Intermedia in Italy:
From Futurism to Digital Convergence
6th February 2025, 2.00-3.30pm
4.01, Lister Learning and Teaching Centre
University of Edinburgh
In Italy at the turn of the twentieth century, the arts drew suddenly closer: a curtain was raised on a magical new hybrid art, cinema. There followed an escalation in the birth of new hybrid genres like sound art, video art, graphic art and performance art and new sites and technologies for hybridity were developed: television, video projection, museums as white boxes, computers, the Internet. Some of Italy’s best-known artists and groups got involved in various ways, from the Futurists to Bruno Munari, Pier Paolo Pasolini, the Gruppo 63, Gianni Toti, Niccolò Ammaniti, and Wu Ming. Many artists we know less well often charted this in-between creative world. At this event, Clodagh Brook, Florian Mussgnug, and Giuliana Pieri will join Emanuela Patti to discuss their book Intermedia in Italy: From Futurism to Digital Convergence. Together, they will explore how the ever-evolving interplay between artistic practices has served as a powerful cultural force shaping creativity since the early twentieth century. Their volume attempts the first large-scale mapping of this force, providing a new framing, and along the way attempts to uncover some of the reasons behind this change.
Clodagh Brook is Professor in Italian at Trinity College, Dublin
Florian Mussgnug is Professor of Comparative Literature and Italian Studies at University College London
Giuliana Pieri is Professor of Italian and the Visual Arts at Royal Holloway, London.
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