Salemi

The LA Weekly reporter Karina Longworth reports on "What happened to Kim's Video collection?" the New York VHS collection transferred to Salemi in Sicily, Italy by Kim Yong.

Karina opens the article in what appears a rather negative outlook on Salemi and the city's management of Mondo Kims Video , until she digs deeper and discovers "Kim's centre" where digitization is "work in progress".

An interesting lengthy article highlighting life in Salemi and Italianisms and interesting reading for those interested in Salemi.

The word “polemicist” was invented for people like Vittorio Sgarbi, the conservative art critic and, until last February, mayor of Salemi, Sicily. A typically polarizing Sgarbism came during the winter holidays when he announced—echoes of “bunga bunga”—that his vice mayor should be a young woman with no political strings attached.

Ever the curator, Sgarbi opened a Mafia museum in the heart of Salemi’s historic centre in 2010. More Halloween spook-house than cultural institution, the attraction that bore a blood-splattered logo was made adults-only after the “slaughterhouse cabin” display reportedly sickened two visitors.

To his credit, the mayor refused a judge’s order to remove a newspaper blowup from the museum’s wall depicting the arrest of Salemi natives Ignazio and Nino Salvo. Nino’s widow had made the initial request, adding that her husband, though indicted, had died days before his trial. (The Salvo cousins, entombed in the town cemetery, were decidedly mafiosi by investigation.)