Mina (cur.)
Building Babel
tracing a visionary map of irregulars architectures and imaginary universes in Italy
"An original research that explores for the first time an odd Italian geography by
tracking the sites of "builders of dreams and imagination"
tracing a visionary map of irregulars architectures and imaginary universes in Italy
"An original research that explores for the first time an odd Italian geography by
tracking the sites of "builders of dreams and imagination"
A retired railroad worker who for fifty years has built on a hill in the Cinque Terre great figures using recycled materials, and created a huge nativity scene illuminated by thousands of bulbs. A builder from Messina, which transformed a shack in a dream home, including mosaics and concrete elephants, then dismantled by strong economic powers of his own town. A cathedral of rock, the result of forty years of research on the bank of the Adige. A farmer and a fourty-five feet Sardinian woman made of plastic and chicken-wire fences. A craftsman of the Marche that created a wooden globe with thirty feet in circumference. These and others are the builders of Babel ...
Here, for the first time, there is an attempt to reconstruct a visionary geography: an anarchist geography is always hovering between accumulation and collapse, driven by self-taught artists who have devoted decades of their lives to a total work, although often surrounded by indifference and hostility. The book includes unusual anthropological studies by researchers who describe little-known enterprises to give back their full value, while questioning the fate of these fragile outside-the-rules worlds. With essays by: Cristina Calicelli (irregular art – creative workshops in mental hospitals); Luisa Del Giudice (anthropologist -director of the Italian Oral History Institute at the University of California Los Angeles); Eva Di Stefano (professor of Contemporary History of Art at the University of Palermo and director of Osservatorio Outsider Art); Bruno Montpied (an expert of outside-of-rules sites in France); Daniela Rosi (coordinates the Outsider Art Centre for Accademia di Belle Arti, Verona); Bianca Tosatti (a leading international expert of irregular art); Roberta Trapani (a founding member of Art Brut collective).
Gabriele Mina, anthropology researcher and professor, has studied in particular the ritual of Mediterranean tarantism, and the representation of the other.
Here, for the first time, there is an attempt to reconstruct a visionary geography: an anarchist geography is always hovering between accumulation and collapse, driven by self-taught artists who have devoted decades of their lives to a total work, although often surrounded by indifference and hostility. The book includes unusual anthropological studies by researchers who describe little-known enterprises to give back their full value, while questioning the fate of these fragile outside-the-rules worlds. With essays by: Cristina Calicelli (irregular art – creative workshops in mental hospitals); Luisa Del Giudice (anthropologist -director of the Italian Oral History Institute at the University of California Los Angeles); Eva Di Stefano (professor of Contemporary History of Art at the University of Palermo and director of Osservatorio Outsider Art); Bruno Montpied (an expert of outside-of-rules sites in France); Daniela Rosi (coordinates the Outsider Art Centre for Accademia di Belle Arti, Verona); Bianca Tosatti (a leading international expert of irregular art); Roberta Trapani (a founding member of Art Brut collective).
Gabriele Mina, anthropology researcher and professor, has studied in particular the ritual of Mediterranean tarantism, and the representation of the other.