3 March 2021, 11:30-12:30 — Blandijn, first floor, Faculteitszaal
Talk by Lorenzo Di Paola, University of Messina/University of Salerno
Comics are a very particular medium capable of living between the fragile boundaries that separate the various media narratives. A sort of media nomadism is what feeds and best describes the vital processes of this medium, which has always remediated previous and contemporary media (remediation that has had and still has very strong influences on formal and narrative aspects, on ‘contact’ with the public and on reading protocols). The web and digital technologies have not only somehow reconfigured forms of work, modes of production and consumption, but have also impacted the semiotic and spatial structures of comics and their reading modes. In this lecture, we will try to investigate these factors through the analysis of the Italian webcomic To be Continued by Lorenzo Ghetti and the web experience of Zerocalcare. Moreover, comics remain a fertile ground for investigating the dynamics that contribute to creating that ‘conception of the world’ capable of orienting the experiences and the emotional experience of entire generations. Through these two authors, therefore, we will try to understand how and with what contribution shared places and memory repertories, symbolic contents and narratives contribute to creating that common sense, that value system that allows mutual recognition among the members of the same generation.
Bio
Lorenzo Di Paola is research fellow at the Department of Ancient and Modern Civilisations, University of Messina. He is adjunct professor of “Teorie e sociologie del fumetto dalla stampa al digitale ” at the University of Salerno. He cooperates with the chairs of Sociology of Cinema and Audiovisuals, Digital Media and Sociology of the Imaginary at the University of Salerno. He works on the mediology of comics and literature and the sociology of digital cultures. He has written numerous articles for scientific journals and collective volumes, and has participated in numerous national and international conferences. He is part of the international research group on Italian comics SNIF – Studying ‘n’ Investigating Fumetti, and is a member of the “Centro Studi Media Culture Società” at the University of Salerno. He also co-edits the scientific series “L’Eternauta, Collana di studi su fumetti e media”, together with Luigi Frezza and Mario Tirino. He has edited with Mario Tirino the volume Poi piovve dentro a l’alta fantasia. Dante e i fumetti (Polidoro Editore 2022). His most recent publications include: From Virtual Reality to Augmented Reality: Devices, Bodies, Places and Relationships (Ismar-adjunct 2021); L’immaginazione al potere (Oedipus 2020); Alla ricerca di una nuova identità disciplinare. Il fumetto e la transdisciplinarità (Mediascapes Journal, 2019). He is the author of the book L’inafferrabile medium. Una cartografia delle teorie del fumetto dagli anni venti a oggi (Polidoro editore, 2019).