Page 211 - World of Art Contemporary Art magazine: The 2023 Guggenheim issue

remote villages and writing letters all over the world and establishing contacts, and then to establish local...
they establish these kinds of virtual communities. “Places to meet face-to-face...”
“Kant did that as well - he was a great letter writer...?” Yes, local communities. When Internet really becomes
Yes, there was Kant. But I think of a great poet like a way of implementing - through virtual communities -
Leopardi. He was sick, a hunchback. Repressed. face-to-face communities, then that will be an important
Lived in a village. Went once or twice to Rome. I don’t social change. I was talking with Professor Prodi [note:
remember how often, though he traveled a little more. Romano Prodi is professor of economics at the University
He was well known, and in touch with all the of Bologna, and prospective prime- ministerial candidate
intelligentsia of his time. OK, it’s always possible. But for for a coalition of centre-left moderates in the next Italian
every Leopardi, you have a lot of other people that are general election] and I told him that the only possibility
living in isolation, with elaborate forms of mental illness. that you have to make a real campaign, is to realize
One great problem of our time is the decrease, or in every city a group, a club, a circle. One of the real
absolute lack, of face-to-face communities. forces in the inventions of Berlusconi was not only to
I always like to tell the story of Bosco - San Giovanni use television for political propaganda. He, having a big
Bosco. This Salesian priest in the middle of the
19th century who got the idea that was a whole new
generation of young people who were working from a
very young age in factories, and so were dispersed and
separated from the family. He invented the oratorium,
which was a community, to which those who worked
could go to play and discuss. And for those who couldn’t
work, he established typographies, activities in which
they could take part. So, he was matching the problem
of despair and isolation in the industrial society with the
possibility of people meeting each other, and obviously
also having a religious purpose. It was a great social
invention.
What I reproach today; with both Catholics, as well as
former Communists or Progressives, is that they lacked
the new don Bosco. There was no new San Giovanni
Bosco of our age able to invent a new possibility of
establishing communities. And so you have young
disaffected males with guns killing people in Central Park.
You have all the problems of young people...
UMBERTO ECO IN CONVERSATION WITH PETRU RUSSU BRIEFING ON MY
“The pathologies, yes...” FOUCAULT’S PENDULUM '89 EXHIBITION, INSPIRED BY ECO’S SECOND NOVEL
FOUCAULT’S PENDULUM, WRITTEN IN 1988 AND PUBLISHED IN 1989. PICTURE
Also of mature and aged persons who feel isolated. Was,
CREDIT: © MARTA DIMITRESCU
is, television a way to overcome this solitude? No, it was
a way to increase it. With your can of beer you sit down industrial organisation, established clubs everywhere.
on the couch...Television was not the solution. This was people that were proud to wear the badge and
Obviously for certain people - I had an old aunt who was to identify themselves as belonging to a particular group.
obliged to live all the day at home, and was unable to I saw them in the village where I have my country house.
walk, and for her the television was a gift of heaven. For It was artificial. It was all set up in two months, so it
her, it was really the only possibility to be in some way wasn’t enough to establish a really profound sense of
in touch with the world. But for a normal person it is not. belonging to a community. But it was an idea.
Can the new virtual communities like we have on Internet So I told Prodi that he should do the same. And one way to
do the same job? Certainly! They give to a person living do that is to use Internet. Because through Internet you can
in the Mid-West the possibility to contact others from reach, say, two persons in every city, giving them materials,
there. Is that a substitute for face-to-face contact and documents. People will be encouraged to xerox all these
community? No, it isn’t! So the real social function of, materials and to establish local groups, networks. So it is a
let’s say, Internet, should be to be a starting point for sort of collaboration between virtual and...

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