The Scandal of Imagination

Screening of a video-collage by Alessandro Cassin with Awen Films

Featuring Luciano Chessa in Sylvano Bussotti’s Julio Organum Julii

With a q&a with Alessandro Cassin to follow.

A modern anarchist outlines a new ecological horizon where man renounces the idea of primacy over other living beings.

Imagination is his main instrument: when he puts it to work, scandal erupts.

Aldo Braibanti (1922-2014) fought in the antifascist resistance and, when the war was over, returned to his first passion: poetry. With a group of like-minded men, he built one of Italy’s first post-war artists communes at the torrione Farnese of Castell’Arquato. “At the tower, each of us was seeking a peaceful solitude which is the exact opposite of the solitude one suffers in modern cities… without the ambition to start artistic or cultural trends. The only common condition was a shared attitude toward organized religion, politics, and society.”

The commune was a free laboratory for poetry, pottery, collage, philosophy, theater, and film. Youth from all walks of life, grown-up under the dictatorship, rediscovered the pleasure of learning without dogmas. They pursued the idea that the practice of art, ethics, and social relations could be the foundations for a new political/ecological conscience.