Jean Baudrillard is one of the great contemporary thinkers who have created the concept of reversal which critics call Post-modernity. Following the increasing importance of the image in society, reality disappears behind it; this absence of reality, the physicality of the world which surrounds us, reveals an extremely important mechanism linked to vision: it is no longer us who look at things, but things which look at us. The reality we live in is a hyper-real world made of object-symbols, and we who live in and perceive this world are but extras on its stage. Photography, as a language and a system of image construction, is a lynchpin in this exchange of roles between reality and image. Jean Baudrillard states that, “If a thing wants to be photographed it is because it does not want to hand over its meaning, it does not want to be reflected. It wants instead to be directly taken, violated there and then, illuminated in every detail. If something wants to become an image, it is not to last, it is rather to disappear”.

Born in 1929 in Rheims, France, Jean Baudrillard began his education as a Germanist and then went on to complete his doctorate in sociology. From 1966 he taught at the University of Paris X-Nanterre and in the following years entered the Research Institute for Social Innovation, a laboratory at the “Centre National de la recherche scientifique”. A brilliant sociologist, Baudrillard dedicated his works to the analysis of contemporary society, studying in particular the consumer society, its myths and structures. In 1968 he published his first book, The system of objects, followed by The Consumer Society in 1970 and For a critique of the Political Economy of the Sign in 1972. A critic and theoretician of post-modernity, his essays have been translated into almost every language and have made a profound effect on contemporary intellectual life and the cultural representation of our times. In addition to the above works, we may mention, The Consumer Society, published by il Mulino, 1976; Symbolic Exchange and Death, Feltrinelli, 1979; Seduction, Cappelli, 1980; Fatal strategies, Feltrinelli, 1984, America, Feltrinelli, 1987, Pataphysics and the art of seeing, Giunti, 2006, The Vital Illusion, Armando, 2007. Jean Baudrillard died on 6^th March 2007 in Paris, aged 78.

 

Palazzo Casotti
piazza Casotti - Reggio Emilia
tel. 0522 451152 - 456249

Hours
Opening 30 April at 18.00
From 1 to 3 May from 10.00 to 23.00
From 5 May to 7 June: from Tuesdays to Fridays from 18.00 to 23.00; Saturdays, Sundays and festivals from 10.00 to 23.00

Saturday 2 May at 17.30 - Teatro Zavattini - Cavallerizza

Rendez-vous. Dedicato a Jean Baudrillard
With Marine Baudrillard, Jean-Paul Curnier, Ludovic Leonelli. 
Presented by  Elio Grazioli and Vanni Codeluppi. 

 

followed by Spazio Gerra / Giardino
Conversazione musicale con Jean Baudrillard
Trio, original production for Fotografia Europea: Jean-Paul Curnier, Yves Robert e Stéfanus Vivens.