Patrimonio Materia Attiva

HERITAGE ACTIVE MATTER. Heritage is closely related to all of us, and part of our everyday lives, surrounding them. It a ects the very substance of contempo- rary urban landscapes; it is an active part of the ows of its transformations and the subject of continuous hybridisations of meaning. Heritage is a collection of inheritances that, in turn, are collections of ideas, values, and political and cultural strategies, which are often con ictual. Its presence is important: it establishes connections between di erent spaces and times, it becomes a part of activities of transformations, it measures critical distances, operating outside of a nostalgic approach, though far from a vision that re-proposes it as an exclusively aesthetic precedent. The objective is that of reformulating the notion of heritage, from di erent points of view. From the point of view of historians involved in re-reading heritage in relation to the modi cation of the role of the élite and re-constructing the “history of themes” throughout the course of the twentieth century in Europe. From the point of view of landscape architects and geographers, exam- ining the possibility that nature or the landscape can be considered heritage. From the point of view of town planners, architects and artists, invited to re-read the founding ties between the city, architecture and heritage in our contemporary era. The question underlying all of these interventions has to do with the relationship with Modernism: exactly what is that, today, we have inherited? How does this notion survive in light of the mutated relationship with modernity? How has the notion of heritage been re-written at a time when we can no longer refer to ourselves as modern? The construction of the proposed contribution begins with the 2008 symposium “Ricordo al futuro. Patrimonio dell’esistente e paesaggi urbani contemporanei” curated by Carmen Andriani (Venice 22 & 23 October 2008, Piccolo Teatro Arsenale) and promoted by the Parc/MiBAC, Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage, the MAXXI Museo Nazionale delle Arti del XXI secolo and the Venice Biennial, 11th International Architecture Exhibition, recently documented in the publication ‘Il Patrimonio e l’Abitare’, edited by Carmen Andriani and published by Donzelli.