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Ebook Comics and the Invisible

Comics and the Invisible

This work collects some of the panels of the conference Comics and the Invisible: Intertwining Academic and Artistic Perspectives, held in Venice on June 3-4 2022.

The conference was the closing event of Invisible Lines, a two-year international project co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme, conceived and coordinated by the Centre for Comparative Studies of Civilisations and Spiritualities of the

Giorgio Cini Foundation (Venice, Italy) with the associations Central Vapeur (Strasbourg, France) and Hamelin (Bologna, Italy) and the publisher Baobab Books (Tabor, Czech Republic).

The entire project was shaped around a question: how to draw the invisible? The question was posed first to twelve young artists selected among more than 400 applicants from all over Europe, who have been involved in an international training experience designed as an illustrated journey through the invisible. At each stage, the hosting partners set up a workshop in which young artists could work and co-create, interpreting the initial question according to their own sensitivity and the genus loci of the places they visited: Broumov, Venice and Strasbourg.

Each workshop focused on a different interpretation of the idea of invisibility. The artists explored the invisible as a form of spiritual and metaphysical quest, inquiring both the relationships with the unconscious and with the transcendent. They represented what is invisible in the daily landscapes we cross by drawing places now abandoned as a result of ever-changing society and historical mutations. Finally, they considered invisibility in its social and political dimension, narrating the lives of some of the migrants and refugees living at the Bernanos Centre in Strasbourg – lives that are too often at the center of media representations yet rarely present with their own stories and voices.

For each workshop the artists were given a special guide: internationally acclaimed artists Stefano Ricci, Juraj Horváth and Yvan Alagbé helped the young artists to draw their own stories, later collected in two visual books and a newspaper.

Their original artworks were also exhibited at three of the major comics and illustration festivals in Europe: BilBOlbul International Comics Festival (Italy), Central Vapeur (France), and Tabook Festival (Czech Republic).

The journey did not end there, because at the final stage of the project the same initial question was asked to a selected group of international comic studies researchers during the aforementioned conference. They too were given the chance

to share ideas with some visual artists who were gamechangers in the field of comics and visual narrative: Lorenzo Mattotti, Dominique Goblet, Stefano Ricci, David B. and Manuele Fior. The result of this encounter is the publication you are reading

now. It goes without saying that the question of invisibility remains unredeemable. The artists’ discussions and works presented in this publication show how artists explore their vision as well as outside reality not just by drawing what they see but longing for what cannot be seen: the struggle to draw the invisible lies behind the choices, inventions, and tricks that keep comic art evolving.

For more information about Invisible Lines: https://invisiblelines.eu/

Call for articles – Special Issue – Religiographies, Vol 2, no. 1, December 2023 – Zoroastrian Esotericism

Zoroastrian Esotericism

The works of scholars who have explored esotericism in the context of the Zoroastrian religion, whether ancient or contemporary, are few. Furthermore, scholarly work has never led to the establishment of a theoretical framework for the study of Zoroastrian esotericism. In particular, the way the followers of the Zoroastrian religion understand, experience, and make sense of the esoteric has never been explored.

This Call for articles invites contributions that discuss case studies and answer some of the following questions:

– Can Zoroastrian esotericism exist as a field of research?

– Are geographical or cultural criteria sufficient to define its boundaries?

– In the light of the constituting characteristics of the old Iranian religion, is Zoroastrian esotericism to be intended as a dimension of religious scriptures and beliefs, of their performative aspect or of some other dimension?

– How do Zoroastrian dualism, ethnicity and purity inform the esoteric? How have Persianate, South Asian, Western, and Global esoteric currents shaped Zoroastrianism?

– To what extent do the esoteric dimensions of Zoroastrianism draw upon and/or contribute to the theoretical framework of an esotericism beyond the West?

– Interdisciplinary methods of investigation are encouraged together with an emphasis on emic categories of the esoteric.

This Special Issue aims at orienting the scholarly debate towards the assessment of Zoroastrian esotericism as a field of research in its own right.

Download the Call – Zoroastrian Esotericism

Deadline: 1^st September 2022

Underwater Lines – Live Painting

Live painting with Stefano Ricci and Manuele Fior (illustrations), Giacomo Piermatti and Daniele Roccato (double basses music).

