Page 68 - The MoMA/ Guggenheim issue of World of Art magazine (2003)

eLiTe UmbeRTO eco

Umberto eco was born in 1932 in alessandria, italy. he is a professor ThE following is an ExTEnsivE lisTing of ThE works of Eco
of semiotics, the study of communication through signs and symbols, at The island of the Day Before (1995). Postscript to The name of the rose (1995).
the University of Bologna, a philosopher, a historian, literary critic, and The search for the Perfect language (1995). how to Travel with a salmon and
an aesthetician. he is an avid book collector and owns more than 30,000 other Essays (1994). apocalypse Postponed (1994). six walks in the fictional
volumes. The subjects of his scholarly investigations range from st. Thomas woods (1994), Misreading (1993). interpretation and overinterpretation (1992).
aquinas, to James Joyce, to superman. he lives in Milan.

Umberto eco And PetrU rUssU, the editor of World of Art mAgAzine
a conversation on information (episode 5) living in isolation, with elaborate forms of mental illness.
one great problem of our time is the decrease, or absolute lack, of face-to-
face communities.
a chain-smoking and jovial Umberto eco receives me in his crowded, i always like to tell the story of Bosco - san giovanni Bosco. This salesian
untidy but cheerful little office at the institute for communication Studies priest in the middle of the
at the University of bologna. a bay-window opens out onto a tiny balcony 19th century who got the idea that was a whole new generation of young
overlooking the garden of the villa where the institute has its offices people who were working from a very young age in factories, and so were
and library. The walls of the office are covered with rows of well-filled dispersed and separated from the family. he invented the oratorium, which was
bookshelves; a sofa along one wall is full of piles of papers, books and a community, to which those who worked could go to play and discuss. and for
articles, a modest writing desk hidden under even more books and papers. those who couldn’t work, he established typographies, activities in which they
in one corner of the room is an ibm 486 clone with Windows, a new article could take part. so, he was matching the problem of despair and isolation in the
or book obviously in progress on the screen. eco offers me a chair in front industrial society with the possibility of people meeting each other, and obviously
of his desk. also having a religious purpose. it was a great social invention. soUrcE: hTTP://www.cUDEnvEr.EDU/~MryDEr/iTc_DaTa/Eco/Eco.hTMl MarTin ryDEr
what i reproach today; with both catholics, as well as former communists
in advance i had given him a list of some possible issues we might
by PaTRick cOPPOck artists spend their lives living in remote villages and writing letters all over the in central Park. you have all the problems of young people...
or Progressives, is that they lacked the new don Bosco. There was no new
discuss so he would have some idea of what was on my mind: computer
san giovanni Bosco of our age able to invent a new possibility of establishing
Technology, the internet community and Processes of cultural change. i
communities. and so you have young disaffected males with guns killing people
begin by asking:
“The pathologies, yes...”
(continued from the previous number)
also of mature and aged persons who feel isolated. was, is, television a
way to overcome this solitude? no, it was a way to increase it. with your can of
it is a community but it is only a virtual community. now, it is true that great
beer you sit down on the couch...Television was not the solution.
obviously for certain people - i had an old aunt who was obliged to live all
world and they establish these kinds of virtual communities.
the day at home, and was unable to walk, and for her the television was a gift of
“kant did that as well - he was a great letter writer...?”
heaven. for her, it was really the only possibility to be in some way in touch with
yes, there was kant. But i think of a great poet like leopardi. he was sick,
the world. But for a normal person it is not. can the new virtual communities
a hunchback. repressed.
lived in a village. went once or twice to rome. i don’t remember how often,
in the Mid-west the possibility to contact others from there. is that a substitute
though he traveled a little more.
for face-to-face contact and community? no, it isn’t! so the real social function
he was well known, and in touch with all the intelligentsia of his time. ok, it’s
of, let’s say, internet, should be to be a starting point for establishing contacts,
always possible. But for every leopardi, you have a lot of other people that are like we have on internet do the same job? certainly! They give to a person living
and then to establish local...
66 WORLD of aRT