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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.

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.

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.

This paper discusses the empirical findings concerning the visual aesthetic experience in a neurological context. Accordingly, the aim of this paper is to shed light on the common ground across neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy to pave new roads for empirical research. Cognitive models posit that the brain employs neural networks mediating bottom-up and top- down processes, and in effect, engenders emotion and reward throughout the visual aesthetic experience. Likewise, empathy and its corresponding recruitment of bodily processes may facilitate the understanding of a visual artwork’s depicted emotion, which may allow the viewer to engage with the visual artwork from a psychological distance and, consequently, to experience pleasure regardless of the visual artwork’s emotional content. In conclusion, empathetic processes may be central to the visual aesthetic experience and should be considered by future empirical research investigating the visual aesthetic experience.

Abstract: the paper considers the creative restoration of an early Christian basilica in Siponto, Apulia, realized by Italian artist Edoardo Tresoldi. Tresoldi resorts to the wire mesh as an artistic material: the restored basilica thus results in a monumental but evanescent building. After an introduction describing the public artwork, the paper will unfold in two main sections. In the first one, the focus will be on the concept of genius loci as a distinctive character of Tresoldi’s poetics. Through an Heideggerian lens, the stress will be put on the existential value of dwelling, which is highlighted by the restored church. The second section will focus on the ghostly and uncanny (unheimlich) appearance of the basilica. Thanks to authors such as Derrida and Didi-Huberman, it will be shown that a genius deloci is at work in the site as well, calling into question the different temporalities that animate the basilica. Genius loci and genius deloci will prove as a conceptual couple capable of providing us with an access to the artwork; nevertheless, they will not be understood as a dichotomy, i.e. as mutually exclusive concepts, but as opposite notions that “haunt” each other and that cannot but be used together, in the postmodernist fashion of double-coding.

The paper reconsiders the possibility of understanding the art of avant-garde in the light of the sublime, as argued by Jean-François Lyotard in his famous critical essay on Barnett Newman’s artwork Vir Heroicus Sublimis. According to the paper, the scope of a ‘sublime art’ of the avant-garde is larger than the reference to a single artist or movement, and entails the possibility of comprehending the reflective stance of modernism as a critique, performed by art, of the conditions of possibility of exposition as a gesture that is relevant not only to the art world but to experience at large. The sublime art brings this critique to its extreme consequences as far as it explores the boundaries of exposition with regard to the world image supplied by the media system. This sublime directory of the avant-garde was inaugurated by Marcel Duchamp as he introduced the practice of the ready-media in the art system. However, it enjoyed a long-lasting success thereafter.

The paper aims to illustrate the Italian play L’Avversario, a work by Invisibile Kollettivo that tries to translate into a theatrical show the roman written by the French author Emmanuel Carrère. Both in the roman and in the play the most important aspect is the author’s point of view together with his feelings. This results quite normal referring to a book, but it is way too original in a theatrical play. So, the paper tries to explain the motivation that moved the Italian artists to stay loyal to the spirit of the book, choosing the form of the scenic reading for bringing it on stage. Theatre, Carrère, Lettura scenica, Teatro dell’Elfo, Invisibile Kollettivo

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.

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,).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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)

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.

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.

Martha Nussbaum considers disgust a "political emotion" that is at the base of both negative value judgments and intolerance towards diversity. The purpose of this paper is to show the relation between Nussbaum's analysis of disgust and her ethical-political theory. In particular, the paper aims at highlighting some essential elements of this theory: the role of the body in social dynamics, the reformulation of the concepts of human nature and dignity, the relation between perception and evaluation, the public role of imagination and art, the importance of moral psychology.Â

The paper focuses on the theory of art outlined by Giovanni Battista Montini (1897-1978) – usually known as Pope Paul VI (position held between 1963 and 1978) – investigated from an aesthetic point of view. The author refers also to less-known manuscripts outlined by G.B. Montini since the first decays of the XX century and then substantially confirmed by his subsequent speeches with the role of Archbishop of Milan (1954-1963) and later Pope. The paper allows to clarify the theoretical roots of the famous request addressed in 1964 to contemporary artists to enter into an alliance with the Church aimed at discovering the most genuine and spiritual needs of contemporary mankind. It focuses therefore not only on the Paul VI’s theory of holy art, but properly on his very conception of art and of the artists’ mission considered into a broader sense. The artist is ultimately regarded as a kind of prototype of contemporary Christian man.

