Here I am, to tell you my preliminary thoughts about intercultural dialog and social responsability.
As you know, I was a linguist, in one of my previous existences. I graduated in linguistic cum laude e with the compliments of the professors and bla bla bla.
But from all that charming journey I let remain in me only a slight curiosity to the language, staying tenaciously enlighted by the lighthouse of the arbitrariness of the linguistic sign, that warn me remembering that language is a comunication based on the convention and that there is no intrinsic element in the arbitrary (precisely!) link that ties the “significante” (the word) and the “significato” (what the word indicates): excepting the case of onomatopoeic words.
And remains in me a kind of linguistic mental system too, also in the approach with matters not directly connected with language. About the rest, everything went progressively in the oblivion.
And yet, even though I never forget the limits of the conventionality, I use the language a lot: I speak a lot and I write really a lot.
Enjoy an example of my linguistic mental system, in this case as the start for a consequence journey

The word “scrittore” (italian for “writer”) means “chi scrive” (the one who writes), following a definition caught in the “Dizionario Etimologico della lingua italiana”, taken from Dante. It derives from latin “scribĕre” that means “to engrave”, “to trace, to mark out” (shapes, lines, letters with a “stilo” or some pointed and sharpened objects) and “to draw”, “to write”, etc.
In the opinion of Devoto (a linguist) “scribĕre” is an old indoeuropean word, from a root SKER (with a basic meaning of “to engrave” or “to scratch”), attested in German, Baltic and Greek areas.
—Please, find the irony in this ethimology: I married Davide SKERlj… So maybe I wasn’t born as a writer or if I didn’t want to be a writer, my destiny was waiting for me, anyway…You never can escape from you destiny… Hi! Hi! Hi!—
Anyway, it’s clear that this word developed in a period in which the writing action was done by engraving letters or symbols on a proper support.
And I meet myself in this definition. I write a lot, as I said, and this action often entails a certain incision on my mind and my soul, because I use it as a tool to understand deeper some elements of my nature and experience, and certainly some elements of what’s surrounding me. It contributes in a decisive way to make me emancipated from the conventional vision of the world (anyway necessary to hold and keep, the world…) and to make me try to overcome the conventional for exalting and sublimating the essential.
What I understand and experiment while I write, remains engraved on my being, usually in a helpful way, at least as long as it will be useful, then I have to go on, otherwise it could change in an obsession.
Generally I don’t publish what I write: I miss the ambition and I am lazy… Anyway, if I publish, not with my name (but this is another issue, not now not here… next time), so it’s the same.
But, please, don’t think that because of this fact, mine is a monologue: a lot of the matters I have in my hands when I write come back also in the dialogue with the others and in that moment it happens the exchange that a book could never create between its author and its reader.
Linguistic dialogue is my natural way to communicate, ‘cause I’m not an artist using other codes.
And I believe that the dialogue is always intercultural, because the meeting and the confrontation between two or more persons happen on the base of their cultural background. The different backgrounds, in the dialogue, can find points of contact or confrontation and exchange. There is no difference, from my point of view, if the other’s culture is different from mine for linguistical, political, historical, geographic, ethnic or peculiar and individual and intimate reasons.
What makes an intercultural dialogue a profitable and useful dialogue is what the persons want to put at the other’s disposal and the curiosity they have in the will to know different realities.
Generally, the meaning of “intercultural dialogue” is a dialogue between cultures linguistically, politically, historically, geographically, ethnically, etc. different.
But culture is not something exclusively else from yourself, and nobody, in a dialogue, is really interested in statistical or compilational elements, on the contrary he is interested in the personal experience of the one he has in front, on the ways this one lived that experience, on the ways he elaborated it, and how and how much it engraved on him. Of course, the context is an important starting reference.
Everyone lives the same event in different way and will be permeated with it each one in a very personal way. The very personal way is determined in good part by the amount of lived experiences, the stored up informations, the tools at disposal and the intimate elaboration of all that: in short, together with the context, this is the culture.
From a very extreme point of view, an intercultural dialogue could happen between two persons who live at the antipodes one from the other as weel as between two twins who shared the same situations from the childhood: we are all different, in a drastic and dramatic way.
