Authors:Paolo Furia, Serena Massimo, Rita Messori, Federico Vercellone Abstract: This issue of Itinera aims to address the connections between architecture and the performing arts in its various aspects and from multiple points of view. The growing emphasis on the performative character of artistic practices, namely, their ability to involve spectators directly and pervasively (Dixon 2007), imbues the relationship between architecture, the performing arts, and the spectator’s experience. The sharing of the scenic space by spectators and performers is essential for the co-production of a common energy which operates as a “transforming force” and thereby opens up the shared experience of discovering oneself and the other as a union of the body and the mind (Fischer-Lichte 2004). PubDate: 2023-08-08 DOI: 10.54103/2039-9251/20783
Authors:Lorenzo Stefano Iannizzotto Abstract: Shadow, a physical phenomenon that we experience every day and is intuitively easy to understand, does not seem to hide great mysteries. However, through the study of texts and works of Western figurative art, a different reality linked to its use can be observed. In fact, the presence of shadow in Western art and representation is profoundly discontinuous and non-linear, and it does not become more frequent with a greater mastery of representation techniques. There are authors who were knowledgeable about and studied the phenomenon in detail but nonetheless advised against its use or avoided it altogether. For these reasons, we have decided to delve into the use and representation of shadow in figurative art and its significance, focusing specifically on two distinct artistic techniques. The objective of this article is to demonstrate: 1) that the use of shadow in figurative art and representation is not simply a coincidental fact or a mere attempt to imitate reality, but rather reveals a specific conscious intention of the artist to represent; 2) that there is a difference in the use of cast shadow, particularly regarding the presence or absence of the subject casting the shadow within the framed and represented scene. To support this thesis, an interdisciplinary analysis of two examples is conducted, one from painting and one from cinema. However, due to the vastness of the time span and examples, it was necessary to narrow down the scope of research by limiting the analysis to two examples from the 20th century in painting and cinema: Giorgio de Chirico (1888 – 1978) and Ingmar Bergman (1918 – 2007). PubDate: 2023-08-08 DOI: 10.54103/2039-9251/20785
Authors:Oriol Martinez Alegria Abstract: This paper inquires what kind of art best enhances what Jacques Rancière means by "politics". It argues that performance (theatre) and other types of artistic manifestations that include a performative component achieve what Rancière considers political equality. The paper argues on two fronts. First, it argues that artistic manifestations should not be understood as a special event, as understood in the traditional form of "ritual". Secondly, the paper takes this discussion to the question of the use of space in artistic manifestations. It is argued that performances should make a differential use of space, constituting spaces of categorical confusion, called thresholds, in order to better enhance Rancière's politics. PubDate: 2023-08-08 DOI: 10.54103/2039-9251/20786
Authors:Axel Richard Eba Abstract: Marcel Proust’s novels certify kitsch by the presence of architecture, theater and fashion. The writer produced his works using textual accumulation and hybridization. These two processes call for other arts in romantic production. From this point of view, the baroque, gothic and modern architectures are represented in the texts through buildings tested by rhetorical descriptions. Images of theater and opera scenes accentuate the flow of kitsch. Ostentatious mode creations are also notified in the intrigues. Marcel Proust is inspired by performing arts to develop an aesthetic of plurality in his novels. PubDate: 2023-08-08 DOI: 10.54103/2039-9251/20788
Authors:Pierluigi Panza Abstract: The article investigates the relationship between architecture and opera and shows that this performative practice is contributing to modifying the approach in architectural design in the direction of overcoming the traditional separation between scenography and urban planning. Two contemporary examples and a genealogical case are proposed, in order to demonstrate that the relationship between architecture and opera maintains an “inescapable” tendency to build consensus, to which is added today a loss of mythopietic potential. PubDate: 2023-08-08 DOI: 10.54103/2039-9251/20789
Authors:Matteo Paoletti Abstract: During the nineteenth century the theatre building - and in particular the opera house - imposed itself as tangible proof of the civic progress of Western societies. As Mazzini theorised the “civilization of the multitudes” through the arts, the theatre became the place where this yearning could be pursued. The momentum of Italian theatre construction was impressive during the nineteenth century, both in the major centres and in the small provincial towns. Rome, from this point of view, represents a significant exception. Until the end of the 19th century, the city, although equipped with important venues of the old regime, did not have an opera house conceived in contemporary terms. To fill the gap, for about a century and a half, designers from different backgrounds will work to equip the capital with an opera house worthy of its aspirations. Drawing on rare or little-known sources, produced among others by architects Pietro Sangiorgi, Antonio Lovatti, and Marcello Piacentini, the contribution reflects on the positioning of a large opera house in the urban layout of the capital. From the papal Rome and the liberal age, to the fascist period, the longed opera house tries to give new, contemporary meanings to a building that will come to stand out for its fascinating outdatedness. PubDate: 2023-08-08 DOI: 10.54103/2039-9251/20790
Authors:Benedetta Colasanti, Beatrice Cecchelli Abstract: The aim of this article is to propose a hypothesis of virtual restitution of the “maritime machine” of Renaissance and Baroque theatre based on the specific case of the opening performance of the Farnese Theatre in Parma (1628). The celebrations of the wedding of Odoardo Farnese and Margherita de’ Medici culminate in the opera-tournament Mercurio e Marte, written by Claudio Achillini, set to music by Claudio Monteverdi, with scenes and machinery by Giovan Battista Aleotti and Francesco Guitti. It is a composite performance, with a strong symbolic value, conceived to celebrate the patrons and in which the main elements of the Renaissance “intermezzo” (music, dance, stage wonder) merge. The first part of the article – by Benedetta Colasanti – highlights the extent of the stage machinery, the phenomenon of technological precipitation from the construction site to the stage and the role of the state technician, tracing the story from a historical perspective and the analysis and intersection of sources (treatises, notebooks, correspondence, iconography), an operation aimed at providing the necessary data for the virtual restitution process. The second part – by Beatrice Cecchelli – describes the process of virtual restitution from a more technical point of view, illustrating the role of digital technologies and their application to the history of the performing arts. PubDate: 2023-08-08 DOI: 10.54103/2039-9251/20791