Dante’s Divina Commedia is one of the most influential literary works in Italy and not only. Reading, understanding and analysing it are a fundamental part of the skills every Italian student should reach, due to the national school programs, particularly in middle and high school. Many Italians and internationals comics’authors worked on Divina Commedia, feeding the collective imagination about Dante, giving new readings of popular suggestions – in this paper, we’ll partially analyse Marcello Toninelli’s and GōNagai’s works, as influences in didactics, but also as peculiar products, with a universal approach, inspired by Dante’s world. So comics can also be considered didactic media. In fact students can be involved in a process where they could build their own comics based on Divina Commedia. Considering both Divina Commedia and comics linguistic media, every student will be able to join a travel from literature to comics and back, creating a final original product, testifying comprehension and personalization of the original literary work.

This paper is intended to illustrate the possibilities offered by comics in linguistic and literary education. In particular, the subject of analysis concerns a publication by Disney, Zio Paperone e il centounesimo canto, made as a tribute to Dante and the Divina Commedia. The proposal is introduced by a reference to the mystery that surrounds various discoveries of songs of the Divina Commedia supposedly lost; it continues with a description of the comic as a medium in linguistic and literary education; the idea of language varieties and the coexistence of different languages is then presented, linking the proposal to the requirements contained in ministerial school documents. To conclude, an analysis of the language present in the balloons of the comic is carried out, with an examination of the choices made by the authors, also through references in diachrony.

Christopher Norris is Emeritus professor at Cardiff University. Recently, he began to address philosophical questions through poetry. In his paper, he explains why. Rather than expressing definite ideas in an elegant way, poetry can be intended as a process from which new ideas (also philosophical ones) can emerge. The result are a number of poems which cover a variety of issues, ranging from philosophy to politics, arts, history of ideas and science. Itinera has already begun to publish a few of these poems in previous issues and is now presenting three of them on painters (Turner, Matisse, Magritte).

Since Virtual Reality (VR) is characterised by the absence of the frame, the VR user has the impression of being immersed into the image, thus overcoming the distinction between spectacle and spectator. Therefore, the user becomes herself part of the work of art, exposing the limits of the Cartesian dualisms dominating the Western thought and raising critical questions about traditional aesthetic categories. Hence, my paper aims at pondering on the ontological status of the VR user. In opposition to Simon Penny’s argument, which proposes that VR fragments the viewer into a physical body versus a virtual one, my research goal is to clarify that the participant’s physical body and virtual body are inseparable and firmly intertwined. In order to do so, I analyse the VR documentary Send me Home (Evanisko, 2019). The point of departure is the acknowledgment that the VR user is invisible both to herself and to the other characters with whom she shares the virtual space. Following Jacques Derrida’s Specters of Marx, I argue that this invisibility reveals the ontological status of the VR participant as a specter. However, my goal is to show that the spectrality of the user is not in contradiction with her carnality: on the contrary, even when one tries to bracket the body, the body remains vigilant, interpreting the world through its flesh. To conclude, then, I argue that the body is the condition of possibility for the user to feel immersed into the virtual world, and that, contrary to the fragmentation argument, physical body and virtual body cannot be thought as separate.

At the time of Instagramism, social media profiles are characterized by recognizable and homogeneous visual theme. Following the spread of the filter culture which allows greater control over numerous chromo-luministic parameters, users are confronted with a normalization of the notions of editing and color correction before every contents’ online publication. The content creators are capable to creatively make what Lev Manovich defines style of existence, using the post-production tools now maneuverable to achieve the desired representation. In a self-representative but social dispositif, the aesthetics of filter triggers chromatic characterizations and compositions such as the color grid. The paper intends to deepen the theoretical and methodological relationship between the social self-representation and the chromatic practice, with particular attention to the ways in which the coloristic connotations led to pleasant and gratifying presentation of the Self on Instagram platform.