I think it’s very important to remember this point, when you work on this theme: never forget that the willingness to the dialogue has to be a constant also in everyday life, with your neighbour, your baker, the policeman who is fining you, your friends as well as with the foreigner. And with people you have something in common as well with people you have (apparently) nothing in common.
Every dialogue, as well as every social action, entails naturally a responsability. At the time when I act, in any way, on the social fabric, I alter its woof. Every single and also very small individual action changes the structure of the society, even if sometimes only slightly.
So, always and anyway, everyone has a social responsability.
What does the difference, at a level less contingent, is the consciousness of that.
The belonging to this or that cultural context, in the linguistic, geographic, ethnic, etc. meaning, could enrich or, according to the circumstances, frustrate the dialogue. The presumed difference between the persons is a wealth only for who is able to see it.
My town is an example of this dualism. I don’t want to slide in rethorical stories, but what I find as favourable and lucky in the position of Trieste, appears to another as a fault, a problem. The intercultural dialogue, for those persons, is only a mere juxtaposition, a contrast between individualities castled behind only some of the numerous points of view of the past, manipulated by the political demagogy or the family heritage: and those individualities are lost in a labyrinth of fears that not always are sensible but enought able to calm the sense of emptiness they perceive in their existence.
Only when you don’t look at yourself, at the inner part of yourself, you could really believe that the enemy is external: and when there isn’t a enemy, you need to invent it, so you can postpone “sine die” the face-to-face with yourself.
The conscious social responsability consist of this: knowing that each of us has the duty to look at himself straight in the face, to act on himself and therefore on the society.
Unfortunately the consciousness is not so advertised and therefore is not so interesting for the people. Instead of it, they prefer follow the advertisement of the idea of nationality, with the meaning that “we are different (and better!) than the others”. But the real meaning of belonging is lost in the global economy net, where the small fish is nothing. We are the small fishes, and we will be that until we don’t remember who we are.
We consist of different components, and one of this is our social being. Our social being is made by several parts. One of these is our belonging to the place where we were born. I my case, Trieste, Italy, Europe, Earth, Solar System, etc. etc. etc.
You know, Luise, I thought about our workshop in Dalmatia. And do you remember the work of Edita? It taught me that we are not sure that the tradition, the ties with the country, the history, the family are always so due and reassuring. But they could be a strenght, if we clean them from the incrustations that are non ours in a genuine way anymore.
So, maybe we have to filter patiently every kind of pollution and create a net that could delete the worse aspect of the idea of fatherland, country, belonging, nationality. We belong to different context and to the same context at the same time: it should be good if we’ll find and keep the most important and lasting and the less precarious and false things that are inside of the context and of ourself : then, with this strong points, we could build a pure and bright net of communication, exchange, development.
To reach the goal we need to know our context.
I asked myself why contemporary art developes differently in the different countries of the planet. I doubt that in Bangladesh or in Liberia could exist a contemporary art idea such in Europe or U.S.A.
The perception of the art changes according to the linguistic, geographic, political, ethnic, etc. context and to the consequence individual elaboration made by each person: it changes, in short, according to the different kind of culture.
Why our society needs the contemporary art as we know it?
Why we go in search of cues and themes (artistic but also philosophical and spiritual: it’s enought to think about buddhism or, simply, about yoga) in countries where on the contrary people don’t need to catch from our culture nothing else than wealth and the consumerism?
Concerning this, I think it’s interesting to know the developments of contemporary art in China.
Maybe I’m too ignorant and this question has no reason to be asked.
But in which moment did it emerge the need of an art that should speak about itself and that should face social and political themes, that should have the will to be non only a impulse of heart and soul (or of a talent) but also of the mind and of our social being?
Is it reaching the goal?
Sometimes I realized that I could seem a little naive –in the meaning of ingenuous and childish- and sometimes I try to be it, really, non always with success. With this approach I look at the art of today: as at the human expression that more than the others is in the balance between intimate and social, intellect and intuition, between joy and desease, fantasy and limit.

I don’t know which will be my contribute to the workshop and I’m curious to live it.
But we can be sure that it will be profitable, because each of us has the will to stake himself for a good goal and the curiosity to know the others and to have an exchange.
And I’m sure we will have a lot of fun, also: this is the most important, because lightness is the deepest way to understanding (for me…).