Authors:Anne Boissière Abstract: At the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, through the eurhythmics of Émile Jaques-Dalcroze, a new relationship between music and movement was established, which closely involved dance and architecture. Our emphasis, here, will be put on the transformations related to space, with regard to the stage reform by Adolphe Appia, Dalcroze’s friend and collaborator. It is through Appia’s drawings, the Rhythmic Spaces, made between 1909 and 1911, that the connection between living movement and architecture will be approached. In particular, one calls in question the status of straight lines, horizontal and vertical, of which the staircases, on the drawings, are emblematic. These lines, contrasting with the curving and serpentines lines that mark the influence of the dancing movement in the paintings from that period, must be understood with respect to the Dalcrozian conception of rhythmic feeling. Aliveness, for him, which is not to be separated from the relationship to measure - itself alive -, can be acquired by varied and complex exercises of marching within the framework of rhythmic education. Through architecture arises a musical conception of space in rupture with the perspectival conception of pictural space, as the former doesn’t dissociate any more mobility and immobility, aliveness and inertia, grace and gravity. PubDate: 2023-08-08 DOI: 10.54103/2039-9251/20799
Authors:Serena Massimo Abstract: This paper aims at investigating the intertwining between dance and architecture by taking as a case study the dance of Anna Halprin (1920-2021), whose character of rupture with modern dance contributes to the questioning of dance codes and conventions that essentially informs western contemporary dance. After a presentation of Anna’s intention to strengthen dance’s function of transforming people’s lives by restoring the original link between dance and nature, we will show how this intention leverages the ritual, essentially performative dimension of dancing. After underlining, with Alberto Pérez-Gómez, the original link between architecture and ritual understood as an action of displaying – rather than imposing – a pre-existing meaning and opening up to its unfolding, we will emphasise how the outdoor dance studio built for Anna by her husband, the urban architect and landscape planner Lawrence Halprin (1916-2009), invites to take up this action. The notion of lived corporeity developed by Hermann Schmitz in his “New Phenomenology” (1965), and that of “atmospheric affordances” (Griffero 2013), will allow us to show that dancing on this studio triggers an “exploratory” attitude of unprecedented ways of moving and interacting with one’s own surroundings by virtue of the everchanging interaction between architectural, meteorological and natural elements provided by this space. Finally, the conception of “material performativity” (Dalmasso 2020) will bring out that the transformative capacity of dance derives precisely from its ability to grasp and differentially decline the performative process of mutual constitution and influence between human and non-human entities. PubDate: 2023-08-08 DOI: 10.54103/2039-9251/20801
Authors:Letizia Gioia Monda Abstract: This paper aims to draw attention to the relationship between dance and architecture. After a historical and conceptual contextualisation, it sheds light on how the term choreography evolved its meaning along the twentieth century, indicating a dispositif for building a new ecology of the participative performance experience. In these terms, choreographic architectures can be recognised when in real and metaphysic spaces, movement strategies are planned to activate processes through which human dancing engages with the surrounding environment. This phenomenon is studied by comparing William Forsythe’s theory of the “choreographic object” with some installations performed in urban environments. Finally, to provide an enlarged vision of how a choreographic strategy can cooperate in building a performative ecology to regenerate the inhabiting contexts with the acting presences of socially empowered citizens, my analysis ends with the description of Asingeline and Garden State, two emblematic works by MaMaZa, a Frankfurt-based group of artists. PubDate: 2023-08-08 DOI: 10.54103/2039-9251/20805
Authors:Luca Viglialoro Abstract: The essay develops an aesthetic of the threshold from an analysis of the artistic collaboration between Werner Ruhnau and Yves Klein for the realisation of the Musiktheater im Revier in Gelsenkirchen. The threshold is a figure of thought that stands for the artistic choice to create zones of interaction between work and spectator, in which exchanges of roles and production of meaning take place. The aesthetics of the threshold in Ruhnau manifests itself through the architectural design of playful theatrical spaces in which the theatre audience can stage new identities. In Klein, the threshold becomes a meditative space, through which the subject trains his faculties of feeling and making sense. In the “Verfransung” (Adorno) between the strategies of Ruhnau and Klein, the theatre becomes the threshold for an interaction between public space and sensibility. PubDate: 2023-08-08 DOI: 10.54103/2039-9251/20806
Authors:Ivana Randazzo Abstract: The “Porta delle farfalle” (Butterfly Gate) is a new monumental work of public art, approximately two kilometres long, that continues the “Porta della Bellezza” (Beauty Gate), which has been built and preserved for over a decade in Librino, a suburban district of the city of Catania. This project made use of an 'emotional' maieutic strategy: involving more than 15,000 people, practically no one in the community was left out. This way each citizen played a role in the change that affected both the inhabitants and the territory through a remarkable example of cooperative public art. Personally involved in the artistic and urban process, residents became part of the work, recognising themselves in symbols that range from the historical roots of the area to popular icons and images aimed at redemption and dreams. PubDate: 2023-08-08 DOI: 10.54103/2039-9251/20807
Authors:Guido Brivio Abstract: Considering the case of the recent creation of the Schneiberg Foundation in Turin, an antique Chinese artworks installation in an historical building, this paper tries to produce a philosophical interpretation of both the artworks and the installation, underlines and investigate the attempt of this project to overcome the distinction between the spectator and his object, involving the viewer in a non- dualistic experience through which he is able to produce his own performance and in that way to create an immersive experience that, like an alchemical process, transforms both his perception and the object of his perception. This text intends also to highlight how this experience is strictly and symmetrically connected to the nature, the meaning and the aim of the objects, i.e. antique imperial Chinese carpets provided of alchemical and philosophical meaning for a performative transformation of their spectator. The paper tries to create, in the end, a performative meaningful experience of a visit to that space and collection. PubDate: 2023-08-08 DOI: 10.54103/2039-9251/20809