Our paper aims at analyzing the relationship between the dimension of colour and the concept of iconic difference as it has been developed by the German philosopher Gottfried Boehm. In particular, we show how colours can contribute to the blossoming of iconic meaning in a way that cannot be fully expressed through language, thus giving access to a more authentic ontological truth of the object represented in the image. Moreover, we introduce a comparison between Boehm, Merleau-Ponty and Derrida. More specifically, we argue that Boehm’s understanding of the colour and of the concept of difference relies largely on the work of Merleau-Ponty and diverges for this reason with Derrida’s approach towards colours. Therefore, we conclude that any comparison between Boehm and Derrida should be undertaken prudently, if our goal is to appreciate the specific material features of images against the reduction of textual analysis.

This paper aims to understand whether and to which extent the Futurism theory of theatre and its practices have influenced the Italian contemporary scene. Common opinion still has it that Futurism has left little to no legacy in the Italian theatre, and we cannot properly speak of neo-futurism or of an active Futurist avant-garde. Nonetheless, taking a closer look at some of most significant figures in Italian experimental theatre (for example, Ivrea Manifesto’s project, Carmelo Bene, Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio) this paper aims to underline the many elements that trace back to Futurist’s theatre, suggesting the need to re-read futurist artistic experiences – at least in the field of performing arts – as constructive practices aimed at the building of a new kind of theatre.

Metamorphosis seems problematic for our occidental point of view. Becoming in general is viewed as an error or exception by our classic standpoint. In fact, it is strongly against identity and law of non-contradiction: A is fundamentally something different from B and for A it is impossible to be at the same time B. We need to think A as what-becomes-B in order to make metamorphosis possible. Anyway, how can A become B? As a matter of fact, this very claim has been historically the most common critic opposed to becoming. Deleuze and Guattari in their monumental work had tried to offer an enormous contribution to a few related problems. Redefining the subject as an event described by movement and affect can exceed the metamorphosis’ aporia. This new principle of individuation provides a new look upon arisen questions primarily because affects and movements are constant coordinates that define how metamorphosis is experienced. The paper tries to show how the betweenness (Zwischenheit; Aida; Traità) in action in the encounter with people, human beings, things, animals, plants and minerals defines the logic field of metamorphosis. This is shown in dialogue with the ontological turn in anthropology that is particularly focused on this affective and lively dimension of encounter especially among Amazonian populations. Actually this is also what happens in our – occidental and classical but live – relation with things and objects, as long as we try to think a real conceptualisation of experience.

The paper investigates the question of the ornament starting from a parallelism between biological- architectural ornaments and decorative-artistic ones. The element of innovation and the emergency of the ornament allow to consider images as if they were living organisms and to highlight their becoming through new forms. Starting from a morphological point of view, from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe to the contemporary morphology, the ornament is strictly connected to the dynamics of forms and to a particular approach to the visible. The ornamental dynamics, according to the binomial form-function, open the dimension of the visible to new perspectives and foreshadow potentially infinite changes. The essay analyzes the consequences in the production of visible forms and in the attribution of meanings, but also the political function of images, with particular reference to the idea of an economy of visible forms.

The paper investigates the question of the ornament starting from a parallelism between biological- architectural ornaments and decorative-artistic ones. The element of innovation and the emergency of the ornament allow to consider images as if they were living organisms and to highlight their becoming through new forms. Starting from a morphological point of view, from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe to the contemporary morphology, the ornament is strictly connected to the dynamics of forms and to a particular approach to the visible. The ornamental dynamics, according to the binomial form-function, open the dimension of the visible to new perspectives and foreshadow potentially infinite changes. The essay analyzes the consequences in the production of visible forms and in the attribution of meanings, but also the political function of images, with particular reference to the idea of an economy of visible forms.

This paper aims to investigate the aesthetic implications of a particular type of image: Benjamin's Dialectic of Stillness, whose most typical application concerns the Baroque Allegory in The Origin of German Tragic Drama. The close relations with the works of Marcel Proust are established by Benjamin himself. The minute freed from the order of time, the Instant in Proust, the extra-temporal moment in Benjamin, are the places of realization of the sublime, ready to dialectically reveal the mortal dissolution of the subject. Through the analysis of several passages from the Recherche, in the light of Benjamin’s gnoseological premises, can we say the silent misunderstanding of sublime is, like death, accessible only for a moment?

