mittelfest2024
mittelfest 2024
19-28 July
Now, if appearances are deceiving, it is also true that they are not always maliciously deceiving – unless that is the intention of the manipulator. If the sea is calm, it is also true that under that grey-blue film lies the chaotic dynamics of the abyss. If the sky is clear, it is also true that beyond the blue, in the darkness of the galaxies, some star explodes or implodes, adding vortex to vortex in harmonic disorders spanning billions of years. And cosmic disorders flashed before the keen eyes of those who, a century ago, in the heart of a central Europe torn to shreds by the Great War, sensed and sought out two ideas both portentous and full of fertile disquiet, those ideas that – says Carlo Rovelli – “humanity, I believe, has not yet digested”: relativity and quantum mechanics. It was a group of young people, full of desire and fervour, of different passions and mutual hatreds, who unveiled two shattering visions, between the overturning of established orders and new laws of a universe in chaos: there were the Viennese Pauli and the Bavarian Heisenberg, who were taught in Copenhagen by Niels Bohr, the Hungarian and outsider János Neumann, who later became John von Neumann, who fathered the computer science of our implacable computers and algorithms. There was the other Viennese Schrödinger, whose life was bombastic and dense, but above all the stateless Einstein, whose relativity had opened the door to a nature that follows ‘probabilities’ and changes depending on who ‘observes’ it. In short, the cosmos now seemed to be guided by a fearsome god playing dice: isn’t it then worth acting like Dr Spoiler and getting on the bicycle?
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Yet, the chaos of that bizarre universe, which emerged a hundred years ago, has set the pace for our age, of hyper-fast trains, of relentless automatons and satellite technologies, of magnetic resonance imaging and drones – whether they carry Christmas parcels or bombs we do not know. Yet, the chaos of that bizarre universe, which emerged a hundred years ago, reverberates in the feelings of this age, in the wide-eyed gaze at lights that alone twirl in the dark, in the rapture of those who cry out their discomfort at the incessant novelties and impositions, in the weary bewilderment of the relentless travellers, free and otherwise, in the excitement of those who turn every trick into a new possibility.
What to do in the face of this bewilderment: try to put everything back in line by following the icy rules of times past and future algorithms, or let oneself go on an adventure with the demure ferocity of sex in one’s twenties, riding what comes, in goodness and horror? Take shelter within one’s own walls, watching from a screen what happens outside and hoping not to end up there, or throw oneself as a protagonist in the centre of the frame? Or perhaps, like a tightrope walker, attempt to navigate the world, wobbling along one’s own slender path, suspended precariously towards the goal, amidst conflicts, illusions, races, hopes and other sumptuous disorders? The die is not cast.
Events
Premio Adelaide Ristori 2024
Soroptimist International d’Italia – Club di Cividale del Friuli
Le tue parole
Pierluigi, Scluse e il cîl
Giuseppe Battiston/Piero Sidoti/Pierluigi Cappello