Authors:Aurosa Alison Abstract: In this essay, I do not want to focus on performativity as such and understand it as an aesthetic expression; instead, I would like to illustrate how performativity takes on the role consequential to an aesthetic experience. Specifically, I want to highlight how aesthetic experience takes place in the spatial contexts of the city. In this regard, I want to define the aesthetic-practical-sensory relationship of the soma, understood as a paradigm of a living body, that is, a body that moves and acts in space, by declining three historical moments that tell the story. I want to define three historical moments from the early twentieth century to the present through the soma-city relationship: 1) The first moment is inscribed in the emergence of the Baudelairian concept of the flâneur, a symbolic figure who introduces a relationship with the city characterized by a disenchanted gaze and a slow, wandering movement picked up, especially by Walter Benjamin in the Paris Passages; 2) The second moment is that of Situationism, in which Guy Debord introduces the concept of dérive, understood as an approach to the city marked by the experiential and emotional relationship; 3) The third and most recent moment concerns Richard Shusterman's embodiment of the somaesthetic exercise, in which the Avatar of the Man in Gold, enters into a relationship with the city, aspiring to reconnect urban spheres and not to a pure somaesthetic experience of the city. The last point to be made is that these three historical and aesthetic experience-based moments of the body in the city are marked by the body moving in space. In the case of the flâneur, the body wanders in an unresolved manner without a precise destination; in the case of the drift, the body is propelled by the many sensations and expressions of the city that are expressed through walking (urban Walkscapes); finally, in the case of the Man in Gold, there is a movement totally absorbed in the experience of places. PubDate: 2023-08-08 DOI: 10.54103/2039-9251/20808
Authors:Gael Caignard Abstract: This article aims to weave the fields of performativity, sound and urban living through philosophical itineraries that follow two motifs: mourning and vulnerability. Through Bonnie Honig's rereading of Antigone, we will trace the characters of a performative Antigone, who hybridises the fields of phoné and logos in her lament. We will then consider the example of contemporary mourning as well as the problem of urban soundscape spread by an ubiquitous technophony. We will address the motif of vulnerability starting from the work and research of Brandon Labelle, who will accompany us on sound walks where listening will emerge as a performative practice. Listening to urban space confronts us with a global and generalised vulnerability. By combining mourning and vulnerability, we will finally express the need for a performativity of fragility in our global condition. PubDate: 2023-08-08 DOI: 10.54103/2039-9251/20810
Authors:Emanuele Regi Abstract: This article aims to explore patterns of the creative process in which performance faces ecological thought, placing about sustainability strategies. Many scholars have investigated the relationship between theatre and ecology since the end of the XXth century. Two positions have emerged strongly: ecology as a metaphor (Marranca) or as a performative tool (Chaudhuri). We will reflect on more recent points of view (Giannachi Stewart, Theresa J May, Baz Kershaw) and try to relate them to sustainability science (Bologna). Then, it will be important to focus on two phases of the creative process, dramatization, and staging, to understand the evolution of artistic practices about environmental issues. Finally, we are going to apply the methodological pattern outlined by the theoretical and practical analysis to two case studies: weLAND (2021), a contemporary circus show that staged climate migration, and La möa (2022), a choreographic work in nature that embodied the relationships in the river habitat. PubDate: 2023-08-08 DOI: 10.54103/2039-9251/20811
Authors:Marco Trisciuoglio, Federico Madaro Abstract: In Europe the street is traditionally the place of self-representation: the “Strada Nuova” in Genova has been designed in 1550 to allow noble families to build their own palaces in a competition of beauty, richness and power. In the American tradition the street became overall a place dominated by its market role (Venturi on Las Vegas, 1972). In China streets are the real public space for people’s daily life and its essential activities (trading, eating, playing, discussing): their role in urban life is so strong that sometime a street can appear even where the planning didn’t establish that. The western main urban public/social space is the square, but for the eastern countries - especially China- the streets represent the most representative urban public space that can be used together without the class differences. However, from the ancient cities to today’s high-density cities, the Chinese streets, because of their social role, have experienced also a very important connection with shop signs, posters, notices of all kinds, flags and signs, luminous writings. All these objects are a kind of ornament of daily-life as well as a real interesting documentary material, useful to understand permanencies and variations in the use of the cities during their transition from the former order to the new one. The paper introduces the framework and the contents of a multidisciplinary research project at work, between urban morphology and Chinese language and culture. (max. 1500 characters, spaces included) PubDate: 2023-08-08 DOI: 10.54103/2039-9251/20812
Authors:Francesca Belloni Abstract: What are the contaminations between art and architecture in today’s world' In the relationship with the architectural and urban space, what role does art play whenever art and architecture come into contact' Quoting James Ballard, the title of the present essay represents a sort of provocation, especially in case of association with Canaletto’s famed Capriccio palladiano and to the in some ways inappropriate usage that Aldo Rossi made of it. Starting from the observation that the composition made by Canaletto is, in a certain way, truer than Venice itself, one might wonder about the role of art in the construction of the architectural and urban image and, through some examples, affirm that in the present time art is a kind of seismograph that pushes architects to look beyond, to investigate the field of the unspoken or the unthinkable and it is used, in many cases, as a device to substantiate architecture itself and its outcomes. How and through which instruments' The answer lies in the works as mere instruments used to go back to the (implicit or explicit) canons and codes used, or perhaps to get to admit that, conversely, they often fade into a hermeneutic of the indeterminate, in relation to which identifying limits and boundaries seems increasingly difficult. Who makes what, between art and architecture' Ballard explains it masterfully and some artists show it clearly. The whole complex of these experiences is bound to the (solid) architecture and its theoretical corpus together with the desire to reflect on processes, procedures, transcriptions, and metamorphoses capable of feeding architecture and its languages. PubDate: 2023-08-08 DOI: 10.54103/2039-9251/20813
