“Culture that unites”: The philosophy underpinning Italy Guest of Honour becomes a reality
“Because culture unites – stated Commissioner Mauro Mazza – culture unites even where everything else divides, distances or clashes. This spirit shines through from the exchanges, the abundance of genres, from the variety of speakers."
And that’s not all. Culture unites minds but also places: the Piazza of the Italy Pavilion, designed by Boeri Interiors, is, as in the best historical and architectural tradition of the “Bel Paese”, conceived to become the epicentre of the community, of exchange and of communication, the beating heart of the event where under a starry sky people can meet, discuss and, if possible, dream.
But what do we mean when we talk about culture? We asked our encyclopaedia.
“Culture that unites” is the conceptual keystone, therefore, around which all the initiatives of the Italian presence at the Buchmesse revolve, but what do we mean when we talk about culture: what is it exactly? It is not easy to define “culture” simply. A changing and multiform entity, rooted in the past but nourished by the future and the imagination, culture spreads and breathes but is not easily encapsulated in one definition.
Luckily, when complexity makes it difficult to pinpoint a meaning, we can ask Treccani for help. We have all been doing it, for almost one hundred years.
In fact, the Institute of the Italian Encyclopaedia, was founded in Rome on 18 February 1925 on the initiative of Giovanni Treccani degli Alfieri and the philosopher Giovanni Gentile with the aim of giving Italy a great national encyclopaedia.
Since then, Treccani has continued its work of interconnecting the most diverse fields of learning, becoming a witness to Italian cultural identity and a tool of knowledge and in-depth study within everyone’s reach.
Here is the result obtained by typing the term “culture” into the online Treccani Encyclopaedia:
“The sum of intellectual knowledge which, acquired through study, reading, experience, the influence of one’s surroundings, reworked subjectively and autonomously, becomes a basic element of one’s personality, contributing towards enriching one’s spirit, developing or enhancing one’s own faculties, especially the capacity for judgement”.
And further:
“Set of social, political and economic institutions, of artistic and scientific activities, of spiritual and religious expression that characterise life in a given society at a given moment in history”.
Whereas looking up the meaning of the verb “unite” in the Treccani dictionary, the result is:
“Putting two or more objects, entities or elements together, joining them or connecting them so that they are in contact, seamlessly, and form a unified whole”.
The Treccani section: a journey through time and knowledge
Culture as the acquisition of self awareness and awareness of one’s own world. Union as contact and togetherness. Culture as a tool for learning from the past to understand the future, for bringing together and integrating distant experiences, a sort of journey through time you will be able to experience also in the space dedicated to Treccani inside the Italy Pavilion.
To learn more about the Italian cultural institution by definition, visitors will find themselves in a multimedia environment inspired by the Renaissance study room, a place considered to be the forerunner of museums and historically dedicated to reflection, contemplation and knowledge of the past and the present. An installation that will conceal and reveal precious illuminated manuscripts, objects of contemporary art, design and fine craftsmanship, expressions of Italian excellence.
The objects in the Treccani catalogue will populate the study room, dominated by a central interactive installation: a portal on Italian culture and the rich iconographic heritage of the Great Italian Encyclopaedia, the subject of an ambitious project to digitise and promote knowledge.
As the philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer wrote: “Culture is the only wealth of mankind which, when shared among all, becomes greater, not smaller”.
Italy Guest of Honour 2024 will be in Frankfurt from 16 to 20 October, to prove just that.