Art under Vesuvius: Cultural practices in contemporary Naples

This work is a study of contemporary Neapolitan culture that moves across different artistic media—literature, cinema, music, and the public arts—and through time, focusing specifically on the last decade. Most broadly, it focuses on the question of how a “city on the borders” such as Naples has experienced a contemporary cultural “Renaissance” and thus has become one of the leading models for the entire national Italian artistic production. In Naples, a new radical culture is emerging from a degraded urban reality. Present-day artists live in Naples, confront the degradation of the city, and combat it. Their works show how they actually engage with social problems—within the larger context of a globalized culture—trying to inspire a renewed civic sense in the citizens. Even if the accounts provided by Neapolitan artists are all different, as if “taken” from different angles and presenting contrasting points of view, nonetheless their common denominator is their awareness that Naples is a microcosm, which needs to be narrated in all its complexity. These works thus show a South crossed by different trends and profoundly contaminated. Thus “looking South” becomes a critical perspective from which to start thinking in a new way, beyond the rigid parameters imposed by historical stereotypes. If the contemporary artistic militancy demonstrates an unsanctioned attempt to rejuvenate the city through the use of symbolic competence, the public art installations represent state intervention—the official, sanctioned attempt to incorporate contemporary art in the everyday lives of the citizens. These artistic efforts reawaken a new civic sense and act as receptacles of a fragile collective memory that runs the risk of being lost. By throwing light on the role that marginal groups play in society and on their struggle to be represented in the global arena, the overall project offers a representation of the so-called “southern question” from a new perspective. It is the subjective perspective of the South that by invoking its particular linguistic and social reality questions its subordination to the dominant culture and inspires a new “critical regionalism” in Italian culture