Authors:Emanuele Arielli, Valentina Rizzi Abstract: This paper examines the transformative potential of performativity in reimagining the concept of dwelling and of domestic spaces. Drawing from enactivist and embodied cognition perspectives, we delve into the dynamic relationship between individuals, their bodies, and the architectural environment. Emphasising the role of bodily engagement, sensorimotor experiences, and interoceptive awareness, we explore how individuals actively participate in and shape their architectural surroundings. Moving beyond individual interactions, we also highlight the social and collective dynamics influenced by the built environment, underscoring the impact of cultural conventions and societal norms. This paper investigates some contributions that advocate for a reappropriation of institutionalised domestic spaces through imaginative interventions that challenge conventional norms and envision future-oriented dwelling practices. Within the context of institutionalised domestic spaces, we investigate the role of the fantastical and the monstrous as disordered qualities that challenge traditional boundaries and offer opportunities for transformation. Through case studies, we examine projects that blur the lines between public and private realms, enabling participatory practices and urban influences to reshape functional space utilisation. In conclusion, this paper underscores the importance of a dialogue between embodied performativity and the concept of dwelling. It proposes a re-evaluation of our relationship with space that is not just functional but enactive, and it champions the transformative potential of the arts in conceiving our future homes. With a renewed focus on sustainability, participation, and the interplay between the human body and space, we can begin to imagine a future of dwelling that is as dynamic, inclusive, and vibrant as the lives we wish to live within these spaces. PubDate: 2023-08-08 DOI: 10.54103/2039-9251/20814
Authors:Roberta Da Soller Abstract: In the following text, I will try to articulate a thought on inhabiting from bodily practices. What I am interested in is demonstrating how a certain feminist thought in architecture in contact with performativity studies that are inextricably intertwined with questions of the production of gender and space, in nurturing each other, inaugurate a field of inquiry into the multiple modes of dwelling and their making. To do so, I will briefly traverse the trajectories of feminist thought and practice in architecture, focusing primarily on the European space and then moving geographically across the Atlantic to the epistemological openings that queer theories and practices have made on the theme of the relationship between bodies, architectures, and objects to the Caribbean. This shift will take us beyond the building, not only into urban space but especially into the dimension of the ecosystem in which Cecilia Bengolea’s choreographic works are grafted, which I will get to at the end. The material mobilized here starts from the thought produced by figures formed within the architectural sphere and in neighboring fields, but which has operated a movement of convergence with additional practices and theories from other experiences, such as performance art, feminism, and activism, bypassing disciplinary boundaries. PubDate: 2023-08-08 DOI: 10.54103/2039-9251/20815
Authors:Roberta Paltrinieri Abstract: This paper is based on the experience gained in European funded research projects. Despite the different objectives pursued by each project, the thread that connects them is the relationship between the performing arts and urban regeneration, in order to emphasise the importance of directly involving the territory and its inhabitants in urban regeneration processes. The research that has matured in the field of territorial co-design at national and European level was based on the conviction that the ultimate goal of urban renewal is not exclusively the quality and safety of life. In fact, the processes of urban renewal, when viewed from the perspective of social and cultural innovation, produce a collective participatory experience capable of overcoming the dichotomy between the public and private dimensions, guiding processes of 'commoning' (Chatterton 2010) or the preservation of the 'common good', which here takes the form of the production of relational goods, of community constructions (Manzini 2021). The aim of this essay is therefore to develop, within the framework of sociology, a reflection on the impact and value of culture in the context of urban renewal processes. The proposal is thus to re-read urban renewal from a culturalist perspective. To this end, it is important to define what cultural sociology studies as a theoretical premise in order to understand how important social practises and cultural participation are in defining social imaginaries and in defining related life, such as housing, consuming, producing, just to name a few areas. Therefore, shifting urban renewal to a participatory key, here I mean citizen participation through artistic practise, allows us to question models of individual and collective well-being, also in terms of well-being, which I believe must be at the heart of urban planning and design processes, in order to recognise the multidimensionality inherent in renewal and open new multidisciplinary paths. PubDate: 2023-08-08 DOI: 10.54103/2039-9251/20816
Authors:Clémence Canet Abstract: In July 2022, the artist Anne-Sophie Turion realizes the tour-performance Grandeur Nature in two districts of Rennes. Instead of commenting on the built heritage, as one might have expected in the context of an urban tour, the performer restores the lived stories of the inhabitants of the neighborhoods. Based on the analysis of this artistic proposal, the article seeks to understand how the device contributes to reconfiguring the perception of the urban territory covered. We are interested in how performance reveals spaces as they are occupied and perceived by users ; then we try to show the links that the proposal weaves between the protagonists and we try to understand to what extent the common experience of the neighborhoods crossed contributes to create social ties. PubDate: 2023-08-08 DOI: 10.54103/2039-9251/20817
Authors:Samuele Sartori Abstract: This article aims to describe the situated interactions between humans and hybrid architectures composed of physical and digital elements. Using a post-phenomenological perspective and drawing on case studies from everyday life and contemporary new media art, the paper will first discuss the limits and possibilities of this philosophical approach. Specifically, post-phenomenology has limitations in describing the technologies present in hybrid architecture that are becoming increasingly transparent and capable of manipulating the habitat while being embodied in the user and widespread in the environment. Through a genealogical reconstruction of the concept of form in Wolfgang Köhler, Kurt Goldstein, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, the article will explore the continuity between endosomatic and esosomatic space, providing new tools for the post- phenomenological debate. PubDate: 2023-08-08 DOI: 10.54103/2039-9251/20818
Authors:Fabrizia Bandi Abstract: In this paper we will relate the term «performance» to what, in different ways, can be considered the components of architecture: the project, the body of the dweller, the space itself, the virtual models. The different ways in which each of these elements can «perform» will be analysed in the paragraphs: (1) digital performalism, which redefines the form of the project with new tools; (2) bodies as performative agents in the architectural space; (3) architecture as a place for artistic performances, which can be defined as a performed object, but also as a performing subject; (4) and finally, virtual space, where architecture finds many possibilities of expression, in relation to the bodily performance of the user. PubDate: 2023-08-08 DOI: 10.54103/2039-9251/20819
