Italians? a research to question belonging
Belonging what defines the perception of our individuality. Identity is defined through the reachment of certain values which should be recognized by others. Citizenship defined by culture and by the collaboration between citizens in ordinary life practice. The second level of citizenship is linked to be governed by a central autority. Politic (from greek polis=city) values which communicate knowledge, moral and full responsability in participating to common decisions for the citizen. Through and in politic eachone can find the confirm about personal interests and belongings. Political comunity where divesities communicate in defining what is right and wrong ( Aristotele - Politic ). The aim of politic is to realize the good life. Participation in common political decision is the prime point for a “good life”. The political comunity must supervise for freedom and the possibility to realize life project of the members. Cultural community it refers to a set of values which are common to all the members of the comunity. They deal with how the members perceive their subjectivity and the relation with others ( marriage, work, birth, death ...).
National identity it is referred to what disitnguish one nation from the others. It is defined by the collective memory and it becomes a model that the nation has to concretize differently depending on the present context. National identity has to be refreshed and redefined by each generation; from this depends the importance of intellectuals.“ A national identity is an organic phenomenon. It is never static and always subject to political, social and cultural movements” ( J.S.Mill) Institution (political) medium which regulates the relation between freedom and cooperation. Material culture constitutes the basic idea of our identity, indeed it regards the objectification of culture and social ideals. Language it constitutes the way we experience the world. It is a medium though which we interpret events and thing and express our subjectivity. Cultural icons and characteristics that ususally collide to create character ( currency, language, music and politics) provide products and realm that could feed and eventually define who people are. Design, as a language and a narrative, palys a role in creating national identities.
Otto e mezzo, Federico Fellini, 1963
Amarcord, Federico Fellini, 1972
“ Find the beauty in daily actions.” Vittorio De Sica
Neorealism narrative movement in literature and cinema which developed between 1942 and 1955. The position of neorealists was to depict Italy and the reality of war and post war periods without adding any idealistic and fake elemets. From this comes the choice of non professionist actors, the use of dialects and the use of natural setting instead of studio one.
Ladri di biciclette ( Bicycle Thieves) ,Vittorio De Sica, 1948
Italian movies from Neorealism untill the early ‘70s the movies defined the collective memory of Italy. This tendency started from the end of the II World War, when intellectuals started to depict Italy in its contemporary essence, and not the mithic one depicted by Fascism. “ Intellectuals have to define culture not from the top of their towers. Art and culture cannot be anymore in a crystal castle. The artist should start to report reality in its essence, that’s the way to define and depict culture.” (A.Gramsci) Collective memory the memory, or the set of memories, more or less conscious of an experience or mythologized by a living community whose identity is an integral part of the feeling of the past. (Pierre Nora)
“All neorealist plays were established on the idea that the future will be better, that a revolution will happen, even if nobody knew which kind of revolution.� Pier Paolo Pasolini
Your Country Doesn’t Exist, Olafur Olafsson and Libia Castro, 2009
“ The body is in the social world and the social world is in the body.” P. Bordieu Habitus mental disposition for being and doing which can be identified with the will of autodetermination and emancipation. Habitat ways of organization of the material culture ( narratives ). World paradigms, as material culture, bend and shape man’s experience and logics; and man’s experience and logic shape world paradigms. Habitus and habitat should reflect eachothers for the achievement of happiness. Flexibility is the skill of something to change its shape every time it is necessary, so following the environment. Flexibility in itself forces us to become passive toward what we are proposed to identify with; it comes that we don’t have a real experience of things and we can’t create a memory, a narrative of ourselves. Routine for Diderot routine is the repetition of the same experiences, and it helps to create a personal background. On the other side for Smith, routine denies empathy and simpathy, necessary elements for the creation of the personality. Routine of flexibility one of the consequences of mental and physical freedom in our contemporary society.
“ Our culture today is about learn and forget at the same time” Z.Bauman Egemony of the present concept directly linked to the Bauman’s one of liquid society. It referres to the consequence of flexibility in our perception of time ( Augè).
Farenheit 451, Francois Truffault, 1966
Exile is the condition of loss of identity, due to loss of language but most of all the loss of story and time as past and future. Then it becomes related to spatial condition.
Why?
Italians?