June, 03 2022, 6:30 pm – 7:30 pm

This performance is part of the Conference Comics and the Invisible.

Free entry upon registration on the registration form.

Conference Comics and the Invisible: Intertwining Academic and Artistic perspectives

The theme of the invisible in spiritual, social and geographical terms as developed in the context of graphic book illustration and comics was the focus of the Invisible Lines travelling project, cofunded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union and created by the Centre for Comparative Studies of Civilisations and Spiritualities of Giorgio Cini Foundation in collaboration with Hamelin Associazione Culturale (Italy), Baobab Books (Czech Republic) and Central Vapeur (France). Three workshops for twelve selected young artists were organised for 2021 (Venice, Tabor and Strasbourg). They are now being followed up in 2022 by three publications and three exhibitions (Bologna, Tabor and Strasbourg). The conference, the last stage of this intense long journey, returns to the concept of invisibility to ask if, and how, the ninth art can represent the invisible. To be attended by artists and academics, the conference will end with a “drawing concert” directed by ingenious artists Stefano Ricci and Manuele Fior.

Download the Program Comics and the Invisible

Admission is free upon registration on the registration form.

Non-Belief and Non-Believers: evolution and challenges of contemporary irreligiousness

This Conference, organised by the Union of Rationalist Atheists and Agnostics (UAAR) with the collaboration of the Centre for Comparative Studies of Civilizations and Spiritualties and of the University of Piemonte Orientale, aims to investigate the heterogeneous phenomenon of contemporary unbelief from a multifaceted perspective which includes the juridical and socio-anthropological point of view.

This field of investigation, little explored at a scientific level, will be analyzed under the multiple aspects of individual and collective phenomenology, without neglecting the confrontation with the challenges of secularization and post-secularization, not least the tension between freedom of expression and protection of sacred, particularly evident in matters of blasphemy laws. The prismatic identities of irreligiousness will be compared on an international level, in a dialogue that also involves the increasingly emerging parodic religions, with the aim of drawing common lines in an approach that is not identitarian but rather the exercise of religious freedom.

Programme 15:00 – 19:00

15:00 Welcome Greetings:

Roberto Grendene (The Union of Rationalist Atheists and Agnostics, Italy)
Francesco Piraino (Centre for Comparative Studies of Civilisations and Spiritualities, Giorgio Cini Foundation)
Roberto Mazzola (Ecclesiastical Law and Intercultural Law, University of Piemonte Orientale)

15:30 Speeches:

Non religious belief landscape of Europe
Andrew Copson (President of Humanists International)

Freedom of speach and Blasphemy laws
Marco Croce (University of Florence)

17:10 Coffee break

17:30 Round Table:

Moderator: Francesco Alicino (LUM University)

The diversity and recent evolution of non-religion in Europe

Anne-Laure Zwilling (CNRS, Strasbourg)

Secularizations and their posts: crisis of the secularization theory and emergence of a post secular paradigm
Debora Spini (New York University in Florence and Syracuse University in Florence)

Why religion is different?
Victor Javier Vazquez Alonso (University of Sevilla)

The conference is in English with simultaneous translation into Italian

For more information:
non-belief.conference@cini.it

Reservation required

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Call for Papers “Comics and the Invisible” Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venice, 3-4 June 2022

As a medium dealing with – and in some cases, challenging – the boundaries of visual and narrative dimensions in contemporary culture, “Comics and the Invisible” calls for a set of ideas, analytical methodologies, and theoretical vocabularies to articulate the limits of visibility within comics culture. In which terms comics can be understood as an invisible art or, from a very different perspective, as an art of the invisible? How can comics be a tool for a fruitful storytelling and visualization of ideas/topics that rarely find space within the ordinary ecology of visual media? Is this art of the invisible an instrument to connect with other dimensions (mental, psychological, spiritual, ontological)?

Inspired by the EU funded project “Invisible Lines” we invite participants to investigate different aspects of the invisible in comics culture, as a complex notion that can offer a fresh perspective around what is seen and what is not seen – and the motivations behind these absences – within the historical and/or contemporary traditions of the ninth art. We welcome submissions that explore the invisible in comics and illustration, stemming from every tradition of comics culture as well as in cultural, media, art theory that deals with ninth art and sequential narratives.