Authors:Susanne Franco Abstract: The essay reflects on the installation-performance Eutopia (2022), conceived and directed by the Swiss-Italian collective Trickster-p, i.e. by Cristina Galbiati and Ilija Luginbühl in collaboration with game designer Pietro Polsinelli, Zeno Gabaglio for the sound space and Studio CCRZ for the graphic design. Eutopia addresses the environmental crisis we are becoming aware of with significant delay in raising cultural and political awareness to counteract the ongoing process of individual and collective removal. The essay inquires the theoretical assumptions on which this installation- performance is based and how it conveys the important message that inspired its creators to investigate how the performing arts can contribute to imagining the future of our planet. As a board game of the Anthropocene, Eutopia transforms the performative space into a political space in which people exchange and discuss ideas and visions about the environment and how to care for it actively. PubDate: 2023-08-08 DOI: 10.54103/2039-9251/20820
Authors:Gregorio Tenti, Pierre Montebello Abstract: A neo-cosmological sensibility seems to pervade many of today’s philosophical debates. But what does it mean to conceive of a cosmic totality after Kant and after the entrance of cosmology into the circle of sciences' What does this new sensibility entail and what are its consequences on our thought, sensibility, representations, and artistic practices' This issue aims to address these and other questions from different viewpoints and traditions, with particular attention to the aesthetic implications of the new philosophical cosmologies. PubDate: 2023-08-08 DOI: 10.54103/2039-9251/20821
Authors:Giovanbattista Tusa Abstract: This age is characterized by the increasing humanization of a planet more and more subject to representation, visualization and prediction. The future, however, seems to herald the emergence of forces indifferent to this historical process. Our present is thus the time of this contradiction, as new forces affect all strata of our lives like a diffuse but deep trauma. My text calls for a georealism that takes into account this time, a new form of planetary realism that assumes that our time is emptied of all representable content and thus open to its own infinity, open to the encounter with what is not given, either as horizon or as memory. PubDate: 2023-08-08 DOI: 10.54103/2039-9251/20822
Authors:Gus Hewlett Abstract: The concept of a transindividual relation has been articulated in order to resolve the problem of the unity of individuals in association with others. More particularly, it has been offered as a route for overcoming a disjunctive tendency whereby either individuality is lost to an encompassing collective, or the substance of the individual renders the collective accidental, optional, or a mere semblance. Transindividuality thus offers a way to think individuals and collectives thereof as relative, mutually dependent and constitutive, whilst maintaining a separation between the two. Equally, it affords a conception of a collective which is more than the sum of its parts, or an arbitrary aggregate of beings. Whilst this abstract description of transindividuality might appear apt for ecological or earth systems analysis, to date this has not been attempted. Neither of the two most significant thinkers of transindividuality, Gilbert Simondon and Étienne Balibar, broach the question of a natural transindividual at any length, nor do the various monographs and special editions of journals which have been dedicated to extending and criticising the former authors’ analysis of transindividuality. As such, this article addresses this lacuna through discussion of the problem of natural transindividuality, claiming that mutual dependency and constitution between individuals and collectives pertains to geophysical and vital relations as much as it does to human social relations. PubDate: 2023-08-08 DOI: 10.54103/2039-9251/20823
Authors:Jessica Lombard Abstract: Through Heidegger’s re-reading of Descartes, this article explores a fundamental issue in the contemporary conception of worldliness. In a restricted sense, the human being is the maker of the world in that he appropriates what composes it, i.e., the worldly beings or things. Greatly influenced by the Cartesian notion of extensio, this tendency no longer entails the world as a thing in itself, but as a set of measurable things, thus available and open to activity. This article articulates the threat relative to the idea of the forming, by the human being, of the essence of the world. Every being, be it an object, an animal or even a human being, seems to be considered as a producer of energy and a structure that could be possessed. For example, such natural space is not campaign or land, but automatically field, that is to say, an agricultural deposit that is symbolically exploited and empirically exploitable. This ontological device prevents us from grasping the world in any other way than in terms of use and productivity. As a result, the ontology of the thing becomes an aesthetic issue in its own right. This issue does not involve here the capture of the object as a bearer of Beauty, but an aesthetic relation in the fundamentally etymological sense (αἰσθητικός) of what is felt, of what is sensible and perceptible. The need for an aesthetic rereading of the world and the things that stand in it presupposes, therefore, the evolution of the human gaze and a metaphysical approach to worldliness, detached from the instrumentalization of the beings and focused on their presence or their proximity. This article aims at demonstrating the necessity of a real human aesthetic responsibility, which can be concretized in the metaphysical thought of the thing that the human being unfolds, by considering it as the persistence in the world of an object whose ontological disposition could never be neutral. PubDate: 2023-08-08 DOI: 10.54103/2039-9251/20824
Authors:Riccardo Valenti Abstract: What happens when consciousness fails' What happens to the connection with our experiences when we abandon ourselves to torpor, when “the light goes out”' Merleau- Ponty answered these questions in his course on Passivity, commenting on the status of the unconscious, sleep, dreams and memory. These are modalities through which the subject discovers a renewed adherence, a deeper sense of belonging to the world, and a peculiar ontological inherence or confidence. In the lethargic reabsorption, Merleau- Ponty so read Proust in The Problem of the Word, the sleeper rediscovers a carnal past with an enigmatic character, for which the anchorage to the stasis of rest, already personifies, the virtualities of a project, a specific “kinetic initiation”, the attribute of an ‘imminent movement’. It is from these intentions that one can trace the genesis of Dardel’s reflection on the nature of inhabiting, of human existence confined to the Earth. To inhabit a surface geographically is first and foremost to “rely, through sleep, on what lies (...) beneath us: the base on which our subjectivity folds”. To exist means “[re]starting from there (...) in order to untie from the surrounding world the ‘objects’ to which (...) our attention will be directed”. Starting from the Berquean assumption according to which the “spatiality of existence”, in all its meanings, “is movement and not -, conversely, motionless, and therefore sterile, - rootedness”, as also attested by Barbaras in L’appartenance, this essay highlights the essential character of ‘coexistence’ in which men and the world in its geographical consistency participate. It, therefore, investigates the conditions, the conjugations, as said, ‘terrestrial’, by means of which the ‘inner geography’ is articulated - and therefore, in the same way, disarticulated - as past, repetition and the creative newness, the future of which is the indispensable presupposition, is the ‘basis’; and the work of man, the implication of which ties his destiny to the ‘moving extension’ that is the Earth. This study concludes with the recognition of a twofold but unique, singular movement within existence, which alternates exhibition and withdrawal, vital élan and relapse into materiality, according to the coordinates of a “reality that is made through that which is undone”. PubDate: 2023-08-08 DOI: 10.54103/2039-9251/20825
