Bodies and Cultures : How we become ourselves

May 17th and 18th, 2017
Museum of Natural History – City of Milan
Sala Napoleonica – University of Milan

Scientific committee
Chiara Cappelletto and Carmine Di Martino

The international conference Bodies and Cultures : How we become ourselves discusses the role of the relationship between nature and culture in the formation of man. To what extent are artefacts, symbols, fictions, performances—in other words, cultural products—expressions of our cognitive processes and neurobiological mechanisms, and to what extent do they shape them in turn? Taking into account works on the embodied mind, the historicity of perception, and technologies and their prosthetic character, the conference focuses on the relations between life and technique : neither beast nor angel, man is naturally artificial and our history demonstrates this.
Bodies and cultures is organized over three half days, each of which opens with a lectio magistralis held by renowned lecturers and followed by international scholars’ talks that will be discussed by young researchers. The aim is to offer a variety of theoretical contributions on topics that appeal to not only scholars but the common man in all of us, as we begin to approach the first stage of the Anthropocene.
The conference is organized in collaboration with the City of Milan.
Organizational secretary: Jessica Murano and Sonia Rezzonico

17 maggio
Aula Magna del Museo di Storia Naturale
Giardini Pubblici – Corso Venezia 55 (Metro Palestro)
Fino a esaurimento posti

14.00 Saluti istituzionali
14.15 Apertura dei lavori

Simboli e sapere – Modera Rossella Fabbrichesi – Università degli Studi di Milano
14.30 Ian Tattersal – American Museum of Natural History, New York – Lectio magistralis
The Origin of modern human symbolic cognition
15.15 Discussione
15.45 Pausa caffè
16.00 Telmo Pievani – Università degli Studi di Padova

The Evolution of symbolic intelligence : Beyond the gradualism vs discontinuism debate
16.30 Ubaldo Fadini – Università degli Studi di Firenze
Esistenza e differenza. Sull’artificio umano
17.00 Pausa
17.15 Carmine Di Martino – Università degli Studi di Milano
Divenire manipolanti e parlanti
17.45 Aprono la discussione:
Jessica Murano – PhD, Università dell’Insubria e Università degli Studi di Milano – e Laura Desirée Di Paolo – PhD, Göttingen Institute for Advanced Studies
18.30 Fine

18 maggio
Sala Napoleonica – Università degli Studi di Milano
Palazzo Greppi – via S. Antonio, 10 (Metro Missori)
Fino a esaurimento posti

Arte, bios e conoscenza – Modera Andrea Pinotti – Università degli Studi di Milano
9.00 Alva Noë – University of California, Berkeley – Lectio magistralis
Art and entanglement : Looking at life in art and art in life
9.45 Discussione
10.15 Pausa caffè
10.30 Felice Cimatti – Università della Calabria

Art and cognition : Why animal art does not exist
11.00 Fabrizio Desideri – Università degli Studi di Firenze
Origins of the aesthetic attitude as matrix of cognitivity
11.30 Pausa
11.45 Chiara Cappelletto – Università degli Studi di Milano
Life and artefacts : How prostheses shape human bodies
12.15 Aprono la discussione: Elisa Binda – PhD, Università di Roma “La Sapienza” – e Maria Regina Brioschi – PhD, Università degli Studi di Milano
13.00 Pausa pranzo

Corpo, agency e performance – Modera Gianfranco Mormino – Università degli Studi di Milano
14.30 Christoph Wulf – Freie Universität, Berlin – Lectio magistralis
The Production of human identity in rituals : Mimesis and the performance of the body
15.15 Discussione
15.45 Pausa caffè
16.00 Pietro Montani – Università di Roma “La Sapienza”
Technology and its agency on the human body : Three paradigms
16.30 Gertrud Koch – Freie Universität, Berlin
The Human body as generic form : Animating technologies
17.00 Pausa
17.15 Lorenzo Bartalesi – École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris
Shaping humanity : Complexity and function of the aesthetic behaviours in the cultural dynamics
17.45 Aprono la discussione: Sonia Rezzonico – PhD, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcellona e Università degli Studi di Milano – e Matthew H. Vollgraff – PhD, Princeton University

18.30 Chiusura lavori