ON LANDSCAPE

ur conversation engages the work of art historian Viviana Gravano, with a particular focus on her scholarship and curatorship around questions of landscape and landscape photography in Italy. Gravano outlines the contours of her discipline’s encounter with the experimental moment in the human sciences, insisting on the importance for her work of the Italian translation of both Writing Culture: The Poetics & Politics of Ethnography (Marcus & Clifford, 1985) and Anthropology as Cultural Critique (Marcus & Fisher, 1987) during the 1990s.  That same decade, she adds, has also seen a ferment of experimental activity in Rome:  the emergence of participatory actions and art practices that took cue from the manifestos, interventions, and urban walks curated and conceptualized by the watershed architectural collective Stalker.  It is in this urban context and intellectual milieu that Gravano locates her research and books on landscape photographers, with a keen interest in the work of Gea Casolaro whose photographs are featured here courtesy the artist.

iviana Gravano was born in Rome in 1961. She is a Contemporary Art Curator and Professor of Art History at the Accademia delle Belle Arti di Napoli. She is in the editorial board  of the journal “Art’O_Cultura e Politica delle arti sceniche”; she was photo editor and editor in the journal “Gomorra – Territori e Culturi nelle Metropoli Contemporanee”; she was Assistant Director in the journal “Avatar-Dislocazione tra Antropologia, Comunicazione e Arti Visive”; she was Curator in the Nova Gallery and in LopLop Gallery in Rome. She was the author of the radio program The magic eyes, broadcasted by RAI Radio3. She published many essays in exhibition catalogues, books and journals, such as: L’Arte fotografica, Fotografi da tutto il mondo nelle collezioni italiane, Fondazione Italiana per la Fotografia, Palazzo Cesi, Acquasparta(TR), Carte Segrete, Roma 1996; L’immagine fotografica, Mimesis, Milano 1997; Crossing. Progetti fotografici di confine, Costa & Nolan, Milano 1998; Paesaggi attivi Saggio contro la contemplazione/L’attivismo paesaggistico nell’arte contemporanea, Costa&Nolan, Milano 2008. Ha partecipato a diversi progetti europei in qualità di storica e curatrice d’arte, tra cui: REcall – European Conflict Archaeological Landscapes Reappropriation (Politecnico di MilanoAalborg Universitet, Newcastle University, NTNU – Trondheim, Falstad Centre, Museo diffuso di Torino, Museum of Romsdal, Ergan Foundation, Routes Agency); Transnationalizing Modern Languages Mobility, Identity and Translation in Modern Italian Cultures (University of Bristol, Queen Margareth University (Edinburgh), The University of Warwick, University of St Andrews, Arts and Humanities Research Council, Routes Agency). Ha partecipato a numerose Conferenze Internazionali tra cui: Relectures postcoloniales des échanges artistiques et culturels entre Europe et Maghreb(Algérie, France, Italie, Maroc et Tunisie) XVIIIe-XXI e siècles, Villa Medici, Roma; MELA Uno International Conference. The Postcolonial Museum. The pressures of memories and the bodies of histories, Università L’Orientale, Napoli (IT) (2013); La performance: vie de l’archive et actualité, AICA-France, Villa Arson, Université Sophia Antipolis, Nice (FR) (2012); 2010 Archivi Affettivi PSI Conference, Università del Piemonte Orientale, Vercelli (IT) (2010).