The book documents the Guggenheim Public project, a complex process that lasted five years: from September 1996 to December 2001. The inspiration for the project is easily recognisable and leads back to the legacy of Josef Beuys. The intention of Anita Sieff, creator and curator of the entire programme, was to create a series of appointments and to make each encounter a “social sculpture”, as Beuys understood the intangible work of communication. The book takes into account the editing of the various contributions of the many participants by a flexible editorial team.

This book, supported by the Fondazione Guido and Ettore De Fornaris, is a wide-ranging study focusing on twentieth-century photography, and opens with an introductory text by Marina Miraglia, divided into two parts, the first of which covers the period from the beginning of the twentieth century to the 1940s, and the second covering the early 1950s to the most recent examples.
The iconographic section recounts the experience in Turin, from shots taken by Mario Gabinio and Stefano Bricarelli in the 1920s and 1930s to the artistic photographs of Carlo Mollino, the photographic report portraying the city after the war and during the most significant events of the 1960s, the anthropological photographs of Ando Gilardi and Paola Agosti, the shots of Paolo Pellion documenting the artistic events of the 1970s, and the photo-works of Paolo Mussat.
The book concludes by focusing on some of the most significant contemporary work, with the photographs of young artists, amongst whom Maura Banfo, Botto & Bruno, Luisa Rabbia and Giulia Caira, who use photography as a means of expressing their art.

Founded in Turin in 1963, Sperone Gallery hosted extreme and different art forms: Pop Art, Arte Povera, New Dada, Minimalism, Conceptual Art and Transavanguard, have found in this space a sure landmark that have let artists and critics cross national boundaries. The book, made up of 2 tomes, describes Sperone Gallery’s history through a large documentation of photographs of the exhibitions of more than 150 artists, hosted in Turin, Rome and New York. The first tome, centred around the activity at the gallery in Turin from 1963 to 1972, includes the texts by the authors; the opening of the new spaces in Rome and New York marks the beginning of the second tome, that speaks about art exhibitions organized from 1972 to 1999, and ends with a chronological and geographical list of all the exhibitions and of all the artists. The pages, in chronological sequence, tell Sperone Gallery's history, draw the route and its most important stages, through views of the fittings of the exhibitions, photographs of the artworks, invitations, texts taken from the original catalogues and from newspapers articles. All the archive material is the result of a deep research made by the authors Anna Minola, Maria Cristina Mundici, Francesco Poli and Maria Teresa Roberto, each of them studying in depht with an essay an important period of the Gallery’s activity, that gives the book the charactheristic of being both critical and historical.

The book offers an interesting interpretation of contemporary art history, here rivisited through unpublished and unusual images that let fully understand the fervour and enthusiasm that always go with the artistic choises of this historical gallery.

The book is published with the contribute of Regione Piemonte.

From the evocation of Bronislaw Malinowsky's maiden voyage to Melanesia, to the re-evocation of Joseph Conrad’s ascent into the “Heart of Darkness”, the unfolding and phantasmagoria of the ten essays by Remo Guidieri that make up this volume unfold between the foundation of modern anthropology and the birth of the clash of cultures in the reflection of the consciousness of the West. At the end of the collection, Guidieri himself reconstructs and discusses his own intellectual adventure in conversations with the book’s editor, Andrea Borsari.

Remo Guidieri is a member of the ethnology laboratory at the University of Nanterre (Paris X) where he teaches Anthropology of Beliefs and Aesthetics. He has carried out ethnological missions in the Eastern Pacific (Melanesia) and Western Pacific (Polynesia). Author of "The Way of the Dead" (Adephi, 1988), "Toys. Showcases and Ventures of the Playful Tool' (Medusa Editions, 2000), 'Matisse's Farewell' (Medusa Editions, 2002), 'Shadows. On the Cult of the Dead in Malekula, Eastern Melanesia" (Medusa Editions, 2005).

The book is intended as a survey of some of the most important work of the twentieth century in different disciplines (philosophical, scientific, historical), in order to outline a multiplicity of responses and meanings and a plurality of pronunciations of the term ‘time', which can be very useful for reading many of the manifestations of contemporary art from a different perspective. In particular, the figures and forms of time that result from these readings seem to be intrinsic properties of “artistic objects”, a sort of “theory” of internal time-clocks that manifest themselves according to different grammars and syntaxes: the notions of moment, instant, becoming, interval, event, constitute the elements and reveal how time can be manipulated in a very wide range of ways, of speeds, shifts, rhythms, intervals, retroactions, giving rise to an equally wide variety of figures. All of this is constantly accompanied by attention to the salient aesthetic phenomena of the contemporary world.

Mario Bertoni was born in Modena, graduated in Philosophy from the University of Bologna, researcher in scientific history, journalist, curator of exhibitions and monographs on contemporary artists.

The machine world we have created is gradually taking on autonomy and power. To remedy this catastrophe, to avert this dispossession, we rely on communication. A magical concept, the new science and liturgy of our new century. Communication, in all its forms, will save our society. Are we sure? Here the author promotes the systematic exploration and radical critique of this new science (which already has its schools, its laboratories and its great priests). Lucien Sfez is professor of political science at the University of Paris. His numerous works have contributed extensively to modern political science.