Photo © Luce Della Foglia
Standing still , Fiorani travelled with her mind , first through books ( mostly on sociology , anthropology , mythology ), then in front of her computer screen , with the internet . The Web was a window on the paths of knowledge , a way of giving substance to essays that were the living organisms of his karstic and ever-growing thought . Gillo Dorfles , Arnaldo Pomodoro , Dadamaino , Gianni Sassi , Gino Di Maggio ( the founder of the Fondazione Mudima , the Milanese headquarters of the Fluxus movement ), Vanni Pasca , Lucio Altarelli , Antonio Caronia and many other thinkers , albeit at times , have been her companions on a journey along the slopes of knowledge devoted to the wish of redesigning the culture-world that we are and that we live in . Eleonora Fiorani seems to have lived in the space of writing as an extension of herself , caught up in the desire to systematise the changing meanings of the technological revolution and later of the digital culture , where the real and the virtual coexist , in search of an essence of the complexity of our time to investigate and not to fear .
In memory of Eleonora Fiorani Presence and thought
Eleonora Fiorani , 78 years old , essayist and curator of art , design and fashion events – the exhibition she curated in 2017 on Rick Owens , the American fashion designer , at the Triennale in Milan was a memorable event –, has recently passed away . The epistemologist , graduate in philosophy and former student of Ludovico Geymonat , lived in her beloved Milan . A professor at the School of Design of the Polytechnic University of Milan , at NABA and IED , she taught philosophy at the Milan Conservatory for many years . For really a long time , she was the scientific director for the Fashion section of the Triennale of Milan . Since 2014 , she has been among the collaborators of the LUCE , along with Arturo dell ' Acqua Bellavitis and other friends and scholars such as Alberto Pasetti , Laura Bellia , Maurizio Rossi , and the author signing her recollection of her on these pages . With her encyclopaedic knowledge ranging from anthropology to sociology , from geography to ethnobotany and to the complexity of communication , Fiorani left us discreetly and silently , but she remains in our memory . She will not be forgotten , neither by the many students in the universities and institutes where she taught for decades , nor by the artists and teachers who knew her , as each of them will retain a trace of her “ unique ”, frank and sincere character .
Next to her was the man of her life , her husband , poet , writer and teacher Francesco Leonetti , a friend of Pier Paolo Pasolini and Roberto Roversi , with whom he co-founded the magazine Officina in the 1980s and the magazines Alfabeta and Campo in the 1990s . These were the years in which she approached the world of visual arts and began writing critical essays and reviews . As she was an eclectic and eccentric woman , even in the way she dressed , she was curious and attracted by the artistic and political avant-garde in general , as well as by the experimental music and the new technologies . She was interested in democratic design , which is democratic when it communicates knowledge ; a thought shared with her friend Enzo Mari . Fiorani transformed writing into a tool for investigating the present and " self-designing " a multiform and multifaceted thought , in the name of a cross-disciplinary eclecticism intended as a possible way of analysing contemporary complexity .
Devoted to the need to divulge scientific arguments and to the constant search for formal quality and verification of its value in relation to the contemporary world , her rigorous , concise , clear and fluent writing conceals an underlying musicality between one word and another , as long as you know how to listen to it . Each of her words corresponds to a musical note , as the carefully intertwined phrases flow on the white sheet of paper following an arcane yet harmonious and rhythmic sense , where crossdisciplinary trespassing becomes the song of her unquestionable intellectual freedom . For Fiorani , writing is part of the ever-changing whole ; the word is a form-sign and substance of dedication to the work of a philosopher of knowledge . Among her many books , Friedrich Engels e il materialismo dialettico ( Feltrinelli , Milan 1971 ), Il naturale perduto ( Dedalo , Bari 1989 ) and Domestico e selvaggio ( Franco Muzzio , Padua 1993 ). Among those published by Lupetti are l mondo senza qualità ( 1995 ), Il mondo degli oggetti ( 2001 ), La nuova condizione di vita ( 2003 ), Panorami del contemporaneo ( 2005 ), Grammatica della comunicazione ( 2006 ), Diversamente il Novecento ( 2007 ), Erranze e trasalimenti ( 2009 ), Geografie dell ’ abitare ( 2012 ), and I mondi che siamo nel tempo delle ritornanze ( 2016 ). The essay Il sogno del giardino ( 2000 ) is a revelation , a necessary element to re-establish the ancient agreement between man and nature . The garden as a form of living , a material and symbolic culture , a place of coexistence , a symbol of rebirth , a thought that is changing our urban and architectural culture . La matta di casa . Iconografie dell ’ immaginario ( 2020 ), her latest book , is her poetic testament , an apology for the science of the imagination as the only possible form of knowledge . The secret of progress is imagination . We are the only ones on earth capable of talking about things we invent , because without imagination , no science can configure new perspectives of a possible future . And when the individual imagination coincides with the collective imagination , the pulse of the new makes noise and the utopia of the future is objectively present .
EDITORIAL / LUCE 336 31