Authors:Alessandra Scotti Abstract: In this article, we aim to focus on the notion of Earth in Merleau-Ponty’s reflections on the concept of nature and his reinterpretation of the Husserlian Umsturz. In doing so, we will use the expression “Earth-making” to describe a particular instituting dynamic, where by the term “institution” we wish to refer to the Husserlian concept of Stiftung and its original reworking by Merleau-Ponty during his 1954-55 course at the Collège de France: L’institution - La Passivité. We will therefore identify the concept of institution as a privileged way to describe our relationship with the Earth, understood as Boden [soil], envisaging in the instituting dynamic as something close to art. Finally, we will try to illustrate what Merleau-Ponty means by transcendental geology, namely the capacity to grasp the original relationship between space and time and a new way of conceptualizing the Earth as a PubDate: 2023-08-08 DOI: 10.54103/2039-9251/20826
Authors:Tommaso Morawski Abstract: Landing on Earth. This now famous formula, which appears in the title of the exhibition/catalogue Critical Zones. The Science and Politics of Landing on Earth, curated by Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel, sums up Latour’s ecological-political project and his attempt to respond to the Anthropocene’s need to bring us back to Earth, to this unstable soil that reacts to our actions and from which the project of Modernity had progressively distanced us. For Latour, climate change and the definition of anthropos as a geological force impose the search for a new habitable territory: the Earth we thought we knew, but which now presents itself as a new terra incognita. However, because of the uncertainty about the shape of the Earth, the need to develop new tools to orient ourselves and describe the situation in which we find ourselves becomes more and more urgent. If what is at stake after the disorientation (spatial, temporal, identity) caused by Gaia’s intrusion is the re-politicization of belonging to the land, what are the cartographic representations that will be able to effectively describe our co-belonging to the space we inhabit, helping to make visible the different chains of agency' What are the tools we can use to learn to see things differently and thus become more “sensitive and responsive” to the fragile shells of this metastable world where life forms other than our own intersect their paths' What kind of map is an earthly map' PubDate: 2023-08-08 DOI: 10.54103/2039-9251/20827
Authors:Gregorio Tenti Abstract: Landing on Earth. This now famous formula, which appears in the title of the exhibition/catalogue Critical Zones. The Science and Politics of Landing on Earth, curated by Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel, sums up Latour’s ecological-political project and his attempt to respond to the Anthropocene’s need to bring us back to Earth, to this unstable soil that reacts to our actions and from which the project of Modernity had progressively distanced us. For Latour, climate change and the definition of anthropos as a geological force impose the search for a new habitable territory: the Earth we thought we knew, but which now presents itself as a new terra incognita. However, because of the uncertainty about the shape of the Earth, the need to develop new tools to orient ourselves and describe the situation in which we find ourselves becomes more and more urgent. If what is at stake after the disorientation (spatial, temporal, identity) caused by Gaia’s intrusion is the re-politicization of belonging to the land, what are the cartographic representations that will be able to effectively describe our co-belonging to the space we inhabit, helping to make visible the different chains of agency' What are the tools we can use to learn to see things differently and thus become more “sensitive and responsive” to the fragile shells of this metastable world where life forms other than our own intersect their paths' What kind of map is an earthly map' PubDate: 2023-08-08 DOI: 10.54103/2039-9251/20828
Authors:Marina Mascherini Abstract: This monographic section of volume 25 of Itinera stems largely from the discussions that took place during the two study days I organised on 13th and 14th. May 2021 at the Stensen Institute in Florence, entitled Ricerche in corso. These were planned on the occasion of the Moral Philosophy Seminars, held at the University of Florence, with the collaboration of Professor Maddalena Mazzocut-Mis and Professor Bruno Accarino, who were foundamental importance for these event, and I would like to take this opportunity to thank them. With the aim of continuing and enriching the debate of both days, this section not only brings together some of the contributions presented by the speakers, but it also aims to further involve other authors in the field of teratology, an area of study, which can seem somewhat impenetrable. The original title of the seminar “The Anatomical Monster” (the subtitle of which reads: “Figures of Irregularity, Mechanisms of Exclusion and Biological Naturalism”) evidently referred to the theme of so-called “monstrous births”. The attempt was to make evident certain themes that run through the various contributions; starting from the definition of abnormal and pathological as deviations from the norm, we move on to delineate the field of unforeseen variations - anomalies, alterations, and abnormalities. We continue to the visual representation of monstrosity, its aesthetic form and its capacity to reveal exaggerated figures that break the monotony of “normality” by virtue of unexpected juxtapositions. This includes the monsters that populated Cabinets of Curiosities as much as circuses, later housed in the collections and on the anatomical tables of 18th- and 19th-century naturalists; the analysis of the present perception of the monster, aimed at its ambiguity, considered as a union of contrasting features that stand out against a horizon that leads back to otherness and difference. The result is a varied and polymorphous collection, within which the investigation of the prodigious, the marvellous and the monstrous loom transversally from every single essay. PubDate: 2023-08-08 DOI: 10.54103/2039-9251/20829
Authors:Ubaldo Fadini Abstract: The article moves from the idea of monster as a “cultural predicate” referable to a wide linguistic and symbolic repertoire proper to the overall human history. In this perspective, particular attention is paid to the variegated viewpoints on monstrosity that, from the initial teratology of “natural” sign, develops into a teratology of a specifically “social” character. Hence the indication that, from a material standpoint, shows how the transformations of feeling, thinking, and acting related to nowadays work activities, make it possible to associate certain characteristics of monstrosity – clearly not conceivable only in negative terms – to new productive subjects and cooperating singularities. PubDate: 2023-08-08 DOI: 10.54103/2039-9251/20830
Authors:Vincenzo Di Mino Abstract: The subject of the following contribution is a discussion of the theses in R.L.Smith's volume 'Making Monster,' on the relationship between processes of dehumanization and the production of monstrosity. Reading the multiple facets of this link, the contribution tries to highlight some lines of analysis. The first of analysis concerns on the epistemic status of the concept of dehumanization. The second, on the other hand, concerns the actual dimensions of the processes of monstrosity production within the multiple social, temporal and political layers of the concept of crisis. PubDate: 2023-08-08 DOI: 10.54103/2039-9251/20831
