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2nd International Scientific Conference on

Mind Scenery in the Landscape-cultural Mosaic.

Palimpsests, Networks, Participation

... (Italy), July 5-6, 2018

Call for Papers by the President Livio Clemente Piccinini

Since 2005, the IPSAPA conference is centered on the successful keywords "landscape-cultural

mosaic". The domain of fantasy and the fascination of discovery provided the guidelines for the

conferences of 2009 and 2010, whose respective titles were: "The backstage of the landscape- cultural mosaic. Invisible, Inaccessible, Inexistent "and" The Wonderland in the landscape-cultural

mosaic. Idea, Image, Illusion ". The fantastic invention was also present partly in the 2013

conference entitled "Utopias and dystopias in the landscape-cultural mosaic. Visions, Values,

Vulnerability ". The unstructured reality was the subject of the 2016 conference entitled "Erraticity

of the landscape-cultural mosaic. Emotion, Energy, Experience ". Zecchi's book entitled "West

Paradise: Our decadence and the seduction of the night" has inspired last year’s conference entitled

"The lost paradise of the landscape-cultural mosaic. Attraction, Harmony, Atarassia ".

This year we took inspiration from a book that appeared recently. This is "Mindscapes - Psyche in

the landscape" due to Professor Vittorio Lingiardi, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who teaches at

Sapienza in Rome (Raffaello Cortina Editore, 2017). The reinterpretation of the Invisible Cities of

Calvino can of course suggest reminiscences that are well linked with Lingiardi’s book for their

dreamlike freedom.

The choice of the theme encourages the participants in the conference to give space once again to

fantasy and personal memories, so that the theoretical models and case studies can acquire a soul,

beyond the professional constraints of precision and objectivity. Even those who deal with

appraising or economic themes will be able to take into account the psychological aspects, not

always rational, that guide individual and collective behavior, especially nowadays when

conditioning of networks seems to have taken possession of our lives.

A fundamental theme is linked to our perception of the landscape and the urban environment. At the

root there is the imprinting we receive in childhood, which only afterwards may be overcome by

cultural and social habits. The very search for a desired landscape is mythologized from early youth

and leads to the exaltation of a particular location when it is finally reached. It is worth asking what

are our places of ideal reference and what are the origins of this preference.

The disparity of memories explains the different preferences that must then merge into the more or

less consensual creation of a shared image of the city and the territory, even if the economic and

functional needs are always lurking. They provide justifications that in some epochs and in some

situations can be accepted, to be challenged and abandoned at other times. The fragments of the past

are re-accepted and restructured only when they become sufficiently scarce and ancient to constitute

a significant testimony.

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The authors are recommended to explicitly introduce some of these considerations in their abstract,

even when they are not suitable for rigorous scientific formalisms.

Conference structure

The conference will be divided into four plenary sessions of 6 presentations of 12 minutes each and

three synthesis plenary sessions of 8 presentations of 9 minutes each. The four plenary sessions are

especially dedicated to critical reflection. A sober exemplification is appreciated, even if not strictly

binding. The synthesis sessions are dedicated especially to the illustration of the case studies, and

are divided according to the three key words of the conference title (Palimpsests, Networks,

Participation). For each of them we suggest four lines of development.

Plenary sessions

A The scenery of the mind

B Project, reality, historicity

C Reconquest, restoration, revaluation

D Dis - orientation in large spaces

Synthesis plenary sessions

P Palimpsests

Q Networks

R Participation

Indicative topics for the sessions:

A The scenery of the mind

A1 The construction of the collective imaginary and its values

A2 The genius loci

A3 The places of invention

A4 Perception and reconquest of nature

B Project, reality, historicity

B1 The fade of the landscape and the dessolution of urban sceneries

B2 A future for the past?

B3 Artist’s falses

B4 A past for the future?

C Reconquest, restoration, revaluation

C1 Re-invention of the past

C2 The network of fragments in the territory

C3 Affective, cultural and economic values

C4 Networks of knowledge between new and ancient

D Dis - orientation in large spaces

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D1 The cardinal points between symbol and memory

D2 Spaces and freedom

D3 Itineraries, stages and nodes of the journey

D4 The places and times of aggregation

Plenary sessions of synthesis

P Palimpsests

P1 Reuse or reinvention

P2 The dream and its times

P3 Models and geometries

P4 Life and representation

Q Networks

Q1 Birth and decadence of networks

Q2 Changeable signs and new interpretations

Q3 A name for non-places

Q4 Constructions and rebellions

R Participation

R1 Physical exchange and mental exchange

R2 Persistent characters of the city

R3 Potential in the wonder of the project

R4 Scripta manent: the intertemporal interview

The sessions in which the conference is articulated offer the opportunity to address the issues in an

optimistic vision that overcomes the nostalgia for places and times no longer existing, looking for

the positive aspects already emerged or still potential.

