Vulnerabilità e dispositivi artistici : intrecci generativi

Abstract

The paper inspects existing and possible intersections between the use and the production of art forms (within its widest meaning: theatre, music, dance, figurative art) and multiple forms of disability, fragility and vulnerability. The study is based on field research that adopted a qualitative sociological approach, realized at the margins of the In Necessita Virtu Festival in Bergamo (born in 2012, in the wake of a previous event). It proposes to give a voice and a body to forms of marginality and hardship through forms of art, but not only. Pairs of contrasting words (production/use, sloth/commitment, visibilia/invisibilia, fragility/resilience, process/product) came forth from the stories told by privileged witnesses, involved in various ways in artistic research and work in contact with socially fragile subjects (the physically and mentally disabled, prisoners, depressed people, and so forth). The tension that emerged – never mutual exclusion (aut aut) nor simple juxtaposition (et et) – intersects the artistic experiences within conditions of marginality, fragility, and hardship. Above all, it is evident that, particularly within these walks of life, artistic languages do not limit themselves to unveiling the human condition, but also inspire in everybody – men and women alike– that generativity that changes lives, powers, communities.