Authors:Lorenzo Montemagno Ciseri Abstract: The purpose of this study is to analyze some peculiar aspects on the conception of monsters and monstrous births in the centuries preceding the emergence of modern teratology. A “new” discipline, a branch of biology and, in particular, comparative embryology, whose scientific basis was laid by the studies of Etienne and Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, in the first half of the nineteenth century. At the beginning I will show a brief summary of the multiple and heterogeneous theories which, in very different times, have tried to explain the causes of the nature and genesis of monsters. We will then go inside the very delicate question on the position of the soul, in man and monsters in particular, which had a direct influence on the possibility of saving from eternal oblivion, in the short time they usually survived, those small deformed creatures. PubDate: 2023-08-08 DOI: 10.54103/2039-9251/20832
Authors:Caterina Tortoli Abstract: This work focuses on a particular figure of the monster: the hermaphrodite who has been considered significant since ancient times. In Middle Ages, the hermaphrodites were executed because of their deformity. This attitude changed later on and they started to be condemned as perverts. During the XIX century, Teratology wanted to include them in a monsters’ classification but the scientists found this work very difficult because they were influenced by novelists who considered the hermaphrodite a perfection’s emblem. In this case, it’s important to underline that Balzac and Hugo wrote about “double” monsters. It means that Balzac talked about people who were both male and female, while Hugo talked about characters with both dark and sublime soul. Balzac in particular considered the androgyne perfect because he didn’t show significant differences. So, this essay wants to analyze the debates about hermaphrodite and its doubleness. PubDate: 2023-08-08 DOI: 10.54103/2039-9251/20833
Authors:Marina Mascherini Abstract: This essay aims to deal with early forms of skepticism, which naturalized the animal Kingdom by removing it from the moral sphere of religious spiritualism. In the 17th century, the gradual shift from magical thinking to science had important implications in the study of monsters. Starting from the concept of anomaly, we define a new science of life where monsters dwel. We deal with human phenomena, the tremendus, described and explained as deviations from the norm, errors. In the second half of the 17th century, the most important Academies began to devote themselves to the study of portentuos marvels and the debate on monsters became central in Natural Science: it was during this period that monsters were placed on anatomical tables in order to be dissected and classified. Fundamental in this regard were the studies of the surgeon John Hunter, in whose collection we can admire numerous specimens of so-called double monsters. In the 18th century, thanks to the numerous studies by Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire and his son Isidore, we arrive at the new vision of monstruosities, finally considered as sufficient in themselves, as autonomous abjects and therefore concrete, accessible and observable. Finally, I will discuss the special relationship between science and spectacle, public an private. The monster embodies a very strong aesthetic end attractive power: the image is the most suitable medium for describing it. PubDate: 2023-08-08 DOI: 10.54103/2039-9251/20834
Authors:Pierluigi Panza Abstract: With his work, the Belgian artist-scientist Koen Vanmechelen poses a challenge to Aesthetics, which does not have the parameters to evaluate it. His artistic experience, which I would drop under the new name of Hybrid-art or Genetic-art, comes from a studied genetic manipulation of animals. If from an artistic point of view the results may apparently have data of continuity with Flemish culture, the Wunderkammers aesthetic effect and experiences such as those of Damien Hirst, the type of scientific research that accompanies it is unique. Vanmechelen, in fact, taxidermizes animals (mainly chickens) born from crosses not previously existing in Nature. The DNA of the animals born from these crosses, now in the XXIIth generation, is part of the “Cosmopolittan Chicken Project” started in 1999 and is aimed at demonstrating that greater biodiversity favors the improvement of the species. Upon their death, these “unique animals” or monsters become works of art in compositions that, historically, we would have framed in the aesthetic terms of the monstrous or the grotesque. PubDate: 2023-08-08 DOI: 10.54103/2039-9251/20835
Authors:Giorgia Visentin Abstract: What does it really mean to contemplate the “anomalous”, the “malformed”, the “anatomical- monster”' Why and how is it so disturbing' And what is the proper norm and status of the monster' The monster is what shocks, the weird, the eerie. The monster is the uncanny, the “unhomely”, das Unheimliche, to borrow from Freud’s famous expression. It’s the irruption of the improper that threatens the stability of life, as it indicates how the commonness of life itself is a precarious yet contingent state. The monster upsets us because it shows us the contingency of the norm. Based upon this assumption, we shall also touch upon other concepts. These might be: the transvaluation of values, the Einverleibung, the Great Health and the theory of the hopeful monster. It is, in the end, a new form of the same: the individual subtracts itself, therefore, from the individuality of the species, but it does so as to affirm a different same that is absolutely contingent. To borrow again from Deleuze, we might say: a “prodigious”, unexpected turn of the becoming. PubDate: 2023-08-08 DOI: 10.54103/2039-9251/20836
Authors:Alessandra Sala Abstract: Wunderkammern represent a truly interesting phenomenon not only because of their pe- culiar feature of collecting amazing, even monstrous, items from all over the planet, but especially for the importance given to feelings such as curiosity, wonder and astonish- ment in the process of discovering the world, as a medium to get to knowledge. Wunder- kammern, also known as Cabinets of Curiosities, keep being represented in art and enter- tainment, with particular relevance to their most grotesque aspects; here, the focus is on two depictions coming from non-fiction children’s literature, which has gone through a recent wave of innovation regarding specifically the picturebooks form. The non-fiction picturebooks edited in the last decade appear to have in common a significant illustration and design apparatus, resulting in a strongly creative and aesthetic approach to knowledge: engaging the senses – and therefore inspiring awe and wonder – together with data and information, these non-fiction picturebooks contribute to restore value to art and beauty in the learning process, revealing a sort of relationship with the Wunderkammer paradigm. PubDate: 2023-08-08 DOI: 10.54103/2039-9251/20837
Authors:Emiliano Aguilar Abstract: Sleepaway Camp and XXY are two films that represent monstrosity from a genetic point of view. In this paper, I will analyze all the sexualities presented in both movies through the queer notion, and criticize the barriers imposed by heteronormative power to our un- derstanding of sexuality and the world, to fully understand the characters’ behaviors. This frame study will be also useful to acknowledge how repressions work, and of course how two movies with diverse style of filmmaking and from different contexts and times can assimilate those supposed monstrosities according to their own rules. PubDate: 2023-08-08 DOI: 10.54103/2039-9251/20838
