Federico Campagna. Philosopher in Residence 2022

Following the first edition of the program Philosophy in Residence organized by Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea in collaboration with its Research Center (CRRI), the Museum is pleased to host Federico Campagna.

In 2021, philosopher and writer Leonardo Caffo developed a series of podcasts entitled The Disappearance of the Public, where he investigated the notion of the public, its disappearance, and its different features.

In 2022, philosopher Federico Campagna delves into the Mediterranean “creative imagination” from ancient times to nowadays, focusing the period between Late Antiquity and the beginning of Modernity. His research pivots on the imaginative solutions produced by the Mediterranean communities – ranging from the Indus Valley to the Atlantic coasts of Europe – during some of the most dramatic moments in the history of the region. Consulting of the volumes of Villa Cerruti’s library and studying closely the paintings in the Cerruti Collection, Campagna establishes transversal research pointing at philosophy, literature, theology, visual art, and cosmology as conceived by those Mediterranean subjects who have faced an “end of the world” (the end of a certain way of understanding reality following the collapse of a civilization). To such moments of crisis, the Mediterranean communities have often reacted with a “mass migration” outside the realm of History (with its borders, its horrors and its political powers), towards other imaginary worlds, out of the geographical space. In these other-worlds, they have given birth to new imaginations with a strong syncretism, in which the very status of reality (and of everything that populates it) has been reinvented from the ground up.

Although often distant in time, these case studies of apocalyptic reinvention of the world remain of great relevance even in our times, in a historical moment of great cultural, environmental and geopolitical transformations on a planetary scale.

The result of this research is featured in Federico Campagna’s upcoming publication, provisionally titled Il Mare Tra Le Terre: una storia dell’immaginazione Mediterranea, which was presented during his residency in the frame of talks and podcasts.