Session A is dedicated to aspects that enhance the role of the mind in its relationship with the

landscape-cultural mosaic. It is aimed above all at the synthesis process that seeks to bring together

the various individual feelings in a shared direction, which generates the roots of the collective

imaginary. The consolidation, even physical and design, ends up by determining the genius loci,

often challenged by modern architecture, which condemns its rigidity and its possible conformism.

The session leaves the freedom to fantasize even on the non-existent places that arise from set

design, films, literature and above all from our individual dreams. Nor ignores the reference to

nature, either in the hortus clausus of the garden, or in the wide open expanses, nor in the so-called

third landscape, where wild recover takes place at the expense of abandoned buildings, streets and

structures.

Session B is dedicated to the reconquest of the landscape-cultural mosaic. Real design aspects

prevail, confronting with fading landscapes and dissolving cities, but also with inventions and with

the skilful transpositions that sometimes slip into mannerism or even trespass in the artist’s false.

The motto "a future for the past" is put in dubitative form, as there is the risk of immobility typical

of epochs where creativity is overwhelmed by the letter of politically correct. The motto "a past for

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the future", anticipates the contents of the P session, as it considers the possibility of reusing what

belongs to the past, relieving it of the correct temporal succession. The risks of exasperated

eclecticism and kitsch are lurking, as in the stalls of the town fair dealers, so here too the proposal is

in dubious form, to suggest the freedom of criticism from the congressmen.

Session C goes deeply into the topics of section B, aiming at the synthesis between past and

present. It underlines the possibility of re-creating a mythologized past, as often happens in

literature and in the show. The fragments of the past constitute a network that is possibly

maintained today, but that needs of conservation and fruition can displace in an arbitrary way.

However, cases of success are also to be considered, where personal, social and even economic

values manage to meet in the right balance. Many small towns have recently conquered this

prestigious position, albeit with some small or large fiction.

Fortunately, the information networks allow the reconstitution and the relocation of different

scenarios, even if the values related to physicality are missing, replaced by images and simulations

of virtual reality, or even augmented reality, which so much excite younger viewers, and intrigue

the older ones.

Session D enlarges the openness to large spaces by adding to it the pleasures of discovery and

travel. The heading takes from Lingiardi’s book the title of chapter 12, Dis-orientarsi. Despite the

methodological rigor, that chapter appears pervaded by a subtle poetry suspended between dream

and reality, between the memory of experience and the imaginary, especially when it speaks of the

psychological perception of the cardinal points. The reader, guided by the author's example, is

induced to construct his personal images of these points. It is a suggestion addressed also to the

participants of the conference.

The open and solitary spaces next to the subtle worries convey the joy of freedom, which today is

greatly exploited by both the tourist proposal and the advertising one. On the other hand, the places

and times of aggregation are an important aspect of sociality, both in ancient times and nowadays.

This title proposes the methodological reflection that underlies the concrete themes of the examples

dedicated to participation in session R.

Synthesis session P is aimed at the exemplification of a fundamental aspect of the conference: the

reappearance of lost aspects of the past in their non-museum reuse but directed to new purposes

and, if possible, to a new life. It is impossible to present a complete list, but we can include the ex- cinemas, the ex-theaters, the ex-stadia, the ex-barracks, the ex-convents, the ex-royal palaces, for

which the main problem is conservation and reuse. The reuse of the motorways, the factories, the

abandoned and disembowelled farms of the Po Valley, the dilapidated workplaces that dot the

streets of Veneto, and in many ways the immense heritage of Venetian villas, is more difficult. How

many times architects, urban planners, economists strive to invent their potential, and how many

times the passerby is horrified by the degradation and improper and miserable uses to which these

structures have been reduced, even if perhaps in this way they still retain a fragment of life.

Another palimpsest is that of the reconstruction of life or of some of its sections which occurred in

the past. The theatricality of the museums of rural life or of medieval crafts forces the rediscovery

of ancient techniques and gives new impetus to craft activities before they finally disappear.

Synthesis session Q develops the theme of networks. In the first place there is the fascinating

theme of birth and death or transformation of networks, which do not exist only from today, but are

projected in the farthest reaches of civilization. The Roman roads network is a typical example, but

also information transmission networks such as post office, telephone booths and fax machines start