The essays on Aesthetics of philosopher Günther Anders are still almost unknown; for his part, painter George Grosz’ production from the 1930s and during his American exile has been mainly despised by art historians. Both Anders and Grosz considered themselves as holding up an unmerciful mirror to society. The aim of this paper is to offer an analysis on the short but poignant texts which Anders wrote on Grosz’ artistic research, providing some of the most vitriolic social criticism of his time. The studies of Anders show unpredicted connections, unveiling in an unprecedented way the deep unity of Grosz’ wide œuvre marked by an absolute pessimism, and therefore particularly near to the philosopher’s “negative ontology”. Moreover, these texts raise key questions concerning modern art itself which are still central in our time, among others: the political engagement of artists, their relationship with the market, and their clairvoyance, the ethical use of montage practice, and the thin line between life and art.

This paper aims to analyse the “Lob des Taifuns. Reisetagebücher in Haikus” by Durs Grünbein, with the intention of showing how Japanese theories of thought, poetic and artistic practises – in particular, haikus – have played a decisive role for Grünbein, not only for understanding “another culture”, but also for reflecting on the aesthetic experience and the forms of telling proper to the metropolitan setting. In this perspective, Grünbein’s book becomes an “ideal place” to see the dialogue between “East” and “West” as an establishment of a tension-filled space between different styles which, without denying their own specificity, offer themselves to contamination and give life to the most recent form of the “metropolitan aesthetic”.

...tra la Carne e il Cielo is an opera by Azio Corghi set to a libretto by Maddalena Mazzocut-Mis. The inspiration of the opera is the essay Studi sullo stile di Bach by Pier Paolo Pasolini, a critical analysis to Bach’s violin sonatas. Mazzocut-Mis re-uses Pasolini’s words in the libretto, while the music is a variation on Bach’s sonatas by Corghi. The aim of this paper is the analysis of the language of Pasolini and the dramaturgical use of his words in the opera focusing on the passage from essay to libretto.

This research is the first of its kind in addressing the story and the internal affairs of the former Psychiatric hospital of Collemaggio, Aquila. A few years ago a collection of pictures of the patients was found within the walls of the Hospital. This study aims at analysing the different iconography that the pictures represent, to put them inside the historical evolution of psychiatric photography. This was made possible by the papers collected by the Association 180 Amici-L’Aquila. The second objective of this study is the iconographic comparison between the healthy state of the patients before and after the closure of the Hospital.

Calderon and Shakespeare are the two main authors that lie behind Benjamin’s examination of the German baroque drama. This paper addresses the importance of Shakespeare in his difference from the other big European cousin, Calderon. This does not mean that, according to Benjamin, Shakespeare is more important than Calderon (his beautiful essay on Calderon of 1923 contradicts this point), but rather that the English author brings to light an element that in Calderon is in some way missing. This is what Benjamin in some critical texts from the period of the Trauerpielbuch calls the «dramatic». Why does Benjamin say here that the dramatic precedes the tragic? And what does this have to do with the two Shakespearian characters he refers to in a letter of the same year, Caliban and Ariel? Moreover, is the interpretation of The Tempest that this passage implies the same as the one that he suggested in his previous essay on As you like it (1918)? These questions will lead to a few passages of the Trauerspielbuch that were particularly difficult to translate (not only in the two Italian previous translations, but also in the first English version, by John Osborne) and that can shed light on some important aspects of the book itself. In this context, another Shakespearian character will come to the aid, the Jacques of As you like it, with his Greek invocation «to call fools into a circle».

This special issue gathers some of the papers presented on occasion of the international conference Women Representing Women in Theatre, held at the University of Milan on 20th-21th May 2019. With no pretence of being exhaustive and adopting a diachronic perspective, the following contributions examine women’s theatre in Italy in the last five decades—from the educational theatre of the early 1900s to the feminist dramaturgy and from the literary rendition of intergenerational conflicts to contemporary rewritings of the patriarchal script. Their differences notwithstanding, all the dramaturgical forms examined in this issue share a marked concern for existing (theatrical and social) conventions and the willingness for their authors to reclaim new form of self-representation — indeed, a stage of their own.