“It is not a question of being against the institution: we are the institution. It’s a question of what kind of insitution we are, what kind of values we istitutionalize, what forms of practice we reward, and what kind of rewards we aspire to.” Andrea Fraser
Revolution The gratest progress of societies are processes that destroy the society in which they happen. A.N.Whitehead From the interview of Cesare Petroiusti and Rob Hamelijnck RB “ But you don’t want the revolution?” CP “ Well I’m a little prudent in this matter. I think that we have to work on ourselves, first of all. Conflicts are first of all inside, and there’s a big work to do with interiority. That would be a big revolution. The big revolution is self awareness, that’s what I think.” RB “ So first yourself and then society.” CP “ Yes, and then a big party.”
from “Italian Conversations, Art in the age of Berlusconi.” Fucking good art, 2010
from the interview of Mauro Nicoletti and Gabriele Gaspari “Italian Conversations, Art in the age of Berlusconi.� Fucking good art, 2010
“It’s your future that counts, the decisions you make, the identity you choose, the principles you stand for. Maybe we need a revolution based in principles not on invented stories and myths” Koert Debeuf
Italians? a research to question belonging
From the first interviews about scarcity that I made in the first week of the trimester to my grandmothers, my parents and my friends one thing has been immediatelly really clear, both the generation of my grandparents and my parents when they were younger were dreaming of a better future and were working in order to achieving it. As my grandmother expereinced the Second World War, she was dreaming of a more prosperous future for her self and for her future children. My parents that lived their youth during the student revolutions of the ‘78 were dreaming of a future characterised by freedom, and they were acting in order to reach more rights. The interviews of my friends, besides, underlined the fact that the generation to which I belong to is not hoping anymore for a better future, but rather is feeling distrusted and not taken into account by their country, Italy.
Study Crises: One teenager on four thinks his futre is going to be worst then the one of their parents.
“Young pople are simply expeled from the society, they are surpluss of the future” “Young people are more and more distressed. We (the young people of the ‘78) were deeply conviced that the future was going to be ours.”
“...L’uomo senza qualità di Robert Musil...Dalle pagine di questo capolavoro emerge un ritratto molto efficace dellla finis austriae ossia di un impero alle soglie del suo drammatico tramonto. Attraverso il protagonista del romanzo, un matematico trentenne di nome Ulrich, Musil narra la parabola esistenziale di un giovane alle prese con una irreversibile crisi di valori, tagliato fuori dal mondo di ieri ma senza alcun appiglio a cui aggrapparsi per costruire il suo futuro. L’uomo senza qualità è il simbolo di un’intera generazione, come nella nostra più immediata contemeporaneità, che si sente espropriata del proprio mondo, delle proprie qualità e persino della speranza di costrire un futuro.”
Crisis, youngs without future and politicians without quality “...The man without quality of Robert Musil...From the pages of this masterpiece rises a really effective portrait of the finis austriae that is the end of an empire at its drammatic end. Through the main character of the book, a thirty years old mathematician named Ulrich, Musil narrates the existential parable of a young man that is expereincing an irreversible values’ crises, excluded from the world of yesterday but with no handhold to build its fture. The man without quality is a symbol of an all generation, as in our present world, that feels expropriate of its world, of its qualities and as well of its hope in the future” Il fatto quotidiano 25th may 2013
From father to son: the feudal Italy from MicroMega
Loosing generation Documentary Report Italy is not a contry for young people, or better it is not since a long time. Because our country is not anymore able to plan its future? It is a country where old people are more then youg people, not just because the life is longer, but beucause it is more then 30 years that less children born because of economic crises and of missing welfare politics. We need to think that for who decide in our Country young people are not that much important, and from a political point of view they are almost invisible, besides the moment of the elections, in which they promise to them a better future that never arrives. And so young people leave. The new emigration is made of people with high degrees and diplomas that are not going to come back because they find better opportunities abroad. They leave behind a Contry that is consuming the private savings to support sons and doughters, that is more and more poor of human resources and older.
