Papers by Giacomo Goldoni
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I cannot recall when the last time was that my imagination offered me something constructive, nor... more I cannot recall when the last time was that my imagination offered me something constructive, nor the last it assisted me in any way. I am talking about imagination, not creativity; creativity is something else — something providing us with intermittent glimpses of the outside world in its grand and transcendental wholeness. Science is not able to recount it, the bible cannot either. Art glimpses at it sometimes. Imagination, on the other hand, is the source of all the anxieties mankind can envision. It originates inside us but draws inspiration from the outside world in all its smallness and mundanity. It is when life has made its cycle once again, that I had the sudden and eventual impression there is something that is not being said about the world. This is when I have started questioning the function of imagination in my life. Think about someone who has been blind for life, getting what they call a sight restoration [we see things in such a rooted ocularcentric perspective we are not able to understand how one could live their life without, so we call it restoration]. Think about how this someone has been acquainted for all this time to being in the delicate world of dim lights and discreet, insightful touches. Someone who may have developed a wide dictionary of perceptions us sighted are not in the position to acknowledge, as our language of colours does not allow even the smallest description of it [as we do not have " colours " to portray sounds nor to depict smells; and with this I am to mean the closest possible category to colour that was never developed for the blind's world]. Think about how this person's imagination led them to wonder what a sublime thing the world is, according to their touch and feel. We told them it is even better once they would have got to see it with their own eyes. The disappointment they might feel when this happens to become true is limitless. Imagination worked against them, just like it works against someone who has being seeing for all their lives, but has being perception-blind for most of it, us sighted for instance. Because imagination is the fruit of our own thinking, it stays in the box, and never escapes it. It can reach such wide and profound taste of anxiety within its fields of knowledge — the possible — but it cannot provide us with insights into something lying outside our perceptive zone, something we have never experienced. Creativity, instead, is an apparatus that happens to be there every time we would think outside this box. It just happens. Creation comes from somewhere inside the world but outside our sheer understanding of it, imagination from what we think we understand of it. Creativity is uniting and intact, imagination is fragmented and divorcing.
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Gilles Lipovetsky defines the present times as hypermodern. He distances himself from the overly ... more Gilles Lipovetsky defines the present times as hypermodern. He distances himself from the overly simplistic definitions many give them and embraces their contradictions by bringing out ‘the full complexity of reality’ (Lipovetsky et al., 2005, p.2). Such pluralist understanding of the world in all its paradoxes is also the crucial aim of the metamodern trend. In this regard, Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker, in their manifesto, define such aspect as the capacity of continuously “oscillating” between Modernism and Postmodernism’s ideals (Vermeulen and van der Akker, 2010). Starting from the explanation of both movements, I will relate them to metamodernism and also to Kant’s philosophy, illustrating differences and affinities. Further, I will use Don DeLillo’s novel Cosmopolis (2003) and its cinematographic adaptation, and Wes Anderson and Paolo Sorrentino’s movies to illustrate the concepts of time and irony and also the new generation - called generation y - in relation to the metamodern atmosphere.
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Starting from the assumption that there is no such empathy for people so distant from us and that... more Starting from the assumption that there is no such empathy for people so distant from us and that this is not to be blamed but to be understood, I will define how this proximity does not purely relates to geography but how also it is a notion involving wider concepts. I will then introduce Globalisation as a part of this process. Making everything looks irrationally closer under a psychological point of view, the globalised world causes a shift in ethics that does not suit our emotions, which can only remain local. Furthermore, I will explain how mass media’s fashion of over-treating certain news and censoring or limiting the exposure of others can be instrumental to both political and economical interests and how photography plays a huge role in this sense, due to its possibility of lending itself to ‘any arbitrary use’ (Berger, 2009, p. 60). Also, media’s overexposure to tragic photographic files, together with their use of archetypical models, can bring an emotional anaesthesia towards people’s sufferings with a resulting dehumanisation and lack of understanding of those worlds these people belong to. A good example being how differently media handled Paris and Beirut’s attacks of last weeks. As claimed by Žižek (2015), we should be able to watch more often outside our glass “cupola”. I will eventually talk about the prospect of art supplanting photo documentary, thanks to its “pensive” qualities, in order to reach more exposure with less exploitation. This, underlining the importance of education to the act of understanding and of thought so to produce more authentic politics of pity for ourselves.
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Thanks to postmodernism it is nowadays a commonly understood truth that even those realities whic... more Thanks to postmodernism it is nowadays a commonly understood truth that even those realities which seemed to be very factual, as the photographic ones, are not as certain as before. Because we have now realised that we will never be able to know that a fact happened for sure, whether that fact is truly represented or not is not a great issue anymore, as long as it is comprehensively well represented. In a world where everything is relative and depending on the personal perspectives of the ones, a fact is authentic when it creates real discussion around it or touches viewers’ sensitivity. Photographers such as Thomas Demand test the line between documentary and personal expression.
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Sally Mann's body of work revolving around her family is analyzed and compared under its historic... more Sally Mann's body of work revolving around her family is analyzed and compared under its historical and social contexts.
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Papers by Giacomo Goldoni