Francesca SCHEPIS
Conferenza Internazionale
11-13 DICEMBRE 2024, Università degli Studi Mediterranea di Reggio Calabria
CROSSMED. Landscapes Across the Mediterranean
Multidisciplinary Considerations in Landscape, Infrastructure, Architecture and Resource Management
Session 19
Sustainable Tourism and Recreation in Landscapes: Traditional land use practices and landscape preservation
Abstract
The proposed theme aims to identify and specify the relationship between ruin, physical place and collective thought, with specific reference to the southern condition. In particular, the study questions the forms of contemporary art and architecture that work on the theme of the ruin, interpreting it with respect to the original historical bearing, not as a nostalgic echo that ruined structures arouse in those who observe them, but as a continuous stimulus in those who consider them as an iterated projection of a collective imaginary, as the permanence, in time and space, of a foundational cultural dimension.
Primarily, it is intended to define the etymology of the term ruin, attempting to fix, among many possible ones, a specific one and its clarification within the scope of the present discussion. The concepts of “ancient ruin” and “contemporary ruin,” “abandoned ruin” and “inhabited ruin,” “fictitious ruin” and “invisible ruin” find their place. But also, the meanings of “fragment,” “discard,” and “memory” as apparent synonyms. The development of the study intends to prefigure the concept of ruin as a site of the project by placing it in a potential and future temporal dimension. In this sense, it opens the possibility to an ethical extension of ruin, in place of only the aestheticizing component, to an operational depth applicable in the context of the Italian South.
Cultural landscapes are once again being investigated as a place of creative transformation by finding the forms of art and architecture as the key to understanding our landscapes.
