Worldbuilding and Territy: reading and narrating the landscape - Conference by Matteo Meschiari

The human species has always modified its habitat following a double thrust, the transformation of the physical landscape and the invention of a cultural landscape. In this sense we read and tell the Earth, domesticating space not only materially but narrating it in the ways that are most useful for living it. The geophysical structure remains, but is reinterpreted through myths, rituals and social practices. This is "earthiness", a concept that sums up the coevolution and coexistence between man and the Earth. Starting from the utopian experience of Monte Verità, Meschiari reflects on the idea of nature which, in the Ascona experience of the last century, was "the beginning", the choice, the goal. However, this landscape poised between nature and culture seems to have left room for new superstructures of thought, perhaps making us lose sight of the Earthiness that could help us understand it between past and future.

Followed by an aperitif.

Matteo Meschiari is an Italian writer, anthropologist and geographer. For years he has been dealing with the interaction between man and the environment, exploring themes such as landscape perception, cultural ecology and human geography. He has taught at several French universities and is associate professor of Geography at the University of Palermo. He has published numerous books and essays, in which he combines anthropological and geographical approaches with a literary perspective. His works include: Black Arctic (2016), Geoanarchy ((2017), Finisterre (2019), Geographies of Collapse (2021), Landness - A Geoanarchist History (2022).

CATEGORIES

• Literature