URL: www.ilnarratore.com (under costruction)

Bio:

Maurizio Falghera (sociologist, teacher and narrator) and Cristiana Giacometti ( communication studies consultant and media broadcasting producer ). We were both involved for many years in ecological issues in Italy, at the moment we are building up a new web site called IL NARRATORE as an international cultural non-profit organization born to promote stories-listening of the literary philosophical and religious traditions from all over the world. The stories that the users can download from this web site are read and recorded by professional narrators and actors( at present in Italian). People tell stories in order to create an image of the self and the world, since we are made up of "stories": people are the metaphor of themselves, they are their stories. Our idea is that the planet is connected in terms of stories and that telling and listening to stories is one of the best ways to feel part of the living story-line itself. It is our opinion that not only are people their own 'story' but also animals, trees, flowers and all ecosystems 'have' and 'are' their own story: this also goes for technology - even the most advanced forms are segments and sequences of stories. Today, computers and their networks allow the memory and conscience to reflect outside the mind of the individual to form "mass memories" and "work memories". The memory is there, always further outside us all - impersonal and gigantic, universal and encyclopaedic. It is as if a New Planetary Species were being created - being to the individual what the nest is to the ant. This new memory form transcends people's memories and is accessible at all times and is threatening in that it prefigures the loss of history through its unstoppable growth and because it is always present.

Topics and themes for Conference:

The question we ask ourselves is this: could this New Planetary Species also be conscious? If the answer were yes, then in what way and to what extent can it tell stories? Is it possible that Internet could give birth to a living mental system in form of communities where science and philosophy would be poetry and narration? Is Internet the right tool for linking all the luminous points in the world while the planet is darkening?

Return to PLANETWORK Conference