Yesterday, today and tomorrow Kent Rogowsky
“Precarity is best described as the structural uncertainly of livelihood and income�
The concept of precarity brings all together: uncertainly of livelihood, vulnerability (both financial and emotional), excusion and the gradual loss of democratic fights and agency of citizen that was fundamental to modern democratic politics. ...we find this idea of precarity, structural uncertainly, signifies that we are in fact at the brink of a wholly new society, even a wholly new vision of ourselves , a wholly new mode of being: one that is no longer based on stability of identity, but one that is based on becomings, new forms of collective identities etc.... Lecture by Joost de Blools- Making ends Meet precrity, Art and Political Activism August 13 2011
2012 Boom of the young italian emigrants In Italy in 2012 there was a boom of the young emigrants. The most of them are between 20 and 40 years old. Living the country is a choice made in order to find better opportunities. The 44,8 % of the people that are living are young people with a degree. This phenomenon has been called the Excape of brains. The espression excape of brains indicate the emigration to foreign countries of people with talent or high professional specialization. This fact is generally viewed with concern, as it implies the risk of slow down the cultural, tecnological and economic progress of the countries in which this happens until the replacement of the academic class is impossible. The fact that talented young people are going to foreign countries is a normal process in a globalized world, it is a metter of cultural and professional enrichement. The problem arise when the balance of brains that leave the country and the one that come back o decide to move to that particulr country is negative. This is what is happening to Italy in this moment.
“Young and the crises: you try to be twenty years old and not having any dreams� Titel of an article abot the young generation in Italy from the newspaper Il Fatto quotidiano 16th April 2013
The map of italian brain excape from il fatto quotidiano
Regions from where people are leaving
Places where people are going
1. Lombardy (13.156) 2. Veneto (7456) 3. Sicily (7003) 4. Piemonte (6134) 5. Lazio (5952) 6. Campania (5952) 7. Emilia-Romagna (5030) 8. Calabria (4813) 9. Puglia (3978) 10. Tuscany (3887)
1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
The most interesting data to notice is that the first two regions from where people are leaving are two of the wealthiest region of north Italy.
Grate Britain (13,5%) Germany (11,5%) Swizerland (9,5%) United States (9%) Spain (6%)
Other places are a well Asia, Africa and Austalia. Presence of young italian is registered in more then 150 countries.
My movements
EINDHOVEN
KARLSRUHE
BOLZANO TRENTO
Escaping
Close friends movements
EDIMBURGO
BIRMINGHAN EINDHOVEN
KARLSRUHE LUGANO BOLZANO MILANO TRENTOPADOVA MANTOVA
Brains
The Nomads of Creativity “We live in a world characterised by the expereince of precarity: the reference points that traditionally laied the foundation of life styles, ideology and institutions have now been destroied. The experience of the individual as the one of the collectivity, is not anymore based on a static system of values or on a collective memory, but is continously hanging in the balance, in search for new reference points.” “The instability (also geographic) in which we are living is translated into a stimulus for searching new forms of present communication, that can be applied to the continously changig contexts on which we act.” Unità di Crisi Collective
My impression is that here (London) is legitimate to think that your ideas can happen, with pragmatism, following an almost natural equation (or a protestant logic?) that is that organisation and hard work can concretise an idea, or anyway something “valuable”. In Italy a lot of time in this sense you feel like a fool” Chiara Onida
The past elections has been a metter for the young people residing outside of the Italy to come together and start behaving in a collective way. Flashmobs and platforms were organized to share experiences and thoughts especially about the elections.
Protest in my hometown against the frozen situation in Italy. The message is: “eather Italy is going to depart, or we are going to live�. 21st April 2013, Trento, Italy
Rhizome is a botanical term that literally means a rootstock that grows horizzontally and spreads its roots below groud over great distance in the form of inextricable tangles. This makes it impossible to trace back the structure of a rhizome or a single origin. Rhizome has no beginning or end, but seems to start simply somewhere; it is always in the middle, between things, inter-being, an intermezzo. The idea of global identity is an identoty no longer defined by nation, family, languageor religion: the citizen is a world citizen.