This paper aims to report the conclusions of a practice-as-research laboratory carried out with students of Université Lumière Lyon 2, which took place within the project “Borders’ trespassing: from France to Italy, from research to creation, from an art to another”. Students were invited to write a dramaturgy inspired from Casanova’s life. They explored several questions about playwriting (action, character, dialog…) and found original solutions to write a biographic play. The results question the representation of identity and personality in our mediatic world, experimenting intermediality in their text. Keymords: théâtre, Giacomo Casanova, laboratoire, recherche-création, intermédialité.

The paper aims to explore the theatrical success of Irène Némirovsky’s work, analysing in particular two Italian productions: Il Ballo, conceived and performed by Sonia Bergamasco, and the play Jezabel, adapted from the namesake novel by Maddalena Mazzocut-Mis and Sofia Pelczer, and directed by the latter. The analysis of these performances allows also to highlight the inherent theatrical dimension of Némirovsky’s work, both on a thematic and formal level. Némirovsky, representation, theatre, intermediality

Les combustibles (translated into Italian as Libri da ardere) is the third Amélie Nothomb work and her unique theatrical text. However, it can’t be considered as a canonical play, for its strong relationship with the page and the reader. The paper focuses on two theatrical versions produced by Teatro dell’Elfo in Milan in 2006 and 2018, adapted and directed by Cristina Crippa. The show maintains the link with the book through the declamation of stage directions by the three characters, in an experiment between reading and theatre. Combustibles, Nothomb, Cristina Crippa, Teatro dell’Elfo.

The paper aims to analyse the possibilities of an emotional political theatre, which finds its roots in poetry of Artaud’s rather than Brecht’s. Two stagings of Christopher Marlowe’s The Massacre at Paris are analysed: the first directed by Patrice Chéreau at the Théâtre National Populaire in 1972 (Massacre à Paris) and the second by Ricci/Forte staged in 2016 (La strage di Parigi). Despite the aesthetic and time differences both staging aim to actualise Marlowe’s play through sensorial stimulation (smell and touch) and allusions to contemporary ideological murders.

This paper examines points of convergence between two major contemporary dramatists: British Edward Bond and Argentine-Spanish Rodrigo García. Indeed, even if their plays are formally very different, both stem from a radical criticism of our capitalistic consumption/aggression culture, both rely on the performativity of what is presented on stage, and both grant a prominent place to food. Food, which informs Bond’s critical and theoretical thought as well as his plays, and is omnipresent in García’s stage works, turns out to be an original dramatic constituent. By this means both dramatists establish contact with the spectator, with a view to bring him to (re)define his humanity and his political positions.

The first and fundamental experience as a theatre spectator usually happens during high school period. How do we make this first encounter as effective as possible? The project Acrobazie Critiche, supported by Fondazione Cariplo and targeting some high schools in Milan, aims to increase students’ awareness as spectators through their active participation and knowledge of dramatic theory. This paper examines premises, objectives and results of the project.

Why do we make the aesthetic judgements and have the aesthetic preferences that we do? How and to what extent does repeated exposure to a certain aesthetic object influence our appreciation and taste for it? The present paper aims at reflecting on the role played by repetition in enhancing people's appreciation and attitudes towards an aesthetic stimulus (either a work of art or a natural object or event). Almost forty years ago the Polish-born psychologist Robert Zajonc famously championed the so-called "mere-exposure effect" hypothesis (Zajonc 1968), according to which repeated exposure of an individual to a stimulus is a sufficient condition for the enhancement of his/her attitude toward it. When applied to the aesthetic case, however, Zajonc's theory produces inconsistent evidence. Is repetition useful or, more precisely, is it true that "the more we repeat, the more we like"? Repetita iuvant?

