Creative Frontiers Research Project

Description

Creative Frontiers Research Project 2012
Co-ordinator: Massimo Leone, Research Professor of Semiotics and Cultural Semiotics, Department of Philosophy, Turin University, in conjunction with 17 other Italian Universities
Total grant Euros 1,397,868

The project aimed at verifying in practice a 'creativity of frontiers' and studying its obvious difficulties, but also the opportunities they bring about. The frontier, more than a space or a time, is a 'form of life'. The project aims at analyzing this form of life according to an ideal subdivision in 'existential domains': housing (Rome), food (Palermo), school (Siena), administration (Bologna), city (Bergamo), play (Reggio Emilia), citizenship (Milano Bicocca), health (Teramo), religion (Bari), justice (Pisa), and the arts (Turin). Each local research unit will work on different texts and practices, adopting suitable methodologies. The project's approach is not a purely theoretic or documentary one, but it has an empirical and practical purpose: the different units will have as their goal the construction of ‘socially useful products’, conceived in order to increase the innovative and inclusive character of liminal practices, for instance by making visual atlases for linguistic comprehension (Siena), movies able to illustrate urban creativity in boundary-rich metropolises (Bergamo), exhibitions on the aesthetic fertility of the gaze across frontiers (Torino), etc.

If funding were successful, there would have been 2 conferences at which Dr Elizabeth Coleman would have been a keynote. There were also opportunities for other Monash members to participate in conferences between participating universities and to publish with the project.

Period	2013
Work for	Università degli Studi di Torino (UNITO) (University of Turin), Italy
Degree of Recognition	International