Exit Strategies
About Me
Passionate, melancholic, thoughtful, sarcastic, and strong-minded. A few ones may say something different about me, but this just because they can’t get my words, or are in bad faith.
After 15 years of sufferance, I eventually improved as soon as they discovered the main reason of my problems (a stupid celiac disease that almost killed me) and so, because of a concomitant saying ‘no’ to a system exploiting individuals and making them fight each other in a battle of the have-not – ‘mafia’ is not only in the south of my country, nor what you see in film, but a cultural attitude unfortunately affecting most of the people in Italy – I plucked up my courage and began trying to change my life, by moving again, travelling, making new experiences and fighting fear and weakness. No, I’m not going to give up!
I’m a cultural anthropologist – I love this job (that I consider a choice of life) and what I learnt/learn by it. This blog is to share my experience(s) and my point(s) of view about people, situations, events, places. Although we are ‘academics’, we can hopefully make an interesting (and enjoyable also for non academics) public use of what we know, and of our way of looking at things – where this specific gaze is not necessary better then others’ one, but it’s based on a scientific mind masturbation, so that it has some sort of social consideration/value. But still what we do is mainly to describe and compare the habits and behaviours of this wonderful, weird, delicate parade we belong to – the human community.
As the introduction to a completely useless group on Facebook – whose name is Anthropology has warped my brain – tells:
without even being aware of the process as it occurred, you have suddenly realised that anthropological concepts have somehow lodged themselves into your brain. You have taken to observing all the strange little – sorry, I mean, interesting, and perfectly valid in the context in which they occur – habits and rituals of the people around you. Anthropological terms have appeared into your daily vocabulary and you unwittingly apply them to every area of your life (whether correctly or incorrectly). Your brain does not work in the same way it did prior to starting your anthropology course/ hanging around with anthropologists. You say stuff like “Ahhhhh, but what exactly do you mean by ‘yellow’?” and “There’s no such thing as a ‘ham sandwhich’ – it’s just a cultural construct.”
Well, yes: this is us…
For many years I worked among an intercultural association (AlmaTerra – based at the Centro Interculturale delle Donne Alma Mater, Turin) and its community multicultural theatre company (AlmaTeatro, Turin). I did anything among them, with the excuse of the ‘participant observation’ – acting, videomaking, writing, interpreting, promoting, managing, networking, listening and talking. It was really an intense experience, that lasted something like 7 years and led to publish books and videos. But for me, the fun was living among them.
I’m generally interested in community projects and activities – both as a researcher and as a networker, something I would really love to do for the rest of my life. I do also make videos: focus of my researches is cultural identity (you can understand what I mean by my video Identità culturale), anything related to this issue is very welcome!
I’m then interested in videoart, contemporary art, and cultural performances in general. I spend a lot of time in museums, exhibitions and art galleries – I feel that I’m ‘rich’ as much as I feed my soul and my eyes. And finally, I recently re-discovered photography, and one of my aims is to learn and use it more and more.
Read, look, listen, enjoy, share.