Pain, as a physical and emotional experience, is an involuntary and unpleasant response to a situation, namely an external manifestation of an unintentional aversion to reality. This paper discusses the social aspects of pain that are relevant to political philosophy, insofar as the concept of pain can be considered as an effective parameter to define a society. It will be argued that if pain in our society is experienced as private, the experience of solidarity can only be shared with people and situations with whom we can identify. In order to understand the emotional distance of many injustices in the world, the need for an awareness of human beings’ involvement in other people’s suffering is critical.

In § 49 of the Critique of the Power of Judgment Kant puts forward a view that the feeling of pleasure in the experience of the beautiful can be stimulated not merely by perceptual properties, but by ideas and thoughts as well. The aim of this paper is to argue that aesthetic ideas fill in the emptiness that abstract and emotion concepts on their own would have without empirical intuitions. That is, aesthetic ideas make these concepts more accessible to us, by creating image schemas that allow us to think about these abstract concepts in a way linked to sensory experience, thereby imbuing them with a more substantive meaning and understanding.

This issue of Itinera collects a selection of the papers presented by the participants of the International Conference "Aesthetics of Emotions. Arts and Cognitive Science" held in October 2016 at the University of Milan. The focus of the conference, on the link between arts, emotions and cognitive sciences, is richly reflected in the themes addressed by the essays, which attempt to put into interdisciplinary dialogue "classical" perspectives of the history of aesthetics with more contemporary perspectives inspired by experimental sciences, in particular psychology, cognitive sciences and the theory of emotions.

This paper aims to clarify the contrasted public response to Romeo Castellucci’s works, analysing particularly his work the Oresteia (2015) in the light of actual philosophic and scientific researches about hypnosis. Hypnosis, in fact, may provides us with the tools to understand the scenic processes which may induce a state of trance-like in the spectator and more generally the emotional path, between shock, hypnosis and distance, proposed by the images on stage.

This paper aims to investigate the nature of aesthetic experience, focusing on the interplay between emotions and cognition. We shall establish a link between a phenomenological account of emotions and a pragmatist, anti-dogmatic view on aesthetics, such as that defended by John Dewey. Although pragmatism and phenomenology have historically emerged as separate traditions, they might mutually share resources to achieve an exhaustive description of aesthetic experience. Both traditions conceive aesthetics as a “philosophy of experience”, and they agree on the decisive role emotional intentionality plays in the constitution of an aesthetic experience.

This section gathers together the improved versions of the papers presented at the Benjaminian Colloquium «Art, Critique and Memory – Values and Historical Tensions in the Experience of the City», which took place at the Faculty for Social Sciences and Humanities of Universidade Nova de Lisboa on the 23rd of June 2016 as part of an ongoing research project – conducted by IFILNOVA’s group «Art, Critique and Aesthetic Experience».

This paper analyses both the possibility of interpreting theodicy as provided with a social function and that of a secularized version of the theodicy itself, characterised by a remarkable continuity between its religious version and the secularized one. To this purpose we focus on the functional analysis of theodicy, i. e. on the concrete effects that it has on society, and on its argumentative structure, reading it as a special kind of social justification; in particular, we underline the role of theodicy in the construction of meaning and its relations with ethics, the conception of justice and the presence of evil in the world. This interpretation is then tested by applying the theoretical conclusions thus obtained to a specific case: Weber’s analysis on Protestant ethic, since it exemplifies a theodicy with a clear social function. Lastly we apply this analysis to the historical case of Social Darwinism, interpreting it as a concrete instance of secularized theodicy; we especially focus on the thought and influence of Herbert Spencer and on its effects on his fervent, as well as probably most famous follower, Andrew Carnegie.

The background thesis of the paper concerns the deep methodological continuity that binds Benjamin’s Project on the Parisian Passages to his book on the Trauerspiel. The starting point is offered then by the reprise of the connection between Benjamin’s micrology and the theological task of critically reconstituting the whole in its original sense. This connection is consequently developed in a consideration of the “passage” as a nominal substance. On this basis is focused the complementarity in Benjamin’s late philosophy between historical materialism and theological nominalism. From the intertwining between urban and linguistic spaces emerges the figure of modern city as a labyrinth. The last move consists in converting the labyrinth in a monad, that is in an intensive space of knowledge and experience of truth.