LINGUAGGI 2014

The distinction between body and soul, between body and mind, has marked the doctrines of philosophers, thinkers, theologians, and scientists for centuries. Yet beyond theories and interpretations, humanity appears as a unique synthesis of two worlds that seem so different and antithetical. In fact, it serves as the clearest demonstration that there is no alternative, only unity. Thus, the body seems to reclaim its place as part of the understanding that human beings can have of the material and spiritual world, as a tool of knowledge, as a thermometer against which we cannot oppose lies, fantasies, or even madness and false realities.This is why the Linguaggi (Languages) section starts here, with the body and the bodies that meet, clash, draw near, and move away, that sometimes sacrifice themselves and find peace, transmitting elements and figures of other people, of the earth, of nature. In an increasingly immaterial world, are only bodies left to bring us back to the truth, to prevent us from lying and deceiving ourselves? Scholars, witnesses, journalists, and artists help us understand contemporary issues involving bodies that migrate between continents, that succumb to a contaminated, degraded, and destroyed nature, that live in the state of constant war of illegality and corruption, that are annihilated by technological conflicts and new forms of fanaticism and terrorism. But they also reveal how the body, where it seems most compromised, is also the only one capable of offering us new perspectives, almost telling us that in such a reference-less moment, we may need to start again right here.