Festival della Mente » 2012

2012 Edition

Festival della Mente — Tue, 23 Jun 2015 12:53:26 +0000

Programmazione 2012 en Download

Sarzana’s Festival della Mente has arrived at its 9th edition, and in such a difficult year as 2012, its organizers find that discussing creativity and creative processes is an important challenge as well as an invaluable opportunity to stimulate a public debate. Nothing can be more useful than culture and intellectual endeavors to help us all understand current trends, perhaps try to change the current, alarming state of things for the better.
After the nearly 500 events of the past 8 years, attended every year by an average of 40,000 people from all over Italy, Sarzana’s Festival della Mente – Europe’s first to be entirely devoted to creative processes renews its commitment and presents its 2012 program. Its director, Giulia Cogoli, has joined forces with leading Italian and foreign intellectuals to develop a number of lectures, workshops and performances designed for a large audience.

This is a Festival for all: for children and teenagers nearly 50 meetings are designed especially for them as well as for adults of all ages. Once again this year, a select group of leading thinkers, authors and performers will discuss their creative work in an accessible language, addressing issues of literature, music, science, history, linguistics, psychoanalysis, philosop hy, neurosciences, art, landscape, society, theatre, food, botany and much more. The red thread that runs through the program is as usual the absolute value of knowledge. There is no future, there is no democracy, there is no progress without knowledge.
This is the meaning of the Festival, and this is what you can expert if you come to share three special days, made possible by the support of Fondazione Carispe and the City of Sarzana.

Event #36

Festival della Mente — Sun, 02 Sep 2012 19:02:00 +0000

A man, a dog, a journey, the great North are the protagonists of the new project by Marco Paolini inspired by and dedicated to the writer Jack London. Paolini will investigate his adventurous life, discuss the relationship between man and nature, ad address the current meaning of limits. In a culture that makes no limits one of its slogans, the work of Jack London deserves revisiting. This great writer never passed any judgments on nature, but constantly investigated the impact of human choices on it. A monologue in the form of a ballad, a work in progress by the popular performer Marco Paolini, who will share the stage with the guitar and the voice of Lorenzo Monguzzi.

Event #35

Festival della Mente — Sun, 02 Sep 2012 17:31:00 +0000

One of the revolutionary discoveries of modern linguistics is that not all conceivable rules are applied in existing languages, and that even combination of rules are limited. In spite of its apparent chaos, Babel is therefore governed by invisible and very strict laws. But how broad are the confines within which a language may vary? Are they conventional, cultural, and arbitrary as we have long thought, or do they follow the brain’s neurobiological architecture? Today the great challenge of linguistics associated neurobiology is to identify the boundaries, established by the brain’s functional architecture—within which experience may influence the structure of language. Understanding this would produce unexpected results for those who are trying to answer the most important question: where does Man come from?

Event #34

Festival della Mente — Sun, 02 Sep 2012 17:00:00 +0000

Approximately 30,000 years ago, the species Homo sapiens began to display unusual behaviors such as ritual burials, wonderful cave paintings, musical instruments, ornaments. What happened in our way of thinking at that time? The modern human mind was born, capable of processing abstract concepts and of imagining different worlds. It was a brand new way to relate to the environment, with no equivalents on the other four human types that lived until recent times. Yet man had been born in Africa 200,000 years ago. This dual birth—first anatomical, then cognitive—continues to baffle scientists and is not yet fully understood. The story of how we became “global sapiens” is a fascinating adventure that we can describe at last tank to the surprising discoveries or recent years.

Event #33

Festival della Mente — Sun, 02 Sep 2012 16:00:00 +0000

Bach’s suites for cello solo are a mystery. In almost three centuries, these works have not yet revealed themselves, or offered a key to their interpretation that could be shared by the thousands of cellists who work on them every day. Why? One answer lies in the cello’s nature and soul. This is an instrument that approximates the expressive and technical possibilities of other better known ones such as violin and piano, but that entails unique difficulties. Yet by composing his Suites J.S. Bach has projected the cello into the future. The notes that can be played take on the instrument’s warm, deep color, but it is up to the listener (and to the performer) to imagine the rest of the polyphony. Since such gaps can partly be filled with the help of present-day technologies, during the performance Mario Brunello will play music of various origins that reveals the polyphony by means of electronics.

