Taobuk chooses identity. And the Nobel Prize winners are Jon Fosse, Jonathan Safran Foer, Yasmina Reza and Marina Abramovic

Identity is the key word of the next edition of Taobuk, the Taormina literary festival now in its 14th edition which will be held from 20 to 24 June. The review will be presented by president and artistic director Antonella Ferrara on February 5th at the Bit in Milan.

Over 200 international guests – writers, artists, scientists, intellectuals, politicians and economists – will join the prestigious recipients of the Taobuk Awards, which will be the Norwegian for literature Jon Fosse (Nobel Prize 2023), the American Jonathan Safran Foerthe French one Yasmina Reza, while for the visual arts the recognition will go to the artist of Serbian origins Marina Abramovic. The delivery will take place on the evening of Saturday 22 June at the Teatro Antico during the Taobuk Gala, a show that will be broadcast, as usual, on Rai1.

And always in the Ancient Theater of Taormina on June 23rd at 9pm Alessandro Baricco will present his new show, Thucydides. Athens against Melo, of which he is the author and director. Baricco will be on stage as a narrator, supported by the actresses Stefania Rocca e Valeria Solarino and accompanied by 100 Cellos, ensemble of cellists founded and directed by Enrico Melozzi e Giovanni Sollimawho also composed the original music for the occasion.

After the two previous editions focused on “truth” and “freedom”, the in-depth analysis of the multifaceted expressions of identity arises from a consequential continuity of reflection that the festival has gradually developed. As Antonella Ferrara, president and artistic director of Taobuk, observes: “The reference to the root idem, i.e. same, identical, appears reductive if not misleading, because it defines identity as equality with oneself and extraneousness to everything else. Starting from the Short Century and today more than ever, the perspective has been reversed: where individuals and peoples are at the same time bearers of specificity and permeated by universality. And this is why homologations flatten and fundamentalisms divide. We see it in the Middle East, we see it in Ukraine, we see it in every abuse that offends a person regardless of gender, creed and nationality. And on the other hand we know what extraordinary results a widespread synergy between individuals and communities of different ethnic groups, civilizations and religions produces, an objective that is not at all obvious and which still represents a priority at a global level”.
The rich program of the event will therefore develop the theme with an eye as always turned to the dynamics of the present, from the individual microcosm to the social macrocosm. To encounter “one, none, one hundred thousand” identities: personal, national, religious, political, social, therefore multiple and all-encompassing. And we will still talk about digital identity, online, often masked behind a nickname; sexual or gender identity, fluid, psychological, even mathematical.

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Among the previews of Taobuk 2024, attention still stands out to three personalities of twentieth-century culture who also stood out for having contributed in different ways to the emancipation and configuration of female identity: the writers Sibilla Aleramo and Goliarda Sapienza, and the painter Carla Accardi. The theme will find further depth in the two sections that Taobuk combines with the literary and artistic side, namely medical sciences and geopolitics. On this last side the focus will once again be the Mediterranean, cradle of the West. The three continents that border its shores, Europe, Africa, Asia, have cyclically fought and are fighting each other to impose their own monotheistic beliefs: Judaism, Christianity, Islam. Yet the Mediterranean is a “sea of ​​religious, cultural and linguistic differences”, capable of fruitful osmosis. Taobuk will analyze this model of plural identities, which – despite conflicts and difficulties – recognize each other as lands of a single basin, united by revealing common traits. Confirming that a culture can remain alive only to the extent that it allows itself to be crossed by others, remaining open to comparison.