Matite in Viaggio - Associazione Culturale

PREMIO ANTONIO COCCO 2023

Premio Internazionale alla memoria di Antonio Cocco

The "Antonio Cocco" prize is awarded to a travel notebook.
We want to celebrate with the Prize the memory of Antonio Cocco, a boy who loved life, and adventures, a boy very curious and very good in drawing; he unfortunately overwhelmed in the French Foreign Legion and died in 1954 at the age of 20 in the "Isabelle redoubt” during the final battle of Dien-Bien-Phu in Viet Nam.
By "travel notebook" we mean a notebook that narrates the journey as you live it. Thoughts, emotions, memories, desires, meetings, amazements, enchantments.
With drawings and words, take form inner reflections and the desire to communicate to the others your own experiences that are lived day by day during the journey.
The notebook can become a "unicum", an unrepeatable self concluded document.
Drawings and words dialogue and intersect each other. Sometimes the drawing prevails, in other moments the words take over. In most cases drawings and words are by one person; in other situations there may be two or more people talking together in a single notebook through drawings and words.
The reasons for the trip, near or far, and the situations are elements that can build a weft and a warp of a new, unexpected, unpredictable fabric.
The notebook, for the reasons listed above, will be evaluated by the Commission with the following criteria:

• 1) quality of the drawings
• 2) quality of writing
• 3) personal motivations for the trip
• 4) ability in communicating emotions and thoughts with drawing and words.

PIn the year 2023, participants are asked to submit to the competition a notebook (only one) which, each author thinks could correspond to the criteria listed above. The competition is international.
People who have reached the age of 18 (December 2022) can participate in the competition.

To participate in the competition, are requested the following documents:

• - 3 copies of a single travel notebook, with dimensions and paper quality, similar to the original: self-published or self-packaged, not published by a publishing house.
• - Application form and acquittance form signed, with residence address and email address, telephone number (see attachment).
• - A photo of the author.
• - Very short autobiography and description of the trip.

The size of the notebooks must not exceed A4 format: 21x29.7 cm.
Since, in the evaluation of a notebook, the texts accompanying the drawings, have the value of direct testimony, their typed transcription in the original language is required separately.
All the material indicated above must be sent to the Matite in Viaggio Association by registered mail with return receipt, to the following address:

ANTONIO COCCO AWARD
at PRESIDIO Centro Culturale Candiani, piazzale Candiani n.7
30174 Venice Mestre

No later than 30th June 2023. (the date shown on the return receipt will be valid).
Materials sent after this date will not be considered.

It is specified that the notebook sent for the ANTONIO COCCO 2023 special award cannot be the one already sent in 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 or 2022 editions of the Prize, and can not be used for the application in the exhibition Matite in Viaggio 2022.
Participation in this exhibition is however possible, by sending other materials in the way defined for it on the specific announcement. The two applications must be sent eparately.
The winner of the Antonio Cocco Award, will receive a prize of 500.00 euros.
The Commission will examine the notebooks by 15 September 2023. The outcome of the competition will be communicated via email by 30 September, to the winner of the Prize, and to all the competitors.
The winner notebook, will be exhibited at the Matite in Viaggio 2023 Exhibition.
All the drawings, if in detachable papers, or copies of drawings made at the expense of the organization, will be exposed in an open showcase. the remaining notebooks and copies of their drawings may also be exhibited at a special section of the Matite in Viaggio 2023 Exhibition.
One of the 3 copies of all the sent notebooks, will be archived at the National Diary Archive Foundation Onlus: piazza A. Fanfani 14 - 562036 Pieve Santo Stefano (AR).
A copy will be sent to Gérard Gaillard general secretary of the French association of Clermont Ferrand "Il Faut Aller Voir".
One copy will remain the property of Matite in Viaggio in order to establish an archive for consultation. The prize to the winner will be delivered directly to him/her, on Saturday October 21, at 4 pm during the Award ceremony of the 13th edition of Matite in Viaggio 2023. If the winner cannot be present on the day of the inauguration to personally collect the prize, he must communicate it, by email and in adequate advance, to the Secretariat of the Commission at the address indicated below, also indicating the names of the persons delegated to collect the prize.
Otherwise the prize will not be awarded.

The Commission's judgment is unquestionable. The Commission is composed by:

• - Natalia Cangi: organizational director of the National Diary Archive Foundation - Pieve Santo Stefano (AR)
• - Monica Pregnolato: art history expert
• - Gérard Gaillard: general secretary of the cultural association Il Faut Aller Voir -Clermont Ferrand (F)
• - Monica Fumagalli Iliprandi: Iliprandi studio - Milan
• - Giovanni Cocco: foundator member of the Matite in Viaggio Cultural Association - Mogliano V.to (TV)

This year, the commission, composed of Arianna Favaretto Cortese, Marta Cocco and Alberto Cocco, proposed the theme for the award: "MY BELOVED LAND".
This prize of Euro 200.00 will be awarded by the commission to the chosen author who will expand on the above theme with a drawing and a short written piece.
The recommendation prize is curated by Anna Maria Spiazzi and Giovanni Cocco and will be given to the winner on Saturday 21 October at 4 p.m. during the award ceremony of the 13th edition of the Matite in Viaggio exhibition.

MY BELOVED LAND

This year's theme is an invitation to reflect, through drawing, on the geography of the heart: the land where we were born, where our roots are or where we grew up. The land where we sowed love or where we saw it bloom. But Earth, my beloved, is also the planet that hosts us and that we have been destroying, desertifying and deforesting in recent decades. The only place where we know there is life as we know it, is showing us that we are no longer welcome guests and nature, little by little, is taking back space. Earth, my beloved is a song of colours to the places where our hearts beat faster and a music of lines for a planet that, now more than ever, needs the hearts of all to continue to give life.
Arianna Favaretto-Cortese, Marta Cocco, Alberto Cocco

Summer 1981 - We come to live at the Turbine Mill in June.
We live well in the country, escaping from the city of Mestre.
At dusk, among the rows of poplars, fireflies move solitarily, then with darkness in increasingly dense groups. Frogs croak in the night. At dawn, swallows and birds in their nests chirp in the branches and wake us up early in the morning.
Over the decades the swallows have not come; the frogs have disappeared; the fireflies now move in a few, very few, here and there.
My beloved land, you have become poor and we long for the frogs, the swallows, the fireflies.
Anna Maria Spiazzi

Since 1981, Anna Maria and I have lived here, in Mogliano Veneto in Via Marignana inside an old mill that stopped operating with the 1966 river flood. When we arrived, our daughter Marta was there too. The Dese river flows through our mill. This river once ran the wheel to grind the grain and drive the sawmill machinery. This was on an annex building on the south side while the grain was stored on the two upper floors of the main building. On the ground floor is the deck where there were the millstones to grind the grains that fell from some channels in the ceiling. Where the millstones were there is now the kitchen. The millstones are in the entrance porch and outside in the courtyard. Outside there are two adjoining areas of about one hectare each enclosed by the 'spillway' of the Dese river, which receives water from the river itself and prevents it from swelling too much.
Anna Maria and I have travelled a lot around the world, also because we feel 'part of the world', and I hope we will continue to do so for a while yet; however, today more than ever we feel that “ the beloved land”, for us, are the two fields where we periodically plant and cut down poplars. Many magpies nest among the foliage of these poplars, and the rustling of the foliage is a call for seagulls, crows and sparrows. The rustling in the wind of this foliage has become a 'sound in the air' which, together with the sound of the water flowing beneath the house, we can no longer give up.
Giovanni Cocco

To download the form, click on the link below.