Between the Visible and the Invisible: The Perspective of the Margin for Narratives of Suspended Places

Abstract

“Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible” (Klee 1959: 76): the increasing interest in dismissed and marginal places, which are becoming ever more prevalent in contemporary urban, industrial, and rural contexts, necessitates a profound reflection on the languages and representational devices that accompany and anticipate their transformation processes (Maniglio 2010). This article thus proposes to investigate the dual role of representation, understood both as a device for recognition and as an agent of transformation for marginal spaces. Recognition implies the surveying act of identifying latent qualities and invisible dimensions; transformation, conversely, is founded on the revelatory act of reinterpreting the context to generate new forms of appropriation and rediscovered identity values. From the perspective of the margin, representation assumes a maieutic valence: a process that, akin to the Socratic tradition, brings forth often-ignored potentialities at the boundary between the natural and the artificial, intertwining analysis and prefiguration, recognition and vision, absences and permanences - for spaces that elude dominant centrality. The concept of a suspended place, understood as a space that evades traditional categorisations - often marginal or in transition - finds a powerful echo in the languages of art, architecture, and photography, projecting a new aesthetic and cultural vision that supports possible physical transformations linked to functional, environmental, and social needs (Matta-Clark 1993). The analysis therefore focuses on the representative power of images in re-signifying these places, referencing the works of artists and architects who transcend objective documentation of the territory to focus on the sensitive dimension of the relationships between communities and landscape (Pierluisi 2022).