Agenda

6th Postgraduate International Conference

9-10-11 October 2024

Time frames the evolution and the progress human beings have achieved so far through the medium of culture. Both in the past and the present, humanity has been witnessing the collapse of its own identity, sociopolitical system and cultural order, as well as their resulting restoration. Within the assumption of progress, indeed, lies the notion of failure, which can although be perceived also as a positive value, aiming towards self-improvement and the reconfiguration of a collective existence. We, as humans, remain in the midst, dwelling on a permanent desire for finitude and, at the same time, the hunger for existence.

It is right in this imbalance that Ernesto De Martino acknowledges the roots of crisis, which is intrinsic to mankind. In his unfinished research on the role of cultural apocalypses, the anthropologist elaborates how the end of the world represents the culmination of the issue of existence (Dasein), caught between the risk of definitive downfall and the quest for redemption. At that moment, an apocalypse happens to reveal (apokalyptein) when a specific order, decayed for historical and social reasons, needs to be replaced by new symbolic formations that correspond to the changed Zeitgeist. It therefore broadens the horizon of cultural domains and generates a dynamic process that implies annihilation and rebirth, loss and triumph.

The 6th Postgraduate International Conference intends to analyze the liminal space between different meanings of ‘crisis’ and their translation into images, exploring through visual outlooks the twilight moment when a familiar world sets and an alien one begins to dawn.

Organising committee:
Asia Benedetti
Angelica Bertoli
Andrea Golfetto
Maria Novella Tavano

Program attached

The conference can be attended online via the following Zoom meeting link

Meeting ID: 854 6623 2361
Passcode: 7EERyt