Festival della Mente » 2011

2011 Edition

Festival della Mente — Tue, 23 Jun 2015 12:25:43 +0000

Programmazione 2011 en Download

The Festival’s project is to address creativity and its processes with the help of such unique witnesses as the thinkers, theoreticians, scholars of the mind who will offer our audiences a total of 39 unique workshops, lectures, and performances designed on purpose for them. We are hoping to make these three days of meetings and discussions a true and proper celebration of the mind and of free thought, meant for all those who seek instruments in order to understand themselves and the surrounding reality—for all those who believe that culture is a crucial tool to improve our lives. Every year the Festival’s director Giulia Cogoli, discusses the topics ahead of time with the prospective speakers in view of offering something new: a sort of common journey rather than just a list of events. Thus, after more than 400 events successfully designed and staged with the cooperation of over 300 intellectuals, the challenge continues in our quest for innovative and stimulating topics to be addressed in a pleasant, informal atmosphere.

Evento n.39

Festival della Mente — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 21:00:00 +0000

Jean de Joinville was a French knight and a gentleman, not only a vassal of King Louis IX, but one of his friends. He never needed to conceal what he thought, for a man of such a lineage was afraid of no-one. When he left on a crusade he admitted that he did not feel like it, and as he rode away he kept turning around to see his castle, where he had left his young bride. His honor demanded that he leave—and honor was all-important. Jean loved his King, but the idea that he was a saint seemed funny to him. When the whole expedition fell into Saracen hands, one of its members suggested that instead of surrendering they should accept to be martyred: ‘But we,’ Jean de Joinville candidly said, ‘did not listen.’ Through his work Vita di San Luigi we discover that the Middle Ages of the chivalry were a time of far greater disenchantment than the chansons de geste would have us believe.

Evento n.38

Festival della Mente — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 19:16:00 +0000

According to Milton Erickson, each one of us is much more than he thinks he is, and knows much more than he thinks he knows. Based upon this statement, Francesco Tesei transforms the most modern and effective techniques of mentalism, subliminal communication and psychological illusionism, and through them invites everyone to draw on the ‘magical’ resources of the unconscious. Like a true and proper ‘mind juggler,’ Tesei presents a performance of acrobatic evolutions involving some of the most intimate and personal things—our dreams, our mind. the true protagonist of the performance, however, is the audience, invited to play with the five senses, thoughts, and perceptions, under the guidance of the ‘mentalist.’

Evento n.37

Festival della Mente — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 19:15:00 +0000

The human and poetic dialogue between Attilio Bertolucci and Pier Paolo Pasolini deals with the recognition of the other as different and absolute, the respect of the other, who is so close and at the same time so distant. Both poets lived for years in the same building in the Monteverde district of Rome, and developed an intimate friendship that expressed itself in poetry. On the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of Attiliio Bertolucci, the voice of two popular actors, Sonia Bergamasco and Fabrizio Gifuni, will take turns exploring the mystery of that friendship through the sound of two of Italy’s great poetic voices..

Evento n.36

Festival della Mente — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 17:30:00 +0000

Life is probably a single, great event that has been going on for almost four billion years taking on very diverse forms and ex pressing itself in an impressive number of particolar events—the countless different individuals that have once lived and are now living. This is not a brand-new idea, but it is not easily accepted in its fullest meaning. Put it differently, it means that the DNA of the genome of an organism whose life is just beginning may be but a ‘summary’ of all previous events. On the other hand, havin a genome is just what makes a living being one—stones and clouds have no genome. In this broad scenario is there any room for new events, i.e., for a new life? With due precautions, the answer is yes, but under very specific conditions.

Evento N.35

Festival della Mente — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 17:00:00 +0000

For Luce Irigaray, her psychoanalytical training and her yoga practice are the point of departure for a meditation on pain and on the way to cultivate a natural energy. Psychoanalysis and yoga can be of help there where traditional medicine fails. Yoga in particular can support ailing persons by means of a practice to restore their energy. ‘Much of today’s political and economic discourse deals with the exhaustion of natural reserves, but there is hardly any mention of the natural reserve of human beings themselves. In order to build a more peaceful and happier future, it would be desirable to deal with these first, above all in connection to the environment, nutrition and gender differences. Bringing together the culture of breathing and the culture of love means to create a bridge between the East and the West, but without either one being culturally subjected to the other.’

Evento N.34

Festival della Mente — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 15:00:00 +0000

One of Mister Aster’s aphorisms says: ‘Life is a great game that we happen to be playing without knowing its rules well and without being sure of the prize we can get in the end.’ If it is true that we can’t be sure of the prize, concerning the rules we can safely say that they are of a mathematical nature. For mathematics enters into play in all aspects of our life, from the simplest to the most complex, even if many times we don’t realize that. An entertaining and playful event devoted to a topic that is often considered boring, but instead is a great creative and spectacular game (think of the many meanings of the word ‘number’), designed to help the audience discover curious and unsuspected sides of the great game of life.

Evento n.33

Festival della Mente — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 14:30:00 +0000

According to the French poet Mallarmé, the Muse of impossibility extends her protective wing over every work of art. Unlike the Muse of inspiration, this Muse contains every work within the boundaries of the humanly possible. Every great creator is aware of the imperfection of his or her work, and failure is the stuff of a large part of all creation. Jorge Luis Borges, and his master Dante, know that: the artist must resign himself never to reach the full expression of his vision, and must recognize that artistic achievement, as Borges himself said, is but ‘the imminence of a revelation that never takes place.’

Evento n.32

Festival della Mente — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 13:30:00 +0000

Repeatedly evoked by all the actors of civil society and by politicians, the family is the true foundation myth of Italian society. But is the family really declining or doomed as many claim? What statistics show is that the family is changing, but remains the basic unit of all Western societies, in particular the Italian one. Unlike those of central and northern Europe, Italian families are held together, first and foremost, by strong blood ties that increasing affluence has not at all weakened. What we have seen in the past century is a radical change of the motives for creating a couple: from mutual interest (or family interests) to mutual attraction (the romantic couple), to alternative forms of marriage. But these changes are something that Italy shares with other affluent countries.

Evento n.30

Festival della Mente — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 13:00:00 +0000

After his past talks on music and on books, Luca Scarlini makes his comeback in Sarzana with a lecture on the world of images and the power they have on people. Pictures, movies, paintings—be they famous or obscure—will accompany him in this investigation of the ways in which power has used images to its advantage, or censured them out of fear. Scarlini will discuss a broad range of episodes, from the iconoclasm in Constantinople under Leon II to Hitler’s regime to that of Cambodia’s Pol Pot, the head of the Khmer Rouge to tried to erase all images from previous eras. He will also comment on some of the allegedly miraculous images that some devote themselves to for help and rescue: a practice which is a sold as the world and has always been connected, for Christians, to the devotion to Saint Luke, the mystical painter of the divine.