Now move away from Serres. Back to “News” section of the cultural pages of these days. Read the appeal of the “Italian intellectuals’ to ‘safeguard’ the Book Fair almost as it stands (which Serres was invited in May 2016 as a guest at the last Salon in Turin).
At that point, with Serres in the head and Ocean in the other senses, you will have to clear sure the world of contemporary knowledge production is too dense, glowing, complex, dramatic, contradictory, visible, invisible, post-any-grid, to entrust a great global cultural event in the care of those who think that words are the cornerstones, the columns sacred books, knowing a warehouse with no surprises. Here are the words chosen by “professors” to stem the displacement of an editorial Milan fair was already a stentorian body when he was born, let alone in an age so that hyperkinetic upgrade systems of our knowledge are put to the test by sensational young ( the first generation of revolutionaries that has an obsession with “kill the past,” but only to increase the speed of this):
“it’s really amazing that some publishers, by virtue of their power of oligopoly and in the wake of an election result, they can pretend to put under his arm a reality built over the years – now almost thirty – the passion of hundreds of thousands of people, participate and present, and take it from a ‘other side’.
Re-read again once these sentences, perhaps after reading Michel Serres, and the Ocean sounds in the ears. Look at the world in which you are immersed: controlled mechanisms and habits, your, and never mind the sense of emptiness that is often protected by nostalgia: Forget the emotional memories of the Book Fair, parties, accounts that work because “sell volumes”, and even the opposition ‘large versus small, “and worse,” Torino vs. Milan”. False problems, false consciousness, fed by false perspectives on what we should be, all together, as “community of fast thinking” (a possible definition of “intellectual class”: why stand as the “intellectual workers” if not we know better to run the machines?) Respond honestly to the following question: in our current universe, there is something more deeply reactionary and weak tone, the attitude expressed by this manifesto, drawn up by a substantial fringe of the Italian intellectual class over 60? I speak of the “professors”, as those who have signed yet another appeal in defense of the Turin Book, a typical example of corporate purpose salon for a better life needs to be addressed, not closed on a reservation.
“It is the next exhibition programs reflecting on some new elements in the wake of what has already been built.
specifically:
1. We strengthen outreach to the rest of the world, confirming the tradition of the host country and the regional and local presence.
2. We collect the proposal, more ventilated parts, a sort of “Mother Earth” books, summoning small publishers and large around the world, jealous of their independence and freedom sometimes put in doubt by adverse conditions.
3 . We propose every year a key idea, a word-theme that captures a historically unavoidable problem for the present and for the future.
4. We choose, during the year, some books that can be discussed by groups of readers around the world – according to a habit increasingly widespread in many countries – to be called to a collective meeting. “
What emerges from these words, from their impersonal tone, defensive and dirigiste ( “programs will”, “jealous of their independence”) even before the letter? Two things, among others: fear of difference, treat the repetition. Many of the things proposed in these four skinny points are now already present in the backbone of the event (the annual theme, the opening to the rest of the world, “Mother of books” Earth), but it is clear that the horizon proposed by “100 “it belongs to the conservation, to the limit just barely retouched, while their own way of thinking and writing emerges the clear need for a radical change. It reads like a blueprint of a center-left party candidate in the European elections in the early nineties. There is so much good will, but a complete ignorance of the fundamental issues of the near future: the themes of globalization, linguistic minorities, independent publishing, are important but have found broad application space in the previous editions of the Salon: also “Earth mother “in” publishing culture “had already been made, under the name of” mother Language “: and summon the readers of the various book-club is not enough to redraw maps and territories of what lies ahead.
the automation of the editorial work and the collapse of finance that support the authorship, the possible automation of the translation, the proper relationship with technology and science, the gender issue in the conception and dissemination of publications, the radical change in reading habits, dialogue with other disciplines and with other textual microcosms, from art to design the games. These, and others, are the issues on which we must discuss with integrity and originality, putting on the backburner the advice of a generation (the “professors”) which has never seen change the landscape and creating object-book distribution forty years and despite everything continues to believe to believe that things are again as in 1965.
however, the overall look, even before the particular verb, to atterrirmi: never as now the world (all Time ) and the world of the book (in its) need to be addressed with a sense of urgency and porosity: the Casa del Libro imagined a hundred professors looks instead to those kindergartens nightmare where every piece of furniture has a raised edge. It seems to me difficult to imagine eyes less prone to fall into that magnificent state of affront by which new things are born. She faces in the two senses of the term, as the new experiences carry with them at the same time happiness and humiliation. It seems to me that there are mainly two categories of behavior – the one that poses the problem, or the one that rejects the problem. The appeal of the professors is a rejection manual. I believe that addressing the problem means today instead prepare to put ideas, stories, magazines and books under the protection of a state interesting and rogue – the esplodibilità.
The exploded, as it is known, it is a type visual representation that allows you to see in detail all the elements that make up an object or system, extracting them from their context and reassembling them outside the original figure. This is why the “crisis” of the Book Fair is an excellent opportunity to blow up – and then analyze with joy and geometric spirit – mental and psychosocial structures that are likely to keep Italy anchored to a certain idea of the twentieth century instead of addressing the most burning contemporary dimension: the unimaginable speed with which technology and science describes the world without stopping, leaving frigid and petrified in certainties by humanists with raised eyebrow and the appeal always ready in the pocket. You need to react with courage and innocence, but these are not the premises of courage and even innocence. The salon table is overturned.
I have already outlined in another text some practical proposals explosion of old formats and old management structures, therefore, I would like here to illustrate some desired they can possibly work as cues notebook for the committee that will handle the future and even the Turin-Milan Salone (which unfortunately is hostage to a provincial certain mediocritas Piemunteisa , type “Turin is my house and nobody has to change nothing”).
it is a theme that I feel heartfelt way, because I believe that inventing opportunities for public cultural production complex is the most democratic way of contributing to society, today, for those who feel an intellectual vocation. That’s why, once you get past the welcome blast hysteria and necessary, I feel that there will come a Book Fair that it can adapt to the real-world speeds. Waste that the consolation of the fake popularity of books-not-books (footballers, politicians, celebrities, etc). Which puts on the same level digital paper on the immediate and the long-form. I feel that there will come a salon capable of functioning as a giant drawing, ready to conceive of collective and social experimentation novels through the conscious use of words. I feel that there will come a hall able to return to the centrality of everyday gesture of reading, a centrality, so refined and cunning to overcome the objective difficulties experienced by our brain dopamine accustomed to digital stimuli. (Perhaps physical books have already thought of as augmented reality objects, like a king Pokemon-go, to photograph landscapes of dishes shared on social networks, there are people who put the books next to the breakfast, or natural backgrounds, as talismans: on the other hand the paper book, in addition to being the largest design project of History is also the very first example of Augmented Reality Physics).
I feel that there will come a salon in which you will find ideas, and not only books: a show that will leave the quagmire of yet another fake opposition, popular vs. niche. A show that will invent new jobs, and will attract global attention as it attracts the Salone del Mobile. I feel that all of this will come. But only if politicians, and we – that we are potential political agents – will choose the right hands to entrust this prayer. Hands of a group. Among the many things that are at the terminus, is the mystique of directors alone at the helm. The coming of the Book of Dream Shop will have as spiritual guides people like Michel Serres and Frank Ocean. After all – pardon the game – is it a book, if you do something that is exactly halfway between a greenhouse and an ocean?
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