Urgent expressions between science and society

Abstract

The essay is a consideration on the relationship between visuality and the urgencies that often live science and society. The assumption that thought is structured through images and that images guide thought is the backdrop to research that crosses the world of visuality. Thanks to images and drawing it is possible to find answers to unresolved issues (Friedrich Kekulé), propose solutions to react to urgent and pressing needs (Renzo Piano), but also denounce and raise awareness regarding compelling issues (Banksy). In the visual arts, the response to ecological crises takes various forms, ranging from graphs and infographics illustrating climate data
to works of art where the artist’s actions merge with evolving landscapes, prompting reflections on the relationship between man and nature. Art, as a means to address social crises, takes the form of protest pieces that often reinterpret symbols rooted in the collective consciousness and express themselves through street art. Initiatives aimed at preserving these artworks through digital archives are also emerging. To understand what is happening around us, the performing arts also operate with transversal gazes, often tracing social and environmental urgencies in the interactions between the virtual and the real. The imminence of needs is expressed in the dynamic languages of ballet reinterpretations, sometimes proposing grotesque images that amplify human impotence in the face of drastic epochal changes. Lights, syncopated choreographies and augmented reality experiments propose a multiplicity of gazes that are integrated into contemporary gestures, to reveal just some of the possible urgent performativity.