“Liquid life is a precarious life lived under conditions of constant uncetainly the most acute and stubborn worries that have such a life are fear of being caught napping, or falling to catch up with fast moving events, of being left behind, of of forgetting dates, of being saddle with possessions that are no longer desirable, of missing the moment that calls for a change of tack before crossing the point of no return.�
“Even saying Italian does not have anymore a lot of sense.� Poster by Jonathan Pierini
“From time immemorial, mankind has tried to constitute their own orientation within the world in which we dwell. The complexity of reality and the immense quantity of the stimuli to which we are exposed, requires a constant selection of information that are considered useful: the construction of orientation is therefore a primarily eliminative activity. This operation of framing complexity has been carried in time by linear language (in the shape of narrations and myths), by systems of classification (mainly of taxonomical type), by graphic representations (atlases, guides and maps), etc. During the last decades these models entered a crisis: the collapse of great narrations precludes the construction of a shared collective imaginary, the systems of dynamic classification make taxonomical models obsolete, atlases and guides are giving way to systems of navigation on demand. The crisis of orientation was born from the complexity of correlations between numerous different emergencies, which most visible effect is a total tendency to fragmentation, to individualisation, to selection, to separation, to the monetarisation of the social and environmental context. The paradigms of orientation become localised, limited, incapable of constructing wide and shared visions. The progressive acceleration of phenomenona limits the capacity of producing orientation from experience and increases the need of information and indications from the outside. In this scenario it becomes crucial to think over disorientation as an experience that may be a source of renewal for new practices of orientation.� Krises magazine
“Every time we speak of the “institution” as other then “us”, we disalow our role in the creation and perpetuation of its condition, we avoid responsability for, or action against, the everyday complicities, compromises, and censorship above all, self censorship, chich are driven by our own interest in the field and the benefits we derive from it. It’s not a questio of insiede or outside, or the number and scale of various organised sites for production, presentation and distribution of art. The institution : we are the istitution. It’s a question of what kind of institution we are, what forms of practice we reward and what kinds of rewards we aspire to.” From Critique of institutions to an institution of critique Andrea Fraser
“One can throw away a chair and destroy a pane of glass but.. only idle talkers...regard the state as such a thing or asa a fetish that one can smash in order to destroy it. The state is a condition, a certain relationship among human beings, a mode of behaviour between men; we destroy it by behaving differently toward one another...We are the state, and we shall continue to be the state until we have created the institutions that form a real community.” Gustave Landauer
Interviews to young italians that decided to leave the country
Italians?
What do yo feel you belong to?
For which reason did you leave Italy?
What do you think are the earnings and the losses of this decision?
Are you able to do future plans? Where?
I feel belonging to ideas. (Adriano, 27, from San Paolo, Brasil
I think that Italians do not have a sense of belonging to the State but to italian culture, especially the one that live the country. The one who stay in Italy sometimes are unconcious of their cultural background. (Zeno, 23, from Eindhoven, Netherlands)
I belong to my family, to myself, all things that go beyond a geograhical location. I do belong to italian culture, but I have the feeling I have a different mentality compared to the majority of italians. (Marzia, 24, Los Angeles, United States)
I wanted to live just the positive aspects of Italy with the opportunities of a north europian inhabitant. The second reason is leave a context made of a stagnant everyday life and allow yourself to be someone else, in another place. (Lorenzo, 24, Eindhoven, Netherlands)
I had a deep need of experimenting as much as I can. I think this is not possible in Italy in this moment, because it’s a frozen, closed, stuk country, that keeps look back to the past, that does not grow, and that does not offer enough possibility to young people. Of course there are also worst situations, but also better. (M.)
An increased sense of adaptability and capacity of accepting yourself apart from the context; the will of going back to Italy, but with the awarness that is going to be temporary, with this mindset one lives Italy with authenticity, as a turist of a well known place. (L.) I left Italy because I felt without any imput inside a system that I don’t feel belonging to and in which I don’t recognize myself. In Italy we miss unity, initiative and serenity. (Astrid, 24, from Melbourne, Australia)
I don’t think there is any loss. What I suffer the most is to see all the italians abroad, to think that they lost the relations with their families and roots and most of all to think that I’ll never come back and live there. (Adriano, 27, from San Paolo, Brasil
I think I can make future plans, while Italy is still marked by a narrow minded, nationalistic and backward sentiment; we must hope that it will end soon. (A.)
I can’t imagine any future plans; now I am looking for happyness somewhere else from my country. I don’t think I’ll have the possibility to come back in Italy and live there, and this is making me suffer a lot! (As.)
Interviews to “exiled” Italians
Italians?
What does it mean for you to be exiled?
Which are your cultural co-ordinates?
What do you think can be the content of the museum?
What kind of contribution can you give to the museum?
Can you tell us yor future vision?
