Interview with Giuliana Bruno

Abstract

Lorenzo Marmo interviews Giuliana Bruno about her experience as curator of the exhibition Carta bianca. Capodimonte Imaginaire, held at the Museum of Capodimonte in Naples, Italy, in 2017/18. The conversation also touches upon the different phases of Bruno’s theoretical thinking, from her first book Streetwalking on a Ruined Map, to the last, Surfaces, also including her famous Atlas of Emotion. Among the issues tackled in the discussion: the materiality in art and media; the surface of the screen and haptic perception; emotion and affect; the element of play present in scholarly research as well as in cartography. Bruno also shares some reflections to be included in another, forthcoming volume, concerning more specifically the concepts of atmosphere and projection.

Giuliana Bruno is full professor in Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard University since 1990. Born in Naples, she has lived in New York since 1980. She is author of: Streetwalking on a Ruined Map. Cultural Theory and the City Films of Elvira Notari (Rovine con vista. Alla ricerca del cinema perduto di Elvira Notari, 1993/1995), winner of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies book award; Atlas of Emotion: Journey in Art, Architecture and Film (Atlante delle emozioni. In viaggio tra arte, architettura e cinema, 2002/2006), winner of the Kraszna-Kraus award in Culture and History as Best Moving Image Book in the world; Public Intimacy: Architecture and the Visual Arts (Pubbliche intimità. Architettura e arti visive, 2007/2009). She is internationally known for her research on the intersections of the visual arts, architecture, film, and media. In her view, the most significant way of analyzing film is not limited to language but refers to the categories of visual arts and architecture, with their emphasis on the space. Her philosophical theory on emotional geography, known all over the world also thanks to her Atlas of Emotion, concerns many artistic practices: from painting to photography, from cartography to design, from fashion to marketing. Her last book, Surface: Matters of Aesthetics, Materiality, and Media (Superfici. A proposito di estetica, materialità e media, 2014/2016), revisits the impact of surface and materiality on contemporary art and visual culture. Bruno holds lectures in museums and universities around the world, and her works have been translated into over ten languages. Recently she was one of the curators of the exhibition “Carta Bianca. Capodimonte Imaginaire” at the Capodimonte Museum in Naples, and in the spring of 2019, she was Louis Kahn Scholar in Residence in History of Art at the American Academy in Rome.