2020/2021
The Broken Archive
European historiography has produced a romanticized image of Italy. The focus on historic city centers and the works of the Renaissance provides a very limited view of the present day. What new historical narratives do justice to the complex problems facing the Mediterranean region?
What is assessed as urban and scenic beauty arises from an historically and politically constructed perspective that is becoming increasingly brittle in the present. Researchers, artists and activists are increasingly attempting to revise such clichés. They correlate European historiography and its archives with current developments to attain a more complex picture that includes marginalized positions and addresses exclusions. How are the legacy of the Renaissance and the exploitation of resources in the Anthropocene related? What traces of African presence from pre-colonial times to the present day can be found in Italy? How do national populist image politics work? What stories do the immense archives of Italy tell and whose stories are absent in them?
