Mario Costa – L’uomo fuori di sé

December 18th 2018
START: 5:30 p.m.
Sala conferenze del Museo Hermann Nitsch
Vico Lungo Pontecorvo 29/d, Napoli

A conference starting from a book.
Speaking: Mario Costa, Vincenzo Cuomo, Maria D’Ambrosio, Matteo D’Ambrosio e Filippo Fimiani.

The Hermann Nitsch Museum will host Mario Costa. L’uomo fuori di sé (The man outside himself), a conference with philosopher Mario Costa and experts from different esthetic fields.
This event will be an opportunity to discuss the essays presented by Mario Costa to International debates on the aesthetic-anthropological impact of new technologies.
With reference to his recent books, and those dedicated to him, the author and the experts will reflect on the new theoretical thought created by Costa, already in the early Eighties of the last century, focusing on concepts such as “communication aesthetics”, “technological sublime”, “communication block”, “aesthetics of flux” and now, “technological outsourcing”.

In particular, the event will be centered on these recent books:

Mario Costa, L’uomo fuori di sé. La fotografia, il fonografo e il telefono nella Parigi del XIX secolo, Mimesis, Milano 2018
Mario Costa, Artmedia. L’oggetto estetico dell’avvenire. Storia di un progetto scientifico, Kaiak Edizioni, Tricarico 2017
AA.VV., Arti e tecniche nel Novecento. Studi per Mario Costa, Kaiak Edizioni, Tricarico 2017
Mario Costa, Technology, communication and aesthetics of de sublime, in AA.VV., Viva Voce. Conversations with italian philosophers, State University of New York, 2017

Mario Costa (Torre del Greco 1936) is a philosopher and an innovator of the aesthetic studies. His books Il sublime tecnologico (1990/1998), L’estetica dei media (1990/1999), La disumanizzazione tecnologica (2007), Dopo la tecnica (2015), known in Italy and abroad, launched an international debate on the transformations produced by new technologies in Art and Aesthetic, and opened the path to a philosophy of the technique completely unnoticed in Italy. Professor of Aesthetics at University of Salerno, where in 1985 he founded and directed “Artmedia”, a permanent Laboratory on the relation between techno-science, philosophy and aesthetic. In the same years, he also taught at “L’Orientale” University of Naples and at “Sophia-Antipolis” University of Nizza.

BOOK SYNOPSYS

Mario Costa
L’uomo fuori di sé. La fotografia, il fonografo e il telefono nella Parigi del XIX secolo
(The man outside himself.Photography, phonograph and telephone in Paris at the XIX Century)
Mimesis, Milan 2018

The book focus on the aesthetic-anthropological effects produced, at the XIX Century, by the first technologies of image and sound, that are photography, phonograph and telephone, considering Paris the preferred place of observation. Moving on a double level of historical explorations and theory, Costa sheds light on our origin and the path we are following.

Mario Costa
Artmedia. L’oggetto estetico dell’avvenire. Storia di un progetto scientifico
(Artmedia. Future aesthetic object. History of a scientific project)
Kaiak Edizioni, Tricarico 2017

This book traces the history of “ARTMEDIA”, Permanent Media and Communication Aesthetics Laboratory/Seminary created by Costa at University of Salerno. From 1985 to 2009, ten international conferences on “Artmedia” took place in Salerno, Naples and Paris, involving artists and theorists from all over the world.

Vincenzo Cuomo and Igor Pelgreffi (curated by)
Arti e tecniche nel Novecento. Studi per Mario Costa
(Arts and techniques in the Twentieth. Studies for Mario Costa)
Kaiak Edizioni, Tricarico 2017

An hommage to Mario Costa with essays by Roberto Barbanti, Maurizio Bolognini, Vincenzo Cuomo, Matteo D’Ambrosio, Diana Danelli, Paolo D’Angelo, Alice de Carvalho Lino, Derrick de Kerckhove, Roberto Diodato, Filippo Fimiani, Fred Forest, Fabio Galadini, Dario Giugliano, Giuseppe O Longo, Aldo Marroni and Carla Subrizi. And a drawing by Gianfranco Baruchello.

Mario Costa
Technology, communication and aesthetics of de sublime, in AA. VV. Viva Voce. Conversations with Italian philosophers
State University of New York, 2017

This is a long interview with Mario Costa, within a collective volume in English that includes other twenty-two interviews, in which Costa exposes the principles of his aesthetics and philosophy of technology.
The book aims to allow the major Italian philosophers to expose, through a series of questions and answers, the fundamental lines of their thought.