CfP Comics and the Invisible final

Workshop | Arabic-Islamic Calligraphy

In the Islamic world, calligraphy is the main medium of visual aesthetic expression and is both transcultural and transdisciplinary.
It is transcultural, because the various calligraphic styles have been influenced by different cultural contexts, although there is also a certain continuity, especially as regards
religious calligraphy. And it is transdisciplinary because it concerns not only the strictly religious dimension, but also the visual arts and poetry.

Intended for students on the Arabic Language and Literature course at Ca’ Foscari University, Venice and any interested visual arts enthusiasts – and organized with the collaboration of Ca’ Foscari University -, this workshop will explore the beauty and complexity of Islamic calligraphy, also through a performance. Andrea Brigaglia (University of Naples “L’Orientale”) will illustrate the historical and theoretical framework of calligraphy in the Islamic world, with a special focus on the production of manuscripts.

The workshop will be led by the Italian-Jordanian artist Eyas Alshayeb, born in the heart of the city of Amman in the 1980s. In his childhood, he was influenced by a family atmosphere in which art, poetry and literature were essential elements of daily life. He became interested in the art of calligraphy when an adolescent, thanks to his passion and curiosity that led him to learn this wonderful art in the workshop of a local master calligrapher. He later attended various calligraphy schools, such as the Egyptian school of Khudair Bursaaidi, and from the age of fifteen he was taught by some of the leading experts of Middle Eastern Arabic calligraphy, learning from each of them the most sophisticated calligraphy techniques of the main Ottoman, Baghdad and Cairo schools.

Download the pdf Workshop di Calligrafia Araba 2021

INVISIBLE LINES

Invisible Lines
Squadro Edizioni Grafiche Collana Sigaretten
Bologna 2021
Project co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union.
https://invisiblelines.eu/

The book collects the works of twelve comics and illustrators artists coming from France, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Poland, Sweden, Germany, and Italy, selected for a residency at the Giorgio Cini Foundation in Venice.

The authors explored the ideas of uncertainty, invisibility, epiphany, through the silence of places and listening to the stories of those who live on the borders. They tried to embrace memories and inner images, connecting the spiritual dimension to the physical one, as part of a shared biological process.

https://sigaretten.net/products/aa-vv-invisibile-lines

Call for Papers: Sufism and Gender in Contemporary Societies

Call for papers to participate in the Conference

Sufism and Gender in Contemporary Societies

(Fondazione Giorgio Cini – 3 December 2021)

Deadline: 1st June 2021

DOWNLOAD THE CALL

This conference then aims to explore these themes of gender and sexuality within contemporary and historical Sufi traditions. Keeping in mind the call to decolonize knowledge production and epistemologies that subvert binaries of “resistance versus subordination” in Muslim women’s life-worlds, we aim to take an expansive discussion of the complex processes of the agentive formation of gendered Sufi subjectivities.

Organisers
Francesco Piraino (Ca’ Foscari University)
Feyza Burak-Adli (Northwestern University)
M. Shobhana Xavier (Queen’s University)

Study Day | Sufism and Gender: Female Religious Authorities in Contemporary Societies

Sufism, the spiritual tradition of Islam, is undergoing a period of renewal with charismatic leaders attracting new disciples from diverse social and cultural backgrounds.
Global Sufi leaders and public figures, both in Europe and North Africa, are promoting a debate on religious and social gender norms, emphasising the importance of both religious freedom and adherence to Islamic values. These Sufi leaders do not impose a specific perspective. In fact, liberal and conservative, and secular and religious positions coexist in the debate involving veiled
and unveiled women, feminists and non-feminists. The study day will explore the boundaries between the secular and the religious by raising issues such as: how do Sufi women worldwide conceptualise freedom and adherence to Islamic values? How do they embody Islamic values and norms?

The event has been organised in collaboration with Ca’ Foscari University, Venice

Curators:
Francesco Piraino (Ca’ Foscari University)
Feyza Burak-Adli (Northwestern University)
M. Shobhana Xavier (Queen’s University)

Download Program Sufism and Gender

Registration

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