Event #32

Festival della Mente — Sun, 02 Sep 2012 15:02:00 +0000

A great master of the Qabbalistic tradition used to say: “The truth should be pursued and intelligence should be subjugated nor suffocated. It is necessary to say ‘I do not know’, and study”. Haim Baharier pleads for a return to study, and in so doing, he goes against the grain of the increasingly widespread fashion of rock stars turning to Qabbala in their chase of unrealistic promises against the background of the crisis of the West. Qabbala
has its roots in the biblical text, which leaves room for imagination, generates light, helps understand enigmas. It is like sailing in a sea dotted with buoys but without ever assuming they are fixed: the sailor can drown in certainty or open up to diversity.

Event #31

Festival della Mente — Sun, 02 Sep 2012 13:32:00 +0000

Street art is around us and concerns us all. From the blue streets by Henk Hofstra in Drachten, Netherlands to Banksy’s murals in Bethlehem, to those by Blu in Krakow, to JR’s portraits in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro or those by Sten and Lex in Køge, Denmark, to ivan’s blank pages in Italian squares, street art is a global movement that brings art to all for all have a right to experience it. Street art asks for no permissions and leaves its mark wherever it goes. It may be fascinating or annoying. It can but be ir-reverent, ir- ritating, ir-regular, ir-rational, for it is not only there to be looked at, but experienced (duration: approx. 150’ including a 60’ lecture and the screening of a movie on Banksy, Exit through the gift shop, Feltrinelli Real Cinema, 2011).

Event #30

Festival della Mente — Sun, 02 Sep 2012 13:01:00 +0000

The notion of creation stands between the notion of invention and that of discovery. A discovery is said of something that was un-covered, something we did not know but was present and is brought to light. Invention is said of something that was not and stands, so to speak, in a relationship to nothingness. Traditionally, therefore, discovery is attributed to science and invention to art. Yet are we sure that we can be content with this simple conceptual opposition? In actual fact science is no less connected to invention than art, and art with discovery. Still, art and science entail two different ontologies: science has reality for its object, art has the sense of reality.

Event #28

Festival della Mente — Sun, 02 Sep 2012 10:00:00 +0000

The Italian landscape does not only reflect the country’s recent history: it is our very identity. Be it urban, natural or agricultural, in the past thirty years Italy’s landscape has undergone constant changes but little or no attention had been paid to the artistic heritage that makes it unique or to the damage done by construction work to the soil. Starting over from culture means not only to recover the pride of being Italian but also to develop the country’s talent. For the modern notion of landscape, understood as an economic, environmental and social resource rather than an elitist phenomenon, requires a change in the models proposed by politics, as well as in the culture. This dialogue between two great experts who are personally committed to safeguarding the Italian landscape will take place 10 months after the floods that destroyed the area of La Spezia and the Lunigiana.

Event #27

Festival della Mente — Sun, 02 Sep 2012 09:30:00 +0000

How does the hand move on paper or on canvas? What are its laws? What questions does it ansie? In a dialogue with A. Ottavi Cavina, Tullio Pericoli tells about his profession of painter and illustrator by starting from the creative gesture. What goes between the mind and the hand? “The paper and the canvas are two surfaces that become spaces as soon as a sign appears, and the sign, as soon as it is drawn on them, turns into a living thing”, says Pericoli. “The artist’s work”, he adds, “resembles the work of someone who finds the right key to a door after many attempts, and opens it, but as soon as he crosses the threshold, he finds another door and yet another one. Gradually he realizes that there are countless doors to be opened. The same happens in painting. The artist’s work is like a naive, childish attempt at discovering what lies past all those doors, but he knows that there will be no end to doors”.