Thursday 2 May 2024, at 6.30 pm in the Terre Blu center, in via San Nicola 27 in Caserta, the exhibition “The city of utopia” will be inaugurated, on the occasion of which the volume of the same name published by Terre Blu will be presented in the prestigious Sguardi series, which includes books by figures such as Franco Arminio, Andrea di Consoli, Isabella Staino etc.
On display are the drawings created by the students of the Leonardo Da Vinci secondary school in Caserta, which together with the texts they composed themselves are the subject of the publication. The city of Utopia is the place where imaginaries condense. The island of Thomas More, the perfect geometries of the Enlightenment which describe cities founded on the principle of knowledge and therefore happy, the magnificent animals which in the Middle Ages gathered together in highly refined bestiaries, finally the travel stories and in particular that of Marco Polo so as narrated by Italo Calvino. On the basis of these fascinations, transferred without voluntarily deepening them, the boys told and designed an elsewhere in which to let their visions live, expressions of a thought that reveals itself at its birth, in its unconditional purity, demonstrating that between dream and project there is possible to trace thin threads.
After the institutional greetings, the project and the book will be presented by: Enzo Battarra, Councilor for Culture of the City of Caserta; Fabiola Del Deo, Headmaster of the Da Vinci-Lorenzini Comprehensive Institute; Antonio Cosentino, expert in Philosophy for Children; Giuseppe Coppola, Artistic Director.
“The “beautiful place” of every utopia – writes Cosentino in the preface – also brings with it, as an inevitable consequence, the placeless, the out of place. The Neverland presents itself, therefore, also as an a-topia, as an inclination to escape clichés, to distance itself from already marked and predictable paths. Here, then, the pages of this book surprise us and invite us not only to participate in the journey, but also to undertake others on our own towards Utopia, without telling us exactly which roads to take and follow.”
The volume, created as part of the Scuola Viva programme, will then be presented on 9 May at the Turin Book Fair, at the Publisher’s stand, where the school and students will be present for the occasion.
