Pordenone, the future that awaits us with “Narrators of Europe”

With the novels of four great authors of our time – Ian McEwan, Delphine De Vigan, Cass Hunter and Hanna Bervoets – and with a cycle of meetings linked to a fluid present that is already the future, return to Pordenonefrom 1st to 22nd February 2024, every Thursday at 3.30pm in the Auditorium of the Antonio Zanussi Student House, the Storytellers of Europe, promoted by the IRSE, Regional Institute of European Studies, which has reached the finish line of its 16th edition this year on the theme Brave new Humanity. The artificial future that awaits us.

The coordinator explains Eleonora Boscariol that the cycle of events in 2024 offers a very current excursus in contemporary European narrative, ranging between artificial intelligence and social media, for a reflection on the complex balance between real and virtual life, but also to understand the potential and dangers of the great technological innovations that intrigue us and they often even scare us. As always by Stefania Savoccothe review will alternate critical analysis and the reading of extracts from the novels during the meetings.

And the curator of Narratori d’Europa, Stefania Savocco, underlines: “There is a very widespread genre in Europe, that of speculative fiction, which interprets contemporaneity with disturbing scenarios, becoming both a celebration and critical analysis of human achievements. In the twentieth century we would have talked about science fiction and dystopian literature: let’s think about George Orwell, Isaac Asimov, Philip K. Dicks. More recently, the British Ian Mc Ewan and Cass Hunter focused on machines that learn and get excited, very similar to OpenAI’s machine learning chatbots; the French Delphine De Vigan creates a mystery that delves into the interaction between material and analogue reality that today we call Onlife; and the Dutch Hanna Bervoets transports us into the pervasive world of social media, into the sea of ​​contents that incite falsehood, hatred and violence. A dimension with blurred boundaries, in which audacity and courage, risk and presumption, that of a “brave new humanity”, precisely, are confused and dangerously intertwined.

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There are therefore four stages scheduled, every Thursday – 1, 8, 15 and 22 February – from 3.30pm to 5.30pm, in attendance at the Student House, but also in live streaming. In the final part of the meetings the baton will pass to David Villareccistudent of Civil Languages ​​and Language Sciences at Ca’ Foscari, called from time to time to interview the researcher Gabriele Santin, who in 2014 built a robotic hand in his garage (1 February), or to interact interactively with the public on the topic of artificial intelligence and social media (1 and 15 February). On Thursday 22 February, the translator of the novel by Hanna Bervoets will participate, Francesco Panzeri, in dialogue with Stefania Savocco. Access to each meeting is free, the program detailed with reservations on the site.