Interdisciplinary Italy 1900-2020: Interart/Intermedia

Since the start of the 20th century, the arts in Italy have rapidly developed hybrid forms. Cinema, digital visual poetry, sound art, filmed book trailers and other practices which cross arts and media and have become a major cultural force. Artists are shifting between different art forms with a fluidity which is striking: Dino Buzzati, for instance, writes novels, but also designs their illustrations; the poet Eduoardo Sanguineti traces his poetry back to atonal music.

Until very recently this interartistic fluidity has been the prerogative of artists. Researchers worked against the grain of this cultural shift, analysing cultural products according to our own disciplines (literature, art, music etc.). In so doing, we risked overlooking a paradigm shift, losing hybrid art forms in the gaps between disciplines - where they receive only marginal treatment - and underestimating the value of one art for another.

As interdisciplinary methodologies develop, however, researchers now find themselves at a new historical vantagepoint. It is finally possible to build a groundbreaking interartistic perspective on the arts. The proposed project maps the paradigm shift in 20th and 21st century Italy. It acts as an intriguing case study.

The key research questions are:

(1) Why has interartistic practice changed so markedly over the course of 20th and 21st century? Our project maps a fresh interartistic cultural history of Italy. It will answer questions like: Why did interartistic and intermedial practice occur in Italy at this time? What part do journals, cafés, printing, digital technology, etc. play in development? Our response goes beyond the narrow focus of monodisciplinary research to reveal a more comprehensive picture of interartistic encounters and new kinds of experimentation. We challenge and amend established ideas of cultural centres and peripheries, to focus attention on individuals and groups who are actively engaged in creative boundary-crossing and on institutions who fostered or hindered interartistic exchange. Our project introduces a new and original focal point: we seek to examine how a multidisciplinary approach subverts widely accepted canons; what looks central under the lens of the monodisciplinary microscope may not be so from an interartistic one.

(2) Why have avant-garde and activist artists critiqued and transgressed the boundaries between the arts in 20th and 21st century Italy? What effect has this had on creativity? Since the beginning of the twentieth century, interartistic practice has been palpable in periods of uncertainty and radical social change, frequently associated with the avant-garde. It also appears to have emerged most strongly where political and cultural conventions are challenged, especially by activists. The first area our project explores is the transgressive nature of interartistic and intermedial creativity.

(3) What theories do we need to develop in order to discuss hybrid cultural objects and avant-garde interartistic practice? We will fashion a theoretical discourse to facilitate new research across the arts and media and underpin work done in our own project. This will highlight the social, creative and psychological dynamics of interartistic creativity, rather than the demands and constraints of disciplinary fields.

Outputs are: Two new interartistic cultural histories of 20th and 21st century Italy (one specifically on the digital age); a theoretically focused book on interartistic research for a broader intellectual community; articles; sample interartistic/intermedial teaching material for schools; an interartistic exhibition and catalogue.

We will develop dedicated events for postgraduates and postdocs, academics, museum curators and schoolteachers. These are targeted at informing ideas about interartistic practice and empowering those cohorts to work, in a theoretically informed way, on interartistic practice articles.

The interartistic and intermedial focus of our research project provides a strong foundation on which to foster a dialogue with a number of non-academic groups whilst strengthening our major aim to reframe the boundaries of the discipline of Italian studies and its perception outside the academe in the 21st century. Our intention is to use our research findings to open up new pathways of collaboration and cultural exchange among our research team, academics across the field of Italian Studies and those working in museums, secondary schools, and the general public. The dissemination programme that follows has been devised to maximize the potential for engagement with non-academic participants and is the result of our ongoing work with teachers and curators. The events planned (especially in relation to 2 and 3) have significantly been discussed with and endorsed by individuals and organisations (see pathways to impact).
(1) The general public. The project aims to achieve impact on cultural life through its collaboration with a professional curatorial team in organising an exhibition at a significant UK gallery, the Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art in London. The exhibition will enable us to present one of the case studies of our research, the work of Italian designers as polymaths and their eminently interdisciplinary approach, engaging in the process with a wider, non-academic audience. The project team will deliver a number of free gallery talks for the general public, and run and/or facilitate a number of additional educational activities.
(2) Museum curators. Our objective is to activate a more robust discussion over the challenges and opportunities offered by different ways to present/frame the work of Italian artists in the period under consideration. The project team will thus organise a study day for museums curators, especially those in institutions across the UK with more substantial holdings of Italian 20th and 21st century art (fine and decorative arts, design, fashion and photography) with a focus on trends in display and exhibition in relation to transmedial and interartistic practices. The interartistic exhibition in 2018 will also present us with the opportunity to bring the potential for rethinking disciplinary boundaries within the exhibition space to the attention of museum practitioners.
(3) Secondary school teachers. Public discussion on curriculum changes in modern languages stresses the inherently interdisciplinary nature of language learning (see draft document of the Department of Education, Modern Foreign Languages GCE, AS and A level subject content, July 2014), yet both teaching material and subject content are still influenced by current disciplinary boundaries. The project will work with ALL (the Association for Secondary School Language Teachers) to produce interartistic teaching material for GCSE and A-level teachers of Italian. The teaching material will be freely accessible online and it will be hosted on the project website under a dedicated teaching tab and blog in order to foster an active dialogue with teachers. A teacher's CPD event, in conjunction with the planned exhibition at the Estorick Collection, aimed at teachers of Italian, art history and history will provide further exchange between educators in different disciplines in which Italian art and culture feature prominently. An enhanced education pack for teachers will also be produced on this occasion and will be available through the Estorick Collection and the project website. Both workshops and teaching/education material will be aimed at students of art history, history, design, as well as Italian language (the latter are not normally catered for specifically in gallery tours and activities).