Bandiera K_2006_site-specific installation (Anfiteatro del Porto Mediceo) , Livorno's old harbour_paper 12 x 4200 cm. Text from "Le Livornine" 1591- 1593.

Bandiera K (flag k) means in the international maritimal signal flags code "i wish to communicate with you".

Between 1591 and 1593 the "Laws Livornine" or "Livornina Constitution" were emanated by Ferdinando I in the Granducato di Toscana. These laws previewed the concession of immunity, privilege and exemptions to the merchants, of whichever origin, but not only. The laws guaranteed also and above all freedom of cult and religious and political profession. Anyone had been thought guilty of whichever crime (with some exceptions, between which the murder and false currency) it had guaranteed freedom of access to Earth of Livorno.

"...To all you, of any nation, Levantini, Ponentini, Spanish, Portugueses, Greeks, Germans, Italians, Hebrew, Turks, Moors, Armenians, Persians and others [...] we grant [...] real, free and amplissimo salvacondotto and free faculty and licence that you can come, to be, to trade, to pass and to live with the families and, without to leave, to return and to negotiate in the city of Pisa and earth of Livorno..."

These laws will give to Livorno, in the time, the characteristics of a cosmopolitan, tolerant, multiracial and multireligious city.

Leonora Bisagno, invited to work in the area of Livorno's old harbour, has decided to evoke the amazing well advanced message brought by the Livornine laws, and to reconsider it nowadays in a time of cultural and social turmoil. The message, contextualized in the urban frame, is turned to the sea, from where most of the foreigners were coming, as a still present invitation to a multi-cultural world.