The point of view is internal to the story; I approached the movement because I wanted to participate in person. Documenting and telling have become ways to take a stand and actively contribute. Rise up! is an exhortation to raise our head, starting from Sicily. It’s a warning to reject the logic of power and war, imposed by a financial oligarchy that decides the fate of humanity, sowing death and destruction. On 9 August 2013, thousands of us have flooded the US military base at Niscemi, to demonstrate that no military structure is inviolable. For the strong emotional and symbolic value of this action, I chose the picture of the occupation of the military base as the beginning of the story. I like to imagine that a joyous humanity can create passages beyond the walls erected by power, to recover their future. 

 The book, on the formal and narrative plan is based on several levels of reading. The unconventional structure, the direction of flip through, the use of different techniques and materials, are an invitation to look at things and analyse them from multiple points of view. The narrative sequence, does not follow a chronological order, but a conceptual and emotional journey. The choice of black and white photo is linked to the desire to give uniformity to the story and to the different series of shots made from 2013 to 2016, while the use of colour in some isolated cases, aims to highlight the landscape or emotional aspects. The juxtaposition of pictures in diptychs above / below, creates other meanings for similarities or contrasts, visual and conceptual, for example, the dichotomies full / empty, noise/silence, immobility / movement. I wanted to include the original materials, found in the midst of notebooks, such as leaflets, because in them I see the trace of some of the movement phases and daily dimension of the fight. I had fun doing a stamped paper collage, to tell the legal battles distorted and judicial repression triggered against activists in order to intimidate and break the movement, emphasizing the absurdity and ridicule. In the implementation phases I found myself imagining from nothing something new, a real object, capable of restoring a story, to materialize ideas. I see in this process a nice metaphor for the fact that the first step in the creation of anything, is lust, think of it, build it, whether it’s a book, or a change of the future, it makes little difference; the keys are critical thinking and direct action. In the final analysis ‘Rise up!’ it is an open book, as it is still this matter, there are still many blank pages to write, and we will continue to do so until the base will not be dismantled.