Authors:Kaitlyn Samons, Justin Shay Easler Abstract: Man has often written about the creation of the monster. The monstrous figure frequently appears in a way that differentiates itself from the human by its grotesqueness, its potential immortality, and/or, of course, its desire to defile the body of the human (i.e. zombies, vampires, etc.) This trauma–i.e. that of being other than human–is often categorized as wicked and wrong. In the case of Attack on Titan, there is a deviation from the norm–namely, instead of being seen as merely evil, these monsters are seen as some“one” to sympathize with. Attack on Titan forces us to question the blurry line that is used to divide monster from human,and forces the viewer to question the human condition of the demonized and repressed everyday "monsters." It is our claim that Dina Fritz works as a representation of “monster.” We look at Dina as an example of representative trauma inflicted through horrific events–such as a genocidal war, dehumanization, and, of course, forced bodily violation–and how these traumas create the beasts that lead to such events; i.e. making these “monst[hers]” out of humans. We argue that the characterization of Dina Fritz is a warning to its audience that segregation, violence, and the loss of bodily autonomy perpetuates a cycle of monstrous births/creation. In this article, we will speak not only to the end result of the monstrous creation–i.e. the monst[her]–but also to the line that has been blurred with this monstrous other and the human in the world of Attack on Titan. PubDate: 2023-08-08 DOI: 10.54103/2039-9251/20839
Authors:Andrea Sormano Abstract: By analysing a choice of Carol Rama’s (1918-2015) pictorial works and comparing them with her ‘discursive practices’ or the ways she articulates her verbal expressions and interactions, this paper aims to construe a particular model for studying the relation between words and images, drawn from and inspired by both Émile Benveniste's ‘Enunciation’ Linguistics and Mikhail Bakhtin’s Metalinguistics. Read in this way, the alleged "pornography" of some of Carol Rama's early works is transformed into its opposite, that is, into an invitation addressed to a traditional voyeur to become a possible erotic interlocutor. This transformation is effected by the figures appearing in Rama’s paintings, who aim their gaze directly at the spectator’s eyes, addressing him as "you". Instead of enticing a voyeur, stealthily peeping at a sensual object, the figures’ gaze transforms the spectator into a “second person of the enunciation” (Benveniste). Similar considerations apply to Carol Rama's discursive practices, all of which are characterized by a "polyphony of voices", a polyphonic ensemble whose voices are not split and conflicting against one another. To quote Bachtin’s on Dostoewsky’s characters, whose voices are usually self-conflicting, in Carol Rama’s case, the voices are problematically “pacified” (Bakhtin,). PubDate: 2023-08-08 DOI: 10.54103/2039-9251/20840
Authors:Michelangelo Socci Abstract: The following article analyzes the parallelism between Notes from Underground by Fëdor Dostoevsky and Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver. The link between these works was made explicit by the director in a documentary movie about his career. The article revolves, therefore, around the underground as a place of intimate alienation and painful incommunicability. As a key to the interpretation, I used the studies of René Girard. In his essay about Dostoevsky he shows the underground as the place of the perversion of desire. The triangular structure subject-mediator-object becomes the source of deep obsession and rivalry: the mediator is for the subject who imitates him worshipped model and hated rival at the same time. In conclusion of the article, I will investigate the resolution hypothesis of Dostoevsky and Girard. Those hypotheses will then be compared with Travis’ story to try to understand if the man who has been harmed by the crisis of desire can come out as a winner from the underground. PubDate: 2023-08-08 DOI: 10.54103/2039-9251/20842
Authors:Stefano Esengrini Abstract: Part I A new art for a new world Martin Heidegger and Barnett Newman Stefano Esengrini stefano.esengrini@unicatt.it François Fédier's contribution to the understanding of Martin Heidegger's thought represents the point from which we start to clarify the meaning of the path taken by the philosopher after Being and Time. The phenomenon of Ereignis as Enowning thus constitutes the horizon within which the possibility occurs for man to encounter his world and take root in it as if he were at home. The need to overcome the crisis that threatens the Western world determines the possibility of experiencing the world in a new way and founding new knowledge capable of giving a measure to our existence on earth. From this perspective, America becomes the place that knows how to symbolically embody the possibility that man has of establishing an authentic relationship with his surroundings and of developing a knowledge that is in tune with this opportunity. Part II Based on the rethinking of the metaphysical essence of art, we will be able to interpret the work of Barnett Newman as an attempt to give form in painting to the thought of a new start. More specifically, the prominence assumed by color becomes the index of the need to give shape to the space and time within which the world occurs. Thanks to the secret symmetry that exists between Newman and the work of Henry David Thoreau, we will thus be able to clarify the nature of the contribution provided by American art to the determination of a new world that America, more radically than other places on earth, has been able to articulate in unheard of forms capable of projecting a new hope for Western man today and for the future that is destined for us. PubDate: 2023-08-08 DOI: 10.54103/2039-9251/20841
Authors:Francesca Melina Abstract: Beginning with the work of Olafur Eliasson, with particular reference to the recent exhibition “Trembling Horizons” but not limited to it, a number of works representative of an artistic vision that might be called eco-logical are analyzed. Not only by explicitly thematizing the issue of the environmental crisis, Eliasson's works seem to materially express the demands of theorists who question how art can actively respond to the need for a shift in outlook that characterizes current events. Starting from the idea of art as praxis, which allows the viewer to regard himself or herself and to place himself or herself in relation to what surrounds us – human and non-human – Eliasson's works act on the intrinsic objecthood of the work itself by creating a relationship with otherness and datity. They generate, therefore, a feeling of proximity, which concretizes a meaning of creativity in a transformative and site-specific sense; they promote an eco-logic that has its basis in a nomadic and depotentiated vision of subjectivity, engendering a feeling of interconnectedness and care. It will be argued in this paper the need to rethink art in these terms by hypothesizing a particular efficacy of some works that actively work in public space: places where the split between nature and culture has taken place, urban and public space are privileged contexts to actively promote the overcoming of this fracture and generate ethically responsible, already intrinsically ecological subjects. PubDate: 2023-08-08 DOI: 10.54103/2039-9251/20843
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