the first European festival on creativity

2016 Programme

Event #27

Attilio Brilli

Voyages through spaces real and imagined

In all of its aspects, travel presupposes a projection of the imagination. Medieval and Renaissance-era merchant-adventurers depended on Mandeville's Travels – that is, on the writings of a man who had never left his own library. «The conquerer», affirmed Canetti, «can never free himself from his map». When Cortés first saw the Pacific, his companions were shocked that he should want to tackle such purely figurative spaces. Even the most domestic of the Grand Tour travelers would indulge in fantasizing about the pleasure that awaited. While for pilgrims, the most fascinating destination is Mecca, forbidden to non-muslims, which may only be imagined or gleamed through the riskiest of adventures.

https://www.festivaldellamente.it/it/live-streaming-alessandro-barbero/

Attilio Brilli

a professor of Anglo-American Literature at the University of Siena, has authored essays on English, irish and American writers such as Byron, Swift, Joyce and James; he also curated the publication of R.L. Stevenson's “Works” in the series «I Meridiani» (Mondadori, 1982). Considered one of the foremost scholars on travel literature, he has written many texts on the subject, published b Il Mulino: Il viaggiatore immaginario (1997), Il viaggio in Italia (2006), Il viaggio in Oriente (2009), Dove finiscono le mappe (2012), Mercanti avventurieri (2013), Gerusalemme, La Mecca, Roma (2014), Il grande racconto del viaggio in Italia (2014), Il grande racconto dei viaggi d’esplorazione, di conquista e d’avventura (2015), Sulle tracce di San Francesco (with S. Neri, 2016).

2016 Programme

Event #27

Attilio Brilli

Voyages through spaces real and imagined

An idea of public space

That place called “home”

The space of words: Helen and Odysseus

The last day of summer

The birth of space (and time)

The birth of space (and time)

The space of war. The First Italian War of Independence

Immunity and the brain: a dialogue between two chief systems. From memory to vaccines.

New males: as teenagers, in couples, as fathers

Tv series: a newly emerged continent

Across the American deserts: a voyage through 20th century collective imagination

What do algorithms think of?

That place is gone

The space of rebellion

Other maps, other worlds. Representations of space

The analyst at the movies: thinking by images

From the stars to Life: one, one hundred, one thousand Earths

Architectural space in the past, the present, the future

Families confined and without borders

The best ideas of our lives. Make room for innovation (the real kind)

The space of absence: Patroclus and Andromache

On the other side of the sea

Play it again

The space of war. The second Italian War of Independence

School is an idea of the world

Asperger Talk Show

Let’s make space for stupidity

Voyages through spaces real and imagined

Is there space for us all? The future of European migrations

When painters left their studios to paint en plein air

The memory of space. The rubble of climate and rubbish in our homes

Graffiti, tags and murals: when art extends to walls

The poetry of space. Words and drawings on that place we call home

The river is never wrong

Mirror neurons: anatomy of a revolutionary discovery

The boundaries of the soul and of the world