Fill 2023: Place

(This is a past event and is no longer running)

Marco Belpoliti & Philip Hoare

The map is not the territory, but every territory has its map. Or rather, several maps, overlapping and contradicting each other. What does it mean to write about a landscape, be it the vast, foggy land of the Italian plain or the troubled and mysterious depth of the sea? Which stories, legends, tales can literature uncover? How do the human stories of the cultural past interact with the nonhuman stories of nature?

Chair: Gianluca Didino

The event is in English.

Marco Belpoliti is an essayist and literary critic. He wrote on a wide range of subjects including Italian literature and politics, art and photography. He is the director of the cultural magazine “Doppiozero”. His last book, Pianura (Einaudi, 2020), is a personal exploration of the past, present and future of the Italian great plain, the Pianura Padana.

Philip Hoare is a writer, essayist and biographer. Amongst other topics, he has written extensively about the sea, its stories and its inhabitants in three of his books: Leviathan, or the Whale (2009), The Sea Inside (2013) and RISINGTIDEFALLINGSTAR (2017). His last book, Albert & the Whale (2021), is about Albrecht Dürer and his pursuit of a mythological leviathan.