Visible and invisible: perceiving the city between descriptions and omissions

12 – 13 – 14 settembre 2013 – VI CONGRESSO AISU

The congress will offer an opportunity to reflect on the complexity and ambiguity of the tools called to describe the city and its history. Through pairs of opposites it is possible to contrast a visible city and an invisible city, an official and an unofficial one, a public and a private one, an objective and a subjective vision, a systematic and an impressionistic one, a false and a true-like one. Finally, it is possible to refer to a reading that is structured by "album" and to another that is based on individual fragments. At the center of attention are the many ways in which the city over the centuries has been described, told, portrayed, quantified with words, numbers and images. Starting from antiquity and the Middle Ages, the techniques of description and representation offer us the opportunity to start a comparison between cities and different contexts, in search of different ways of perceiving the urban structure in all its complexity. This will only be the starting point, with respect to the objective and subjective limits that the analytical process brings: on the one hand there is in fact everything that has been omitted, concealed, ignored over time, especially within the perimeter of a deliberately hidden city ( in private and social life behind the walls of ghettos, prisons, hospitals, tolerance houses, convents, houses). On the other hand, there is a city that is below the surface of physical evidence: the city of excavations, underground infrastructures, under-services, underground or submerged buildings. Besides physical consistency there is also an intangible city made up of networks, networks and other relationships that go beyond the "papers" and official documents. Outside of the descriptions and representations, there is therefore a silent and marginal city which is not mentioned in the documents, nor is it highlighted; a reality, partially submerged, which escapes the findings and which corresponds in part to all that has been hidden over time. In this case, other types of techniques and strategies come into play, related to the omission of information, mystification and propaganda. Finally, there are different realities to be brought to light: the multiple residual presences in the city, the conditions of degradation, of suffering, but also the industrious situations, not recorded but no less real.

Sessions' programme

Scientific Committee

• prof. Salvatore Adorno
• prof. Donatella Calabi
• prof. Aldo Castellano
• prof. Augusto Ciuffetti
• prof. Giovanni Luigi Fontana
• prof. Enrico Iachello
• prof. Paola Lanaro
• prof. Paolo Militello
• prof. Francesca Martorano
• prof. Luca Mocarelli
• prof. Roberta Morelli
• prof. Massimiliano Savorra
• prof. Donatella Strangio
• prof. Rosa Tamborrino
• prof. Carlo Travaglini
• prof. Guido Zucconi

Coordinator organizer

Direction
prof. Salvatore Adorno

Organizers

dott. Giovanni Cristina
dott. ssa Lavinia Gazzè
dott. Francesco Mannino
prof. Paolo Militello
dott. ssa Melania Nucifora
dott. ssa Arianna Rotondo
dott. Giannantonio Scaglione

Photo album