japanese and Latin American artists represented - and also the meta-level was not too short: "What do I to the culture?" asked the makers of the OST (Open Space Technology), one in the eighties in the USA by Harrison Owen developed technology in the public discourse.

Unemployment and emigration: "We'll stay here"

Currently, the entire area of the factory from the ground up restored - an expensive venture, to be part of the "Film Commission" of the province of Puglia and Lecce is supported. "A General sponsor would be great," says Michele, but in southern Italy is not so easy to find. "Yet we are urgently looking for economic independence, in order not to get political."

Puglia has always been an economically weak region. Unemployment is rising, and increasingly well-educated young people are choosing to emigrate. Solo from 1995 to 2004 left more than 120,000 graduates their homeland, not a few in just four million inhabitants throughout the region.

All the more worthy of respect the commitment of the "Knos collective" because all the volunteer work here and put a lot of time and energy into her job. PR woman Gemma has just completed her MA in Literatures made, Michele is his main philosophy lecturer at the University of Lecce.

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Of course, all in northern Italy can stay where they studied or worked there. "Even though we are in Milan, Bologna and Turin had a better chance - we will try anyway, here something to move and build," says Michele. "With the mentality that prevails with us, there are sometimes severe storms, but then again grow flowers," says Maurizio and added a wink: "With thorns."