COLLECTING PEOPLE – THE ART OF THINKING
May 17
the Diogene Tram
h. 6:30 pm
Worlds and languages
Collecting People-The Art of Thinking, promoted by Progetto Diogene and curated by Clara Madaro, is a series of meetings in which relationships are intertwined while discussing some pressing issues concerning artistic and philosophical research. The last edition of the project dealt with the methods of direct relationship with the world, interweaving the artists’ and philosophers’ research on emotion, affordance, illusion, and ecology.
The next edition is entitled Worlds and Languages, and it will continue to link art and theory on a journey into the worlds of the arts and languages, starting with three forms of media that are very present in our daily life: video, music, and the Internet.
“The limits of my language are the limits of my world,” wrote Wittgenstein in his Tractatus. Moving within in the social landscape and arts research, one is thus tempted to wonder whether it is the languages that shape the worlds or the worlds that define the limits of the languages. How are the languages of music, science, and cinema semantically and syntactically translated in the visual art world? How do the visual arts transform their languages to mingle with the social circuits of other arts and disciplines? The answer to these general questions is secondary.
The method of The Art of Thinking privileges an analysis of the singularity of each artistic research in relation to the singularity of a theoretical research by exploring the osmotic mechanism leading to the contamination of the media, and questioning whether, by analyzing, forcing, and hybridizing the rules of a language, the possible aspects of reality can be grasped, thereby triggering a short circuit of the artistic and social cognitive categories. The ability to bring together different languages, pushing them out of their disciplinary context, starting with a necessity or a deficit arising from the relationship with reality, makes the visual arts a potentially attractive setting for the generation and regeneration of knowledge, but in any case, the visual art world has its own rules, conventions, and aesthetic and social norms that restrict the game moves.
When they inhabit the blurred borderline between multiple social worlds and languages, do artists and philosophers have a position within the ecology of meanings of theoretical and artistic worlds that allows them to be directors of visions of possible worlds? Collecting People-The Art of Thinking 2016 is situated on the border with artists and philosophers who live in manifold worlds and speak many languages.
Francesco Bertocco (Milan, 1983. Lives and works in Milan). Bertocco is an artist and filmmaker, whose research focuses on the linguistic complexity of the documentary genre. Recently, he has been researching the relationships between documenting and scientific imagining. After receiving his BA degree in Modern Literature, in 2011, he earned a degree in Film and Video from the Brera Academy of Fine Arts. He has presented his research in solo and two-person shows: Through a glass darkly, BACO, Bergamo, Italy; Allegoria (with Aberto Grifi), Viafarini DOCVA; Eclissi, MAGA Art Museum in Gallarate; F (with Alessandra Messali), MAC, Lissone, in collaboration with Viafarini DOCVA; Role Play, Lucie Fontaine, Milan; Focus Group, ROOM Gallery, Milan. His work has been shown in group exhibitions and festivals: OCAT, Shanghai; Kino der Kunst, Münich; Museum 900, Milan; Glitch. Interference between art and cinema in Italy, PAC-Pavilion of Contemporary Art in Milan; Vision du Réel – International Documentary Festival, Nyon, Switzerland; The Art Screen, Florence; Errors Allowed – Mediterranea 16, Ancona. He has recently had exhibits at Careof DOCVA (ArteVisione, a project in collaboration with Sky for the social support of young Italian artists.), Milan; Luigi Pecci Center for Contemporary Art in Prato; Merz Foundation, Turin; and the International Filmmaker Festival, Milan.
Enrico Terrone has a degree in engineering, a PhD in philosophy, and he is a qualified university teacher of cinema, a subject that he has taught at the University of Eastern Piedmont. He is a member of Labonte (Laboratory of Ontology, University of Turin) and editor of the magazine Segnocinema. He is the author, together with Luca Bandirali, of the books: “Nell’occhio, nel cielo. Teoria e storia del cinema di fantascienza” (“In the eye, in the sky. Theory and history of science fiction movies”, Lindau 2008), “Il sistema sceneggiatura. Scrivere e descrivere i film” (“The script system. Writing and describing movies”, Lindau 2009), “Filosofia delle serie tv. Dalla scena del crimine al trono di spade” (“Philosophy of TV series. From Crime Scene Investigation to the Game of Thrones” (Mimesis 2012). His latest book is “Filosofia del film” (“Philosophy of movies”, Carocci 2014). In 2014, he was named research fellow at the Käte Hamburger Centre for Advanced Study in the Humanities in Bonn, and since 2015, he has been a research fellow at Collège d’études Mondiales in Paris.
