In the digital age, images tend to produce an increasingly strong indistinction between document and simulation. New technologies (think of Photoshop) induce us to arbitrarily remodel reality and to manipulate our personal archives at will. The relationship between technically produced images and reality is therefore changing considerably. Not so much in the sense that the real world is progressively replaced by a simulated world, but in the more disturbing sense that the reference of images to the real world is realized with a growing disinterest in their truthfulness and with a growing indifference towards their capacity to bear witness. Are we moving towards the progressive substitution of the simulated world for the real one? Are images still a faithful mirror of reality? To answer these questions, Pietro Montani proposes a compelling journey through visual languages and the processes of technological construction of the image. From La valle di Elah to Avatar via Buongiorno, notte, a healthy reflection conducted at the limits of the visible.
Pietro Montani, full professor of Aesthetics at La Sapienza University in Rome, has been questioning the relationship between technique and the arts for years (and with great lucidity). Strengthened by Garroni’s lesson, according to which art is a way that man has historically given himself to attribute a meaning to experience, he has long been concerned with the relationship between reality and fiction from the point of view of cinematic aesthetics. His studies on the aesthetic theories of the avant-garde and on the formal autonomy of cinematic narrative are fundamental. At ease among Lukács, Bachtin, Heidegger and Gadamer, he was the editor of the theoretical writings of Dziga Vertov (L’occhio della Rivoluzione, Milan 1976) and the twelve volumes of the Selected Works of Sergej M. Ejzenšteijn. He has just published for Laterza a successful book dedicated to the testimonial value of images (’ immaginazione intermediale. Perlustrare, rifigurare, testimoniare il mondo visibile, 2010).
Pietro Montani, professore ordinario di Estetica all’Università La Sapienza di Roma, si interroga da anni (e con grande lucidità) sul rapporto tra tecnica e arti. Forte della lezione di Garroni, per cui l’arte è un modo che l’uomo si è dato storicamente per attribuire un senso all’esperienza, si è a lungo occupato del rapporto tra realtà e finzione dal punto di vista dell’estetica cinematografica. Fondamentali i suoi studi sulle teorie estetiche dell’avanguardia e sull’autonomia formale del racconto cinematografico. A suo agio tra Lukács, Bachtin, Heidegger e Gadamer, è stato il curatore degli scritti teorici di Dziga Vertov (L’occhio della Rivoluzione, Milano 1976) e i dodici volumi delle Opere scelte di Sergej M. Ejzenšteijn. Ha appena dato alle stampe per Laterza un felice libro dedicato al valore testimoniale delle immagini (L’ immaginazione intermediale. Perlustrare, rifigurare, testimoniare il mondo visibile, 2010).