I Dialoghi di San Giorgio. //Inheriting the past.

People have always wondered how to give meaning, value and uses to traditions, knowledge and artefacts handed down to them from previous generations. For us the question is particularly obvious in the field of works of art. In the modern collective imagination they have become the most precious legacy of the past. The ‘sactuarization’ of art works thus cuts away their links with their traditions: the ‘original’ work acquires a value per se for its uniqueness and the ‘aura’ associated with it. Subsequently, the copy is divested of its etymon – whereby it was abundance and wealth – to become an impoverished version and therefore the “fake” or “false” version of a “true” original.
The radical distinction between the original and the copy and the translation of this dichotomy into terms of true and false has weakened the transmission of knowledge – both formal and tacit. From time immemorial this has been based on repetition, duplication and the reinterpretation of an original experience. The past will vanish, if it is not reproduced, imitated and re-invented. Today, new technology is available for reproducing historical items of all forms and nature, leading us to raise these questions in a different way. The new intimacy with works of art created by these technologies reveals unexpected aspects and potential, and in some cases allows us to study them more freely and more creatively: by placing the work of art in the context for which it was created, re-establishing the original conditions of its enjoyment or, conversely, recreating it in another environment making it easier to ‘read’.
How we inherit the past is a crucial question not only in the world of art and art conservation but also in other fields, at the center of the contemporary debate on the subject. The maintenance of ecosystems, for example, is taking on special importance. Here we can ask exactly the same questions: is it possible and legitimate to artificially create an appropriate way of keeping a “natural” system alive? How far can the new technologies help us maintain the character and balance of ecosystems by reinventing their constituent elements and relations? Musicology – and especially ethnomusicology – is showing a growing interest in the diachronic dimension of musical traditions and the problem of their relationship with the context in which they were created: how can an oral music tradition survive and be re-elaborated in the present without losing its character? Can musical experience be spread and reproduced, separating the sound material from the source and its context?
The key issue thus lies in understanding how it is technically possible to revive the past or ‘to let the past resonate’, avoiding at the same time fetishism and refusal, slavish imitation and betrayal; and how, through comparisons, the practices used in the different fields we have mentioned mutually can inform and enhance each other. At a time of growing fundamentalism of all denominations, this comparative exercise focused on understanding how we can inherit the past “well”, seems to us a decisive way of being faithful to the calling of ‘I Dialoghi di San Giorgio’, aimed at encouraging exchanges of views between experts from various disciplines and cultural traditions on issues of crucial importance to contemporary society

Venice, Island of San Giorgio Maggiore
12 – 14 September 2007

Sessions: 9.00 – 10.30 / 11.00 – 12.30 / 14.30 –16.00

Poster sessions: 12.30 – 13.00 / 16.00 – 16.30.

Free entrance

Contact
General Secretariat
tel. +39 041 2710228 – +39 041 2710229
fax +39 041 5223563
e-mail: fondacini@cini.it segr.gen@cini.it