The exiled knows what he leaves but don't know what is going to find. Exiled is a person that tries to realise him self, to follow his way in context that is still be unknown and the only thing that knows is what he left, in my case the Italian certainty and what it implies in positive but especially in negative. I never felt really Italian, maybe European, because Italy is a country of conservatives, in which a future vision is missing and is missing as well a sense of society in order to create a positive system. (Gianluca, 26, Birmingham, UK)
Exile yourself is a method, is a quality, is a method to realise yourself. (Zeno, Eindhoven, Netherlands)
I feel I am an exiled by choice. I could have stayed in Italy, we are not in the condition in which we are really forced to emigrate, a lot of people are able to create their own refuge in Italy, with all the frustration that this implies, but determined to think that is the right decision. I decided not to accept certain dynamics, but I didn’t even try to to change them. I don’t know if the system would have closed all the doors to me, but as I was doubting I decided to leave. (Astrid, 24, Melbourne, Australia)
I think that exile is a nice challenge to have the life that you wish, exile is a necessary medium. In Italy I wold not have been able to do the projects that I do now in exile. (Andrea, 27, Eindhoven, Netherands)
What I am questioning my self is how can I talk of being exiled from a country that I have never really felt belonging to. How can you tell that I am in exile from Italy if in the reality I have never felt really Italian? (Giacomo, 26, London, Uk)
People are leaving Italy and they are happier because they have chosen themselves and their ambitions. (Lorenzo, 22, Eindhoven, Netherlands)
The right of a community to self-determin it self is something that I always liked (Giacomo, 26, London, Uk)
Two of my co ordinates are two writes, Amartya Sen and Focault. The message that I received from them is that reality is never simple, and that everything that is easy is fake. I think that this is connected as well with the problems of Italy, we are always trying to simplify and distort what reality is. Try to analyse big questions through simplification is a violence toward society and culture. (Gianluca, 26, Birmingham, UK)
Culture is an instrument for freedom, as the society is today we one can not consider free without culture. If I have culture I can think with my head, I can criticise things, I can have the freedom of saying no even in front of a thousand people, you can say no just if you have the instruments to do it. This helps you as well in the everyday life. Culture is as well being able to be sensible with a person that is crying, or with a person that needs help. (Andrea, 27, Eindhoven, Netherands)
We need heroes, where our heroes are not anymore like Garibaldi, they are the philosopher, the writer, the engineer, the designer, people that are able to elevate the cultural and economic level. Besides being able to work with those people Italy is working against them. (Andrea, 27, Eindhoven, Netherands)
Hardly I would choose a specific form or something particular to identify this museum, I imagine it as a sort of container that can embrace as much as possible, more forms and techniques as possible. What is the opposite to minima? Well I imagine this museum maximal, full of things, not all clean and perfect but dense and in evolution. So if a museum that continuously evolve well this is the museum that I imagine. (Giacomo, 26, London, Uk)
The motivation that have pushed people to leave. The museum needs to show people, their identities, that has something in common, I would like to see their faces. (Kim, 24, Eindhoven, Nehterlands)
I would like the museum to be interactive, a place where people can add things. I would also like to see the stories of the exiled people, see how and way people have arrived to the museum. (Andrea, 27, Eindhoven, Netherands)
My contribution could be one of my art concept in the field of video-games. They can be a symbol of another chance that Italy missed. In Italy fantasy, creativity and talent are sometimes almost a negative aspect of a person, characteristics that are at the base of the video-games industry. (Giacomo, 26, London, Uk)
I would participate to the museum paradoxically because I am Italian, for these values that you have written, those are the one that made what there is of good in Italy. I want those values, the other no, because I saw what are the consequences of the other values in my country. (Andrea, 27, Eindhoven, Netherland)
I would like to show what Italy could be if the values of this communitywould be respected. (Stefania, 24, Trento, Italy)
In some years a community of people that had the possibility of leaving Italy and to prove themselves in a different context are going to bring enrichment to the society in Italy. I imagine it as a dynamic future where it is not difficult to realise things, more equal and meritocratic. But all this is going to happen just if the system that is not recognising us at the moment is going to open its self to those who has been refusing until that moment. (Giacomo, 26, London, Uk)
I imagine that this network of exiled is going to be able to create a civic sense that is going to direct all the talent, the know how in a positive way and maybe as well Italy, that is a place that have everything to be a country where people are living a good life and that in this moment it is not because of the wastes of talents, energy and time. As a provocation I would say that we could send the next two generation of children from 0 to 18 years old in Sweden and the when they are 18 they can come back in Italy, until we do not renew at least three generations
In ten years a cultural movement is going to be created as the avant-garde of the 1900. At the Biennial it is going to be presented and it is going to start to operate there. (Andrea, 27, Eindhoven, Netherands)