A $1 million project financed by the autonomous region of the Trentino-Alto Adige during the summer of 2008, the Memory Tunnels are a collaborative project between the Stanford Humanities Lab, Filmwork (Trento), and Studio Terragni (Como and New York), developed with the support of the Fondazione Museo Storico di Trento. Thus far, they have involved a work of industrial archeology--the recovery and repurposing of two abandoned superhighway tunnels passing under the Doss Trento at the entrance to the region's capital--and the creation of a 6700 square meter opening exhibition, entitled I Trentini e la Grande Guerra.

Inaugurated to national acclaim on August 19, 2008, the tunnels project was launched with what is at once an exhibition on the history and commemoration of World War One, and an experiment with new approaches to the experience of the past. To traverse them is to set out on a march among long-buried individuals, documents that have been brought back to life, and objects that have survived the ninety years that separate the present from the conclusion of the war. The march takes place through parallel tunnels now experienced by pedestrians much as they were formerly by automobiles.  One is black (South to North) and one is white (North to South).

The dark tunnel contains a multimedia phantasmagoria or parade of ghosts. Divided into five chapters according to the years of the Great war (1914-1918), it weaves together the voices and images of ordinary people into a choral account of the war’s unfolding. The second tunnel is built around three separate sections. The first section contains a sequence of eight small structures, modeled after the temporary buildings that abounded in the wartime refugee camps known as “cities of wood,” each of which documents a key moment in the recollection of the war from 1921 through the 1990s: the building of monuments, the foundation of museums, the development of archives, the creation of new rituals of rembrance. The second section consists in a series of pedestals each of which displays objects, artworks, and material remains that document how the war was lived by common citizens. The third section is divided between temporary exhibition and activity spaces, and a cluster of pedogogical structures: a classroom, a digital laboratory, and a workshop. Extensive documentation of the project is available at http://www.filmwork.it/gallerie/video.html.

An expanded virtual-world edition of the Tunnels is available in Second Life and can be visited either at the digital laboratory on site or via teleport to Gallerie della Memoria (SLURL) from home. It recapitulates the experience of the exhibition, enhancing it by means of various archives: of historical materials, of documentary films, of historical photographs.

Two additional exhibitions are in development for 2009.