The association "La Nostrea" was founded in Frascati (Rome, Italy),
on a summer evening of 2001, while reasoning on culture and its praxis. The
aims are the creation of an up-to-date network for
information on the regional cultural events and the promotion, in the territory of the "Castelli Romani", of
manifestations dedicated to poetry, music, visual art and theatre of
contemporary inspiration. Its symbol is the
woodpecker.
The society of information implies the
cancellation of distances and the contraction of time, conditions that
favour social forms where the factor "knowledge" gains
priority (Daniel Bell), and the development of technics capable to
constrast the growing entropy and the natural tendency to "destroy
meaning" (Norbert Wiener). In our daily contexts, the capacity
to manage information consists in the implementation of percourses between
various possibilities of meaning: with possibilities and meanings that
have to be known, recognised and managed. Several percourses make up a
network, which capacity is determined by the channels that are opened, in
the global metropolis and in each local context.
Now, playing with meanings, the
territorial domain that antiquely defined the "contea"
(earldom), may be expressed as a personal domain, "ourdom", in
the localised management of information in the vast non-hyrarchical space
of the net. To the "contea" succeeds, as it resounds in the words
of the Italian poet Vito Riviello, the "nostrea" ("Piano
del Conte", in "Assurdo
e familiare", 1997). The black eagle on a red fond was the coat
of arms granted by the emperor Ottone III to Gregorius I of the Earls of Tusculum, but
nobody remembers this: the histories of the past do not evoke anymore
those forces of which the events were images.
As for the sympathetic
woodpecker, for his capacity to pick holes in trees, he was considered as a symbol
of rebirth, and this bird represents one of the oldest divinities of the
latin populations. A green woodpecker feeded Romulus and Remus hidden in
the cave, and he guided the travelers on their way. Flying to today, the woodpecker may be considered as a
traveling guide of art, as remembers the philosopher Mario Perniola,
with its "shadow", that is to say with its pecular
"cryptical" reasons, to discover and decypher, but always
present "close" to an artistical practice incentrated, more than
on form, on "meanings" (Joseph Kosuth), on a poetry that
becomes more "a meaning of knowledge than of representation" (Eugenio Montale).
One of the first activities of the
association has been the creation and management if this website.
Various activities for the "Castelli romani" area are in
preparation for the season 2001-2002. The first cultural event
organized by "La Nostrea", together with the Italian National
Union of Writers, was held at Frascati on the 15th of december
2001: Appointment "Poetry Premium", performance and presentation of
the book "Un giorno lungo un sogno" by
Claudio Comandini - with Luca Sapio, Marco Brezza, Michele Martino,
Live Painting by Bongị, critics by Plinio Perilli.
If you would wish to do so, it is
possible to become a member of "La Nostrea". This is free. Click
here to go the form. You may become a member and/or receive regularly
an email on the activities of the association. For any
information: email nostrea@libero.it
Tonnie Arnoldus
