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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