I Dialoghi di San Giorgio//Space as a Contested Terrain.
The millenary equilibrium in the man-environment relationship, ranging from the idyllic (“mother nature”) to the conflictual (“hostile nature”), seems to have been irremediably altered. The human experience of inhabited space is becoming increasingly distressful. Individuals and communities often appear to have lost their sense of orientation and their age-old reference points: they feel “out of place” (dépaysé), at home and at work – but also in places for social life and recreation –, frequently experiencing an overall state of deracination. It is not clear in what way these feelings are original and new, and we might wonder whether the feeling of being “out of place” is part and parcel of the modernist great narrative. Modern developments, however, actually seem to have radically changed our relationship with space, time and territory. Loyalty to a homeland or familiar territory with circumscribed sacrosanct borders is increasingly being replaced by the experience of several interconnected territories with uncertain, fluid borders in which traditions crossover and languages mix. At the same time, globalisation, the proliferation of new virtual spaces and new kinds of mobility have brought hitherto unknown spatial-temporal experiences. The ringing of the church bell setting the rhythm for work days and festivities has been replaced by the ringing of the global bell in stock exchanges which close in Tokyo while opening in Milan, or open in New York while closing in London. This “timeless” time extending to all sectors of human existence has given rise to an inextricable mesh of multiple biological and social time scales. And it has been accompanied by a reduction, restriction or destruction of the places of our physical existence, invaded by growing numbers of people, increasingly cumbersome goods, more resistant refuse, and increasingly lethal pollutants. Today there is a need to come to terms with a kind of ontological mutation in the idea of space, which can no longer be conceived as a container or background element whose description matches its cartographic co-ordinates, but rather an existential metaphysical dimension, inseparable from the experience of people who live in it. New visions of the world are required, innovative formulations for a liveable habitat enabling us to rethink
– bearing in mind the needs of the contemporary world – the concepts of space, territory, landscape and nature so that they take into account the irreversible changes affecting them, but also the opportunities those changes offer. What form should be given to the “greenhouses” in which human beings live so that they may again offer security and prosperity? Is the mnemonic and emotive relationship established with certain places a constant universal factor? Are the elements involved in building identity always inextricably bound to memory (individual and collective) and the mental processes of the objectivisation of the real? To what extent is our time really speciï¬c and different from the other periods and the other episodes of globalisation? Can contradictory tendencies such as globalisation (as we experience it, with its fl uid, composite identities, nomadism and networks) and the trend to make identity, places and local knowledge into a fetishist heritage be made to coexist? Is it possible to ï¬ gure out a shared alternative metaphor for the notion of globalisation? Can the analysis of the relationship between language and spatial cognition, or the analysis of the mutual influences of spatial arrangements and feelings and emotions help us formulate a new approach to the concept of habitat? What kind of strategies, forms and actors will be involved in new landscaping policies? Can the land artists’ creative use of space help us in this line of thinking? Venice is an extraordinarily beautiful city that is gradually becoming uninhabitable due to repercussions of globalisation. It emblematically sums up the sense of the distressful experience of space which was the starting point for these reflections. But for this very reason, Venice also would seem to be the most suitable setting to host a multidisciplinary enquiry into landscape, territory, identity and the relations binding them together. The participants at the 2009 edition of the Dialoghi di San Giorgio are Godfrey Baldacchino, Claire Bishop, William Cronon, Philippe Descola, Olafur Eliasson, Tim Ingold, Bruno Latour, Elaine Stratford and Nigel Thrift.
Many thanks to the Mart – Museo di Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Trento
e Rovereto for teh image courtesy of Giacomo Balla’s, Velo di vedova + paesaggio (Corazzata + vedova + vento)
I Dialoghi di San Giorgio are open to the general public.
The official language is English.
Timetable
9.00 – 10.30 / 11.00 – 12.30 / 14.30 –16.00
Information
