Pad (Dec 2019)
Ulysses Does Not Come back Home. From Maps of Migration, Small Constellations of Artistic Influences in the Mediterranean Landscape
Abstract
Ulysses, the hero of Greek mythology, spends ten years of his life in war and as many again to come back home. On the return journey, he crosses the entire Mediterranean area. The map of his pilgrimage for centuries has represented an ideal thread that weaved the image of the Mediterranean as a place of shared history. Today Ulysses does not come back home, he still travels along the same waters, but to escape from it. Another Omero has felt the need to design these new routes to testify, with the evocative power of art, a new topography of the Mediterranean Odyssey. These cartographies, experienced by anti-heroes whose name is “no one”, trace paths that intersect men, things and landscapes, in a meeting that generates changes. Art does not finish its role with the storytelling: while it follows the traces of these new journeys, it generates transformations. Artistic actions contribute to define the new identity of the places; they transform the memory of them and promote the construction of the sense of belonging of new community profiles. The paper wants to explore a wider role of the art in the urban and landscape transformations, by reading in a critical way different experiences.
