The art of Ai Weiwei and Isgrò, Paolo Giordano’s Percival Everett: here is «the Reading» – Corriere.it

The price of freedom in the age of the internet, the risk of censorship which seeks to neutralize the dissent of art (and it does not only do so in dictatorships): two great artists such as the Chinese Ai Weiwei and our Emilio Isgr in the broad conversation with which the new issue of la Lettura opens, #591, previewed on the App on Saturday 25 March and on Sunday 26 on the newsstand.

The dialogue between Ai Weiwei and Emilio Isgr, curated by Marco Del Corona, takes the opportunity of the release in Italy of the memoir of the Chinese artist and activist (
1000 years of joys and sorrows
Feltrinelli, in bookstores from 28 March) to compare the two artists: reflections on the historical memory, on freedom and on the breaking character of art, themes on which the two masters are close.

Ai Weiwei, who was incarcerated in an undisclosed location in 2011 and now lives in Europe, explains the pervasiveness of the regime in his country. AND Isgr, who spoke about himself in 2017 in the book Self-curriculum (Sellerio), underlines how art is always dissent, even in the West of freedoms: where there is power, the risk of censorship always lurks. And the cancel culturesobscuring memories, self-destructive for the West.

Right in the heart of the West, in the United States, the story of which has its roots writer Percival Everett tells the ramifications in today’s world, in the book Trees (The ship of Theseus): in 1955 a group of white lynxes Emmett Till, African-American boy guilty only of speaking to a girl in a shop; now, in Everett’s novel, the descendants of the then murderers they are involved in a series of arcane and mysterious deaths. The Paolo Giordano Witch Prize reflects on the book and interviews the American colleague on the issues raised by the novel: white suprematism, today’s racism and the death of George Floyd, the temperature of the country after the attack on Capitol Hill, memory in a society where some schools erase slavery from history programs. Among other things, the reconstruction of the story of Emmett Till today’s Theme of the Day in the App de la Lettura, signed by Viviana Mazza.

The Reading App for smartphones and tablets (downloadable from the App Store and Google Play) offers subscribers a preview of the new issue on Saturday, the archive with all the releases since 2011 and the Theme of the Day, a digital-only daily extra. Subscribing costs 3.99 euros per month or 39.99 per year, with one week free. The subscription can also be subscribed from the desktop starting from this page. For subscribers, the contents are also visible from PCs and Macs starting from their Profile page. Furthermore, a one-year subscription to the App can be given as a gift via the web from here or by purchasing a Gift Card in Librerie.coop.

In addition to erasures, false reality projections (cows are not purple) are also a danger, while we need to see the world as it is. The warning comes by historian Philipp Blom, among the guests of Incroci di civilization (in Venice, from Wednesday 29 March to Saturday 1 April): interviewed in the supplement by Annachiara Sacchi, the author of Submissive nature (Marsilio) explains the need for a new enlightenment that is both radical and ethical, and that makes us recognize the interconnections existing in nature, of which we are a part and not a separate and individual element.

Immersed in nature and in open dialogue with cultures: a perspective that appears futuristic but also has archaic roots. For example in the realism with which the Macchiaioli depicted life in post-unification Italy, among farmhouses and woods, farmhouses and farmyards, ox carts and soldiers, well illustrated by the three exhibitions (plus one that has just closed in Pisa) at the Orangerie of the Villa Reale in Monza, at the Palazzo Fava in Bologna and at the Revoltella Museum in Trieste: Arturo Carlo Quintavalle writes about it.

Other themes in the Masks, the new projects by actress Rachel Brosnahan, interviewed by Paola Casella as the 5th season of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (from April 14 on Prime Video); in the Percorsi, the identity and evolution of the right at the time of Giorgia Meloni in the conversation between the historian Roberto Chiarini and the political scientists Piero Ignazi and Salvatore Vassallo, edited by Antonio Carioti.