Stalker

In 1972, American scientist Edward Lorenz addressed the American Association for the Advancement of Science with a paper entitled 'Predictability. Does the Flap of a Butterfly’s Wings in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas?', thereby taking the first step in what became popularly known as the 'butterfly effect' and more formally as 'chaos theory'.

In 1979, film director Andrej Tarkovsky released Stalker, a movie which tells the story of a writer and a scientist who decide to enter the Zone, an environment that seems normal, but is in fact quite different from reality. In the Zone, there is a room where men's most intimate and secret desires come true. This is where the two men want to go and so they hire a 'Stalker', a guide who knows the Zone inside out and can help them reach their destination safely. The Stalker will guide them through an increasingly complicated and unpredictable set of rules. The journey will become an interior journey that will take the men into unknown territory, forcing them to confront their personalities and, above all, their feelings and ideas about themselves and life.

In 1995, a new kind of Stalker made its appearance in Rome. Born out of the idea of creating an urban art laboratory, this Stalker consisted of a group of people with different backgrounds and interests ranging from art and architecture to cinema, philosophy and astrophysics. They started organizing seminars, workshops and events focusing on social and urban issues. Their aim was to explore undefined urban territories.