Esercizi Filosofici 15, 2 (2020)

In this paper, I question architecture in relation to the notions of “immaterial” and “virtual”. The cityscapes where architecture is placed become increasingly liquid, marked by immaterial structures, flows and landscapes. How does architecture fit critically in this scenario? I will consider two ways to discuss the role of the immaterial related to architecture: first, in the case of media buildings; secondly, in those forms of architecture which imbibe immateriality, focus on and represent it, as in the Sendai Mediatheque (Ito) and in the Fondation Cartier (Nouvel).

Images have the power to transform physical absence into iconic presence: this is where the paradox of their existence emerges. In the era of the triumph of audio-visual self-representation the debate on self-portrait shifts its focus from the produced works to the process of production itself. Based on such premises, the question of materiality can be redeemed by placing it in the gestural domain, in the act of manufacturing that the body, as a living medium, together with the technological medium, performs in the processual interaction between picture and image.

I analyze James Turrell’s artwork Sight Unseen to investigate the dematerialization of the art object. Exploring the installation, spectators can perceive the ephemeral qualities of artificial lights as matter. As consequence of the immaterial aesthetic relations emerging from this atmospheric situation, audience experiences the spatial reorganization of the artistic environment. I assume an ecological aesthetic perspective to understand the crucial role of technologies to pursue both the materialization of light and the degradation of the art object intended by Turrell: the aesthetic experience. In conclusion, my analysis on the artistic dispositif endeavors broader considerations about the conditions affecting the daily experience related to the technical habitat in which we are immersed.

The paper aims to examine the correlation between the alarming and stigmatizing narratives of the migration, spread via the new media, and the mushrooming of xenophobic speeches online. The Italian media address the migration primarily according to the frame of illegality and criminality. This dynamic contributes to colonize, in negative, the “collective imaginary”, but also to direct the relational schemes, as evidenced by the increase in hate speech against migrants. Therefore, my aim is to identify potential scenarios suitable at reorienting the public debate around the migration and also to elaborate counternarratives and/or alternative narratives to encourage a new social, political and cultural attitude towards the migration, against any form of dangerous simplification.