Exile and Creativity: Book Launch

Book discussion followed by wine reception.

Giorgio Van Straten, Alessandro Cassin, Alexander Stille and Fraser Ottanelli.

Exile and Creativity, published by CPL Editions, is a collection of essays  from a program series held in 2017-18 by the Italian Cultural Institute in New York jointly with Centro Primo Levi.

The essays examine the lives of Italian man and women who were forced or chose exile during the Fascist era. These include Enrico Fermi, Mario Castelnuovo Tedesco, Arturo Toscanini, Nicola Chiaromonte, Renato Poggioli, Paolo Milano, Franco Modigliani, Amelia Rosselli and Amelia Rosselli, Corrado Cagli and Lucio Fontana, and Costantino Nivola.

Whereas the narratives of exile tend to focus on the experience of disorientation and loss, as the curator of the series, Giorgio Van Straten states in the introduction, exile is “also something found: an opportunity, a new culture capable of sparking unexpected, unforeseen developments along one’s path through life and, therefore, the possible enrichment of one’s humanistic and cultural heritage”.

In the experience of many exiles, expatriates, refugees and migrants, creativity emerges amidst narratives of permanence, familiarity and stability. Exile is often cast against ideas of home, identity, family and roots, which ambiguously tend to define what is good and relevant, as if to ensure that mobility, difference and encounters remain confined to realms that break off from “normality” ranging from war to tourism.

Join us at Rizzoli’s for a conversation on these topics, to learn more about the Italian exiles in America and a drink.

From the Primo Levi Center.