Photographic representation of biodiversity and countercurrent aesthetics of marine landscapes. – Questioning the role of images in the communication and valorization of biodiversity, as well as in the constitution of cultural geographic imaginaries and environmental sensibilities, this paper focuses on the aesthetics of marine landscapes in some contemporary artistic and activist practices. More specifically, it investigates the function of photography in the construction and deconstruction of stereotypes related to coastal areas and islands (between artistic traditions and tourist imaginaries), thus in the representation of issues related to biodiversity. Contrary to approaches that tend to show marine landscapes exclusively as picturesque or sublime sceneries, projects such as Else, All Will Be Still (Ravi Agarwal, 2013-2015), After the Storm (Amy Balkin, 2016), The Shape of Water Vanishes in Water (Marina Caneve, 2018) and Invisible – Paysages productifs (Nicolas Floc’h, 2018-2020), seek to express the environmental, social and economic inequalities aggravated by climate change and its consequences on marine biodiversity.

Comparative Experiences of Equestrian Sports Events in the Metropolitan Area of Rome. – Sports events offer an opportunity for regeneration, visibility, and international repositioning for the hosting territories as they can lead to the creation of cultural districts, displaying the territory’s self-representation and specialization. While these events require significant organizational and financial commitments, they also present strategic opportunities with various effects, such as economic diversification and cultural enrichment. This study examines the territorial impacts of two equestrian sports events in the Rome metropolitan area: the 2022 World Equestrian Games and the Piazza di Siena horse show. Despite
performing the same sport discipline, these events have different economic, social, and environmental impacts, as well as varying dynamics related to managing territorial conflicts. The reflection aims to analyse how to reconcile the goals of tourism-economic development and environmental protection in areas with significant natural value, by identifying programmatic actions and best practices.

From the European Capital to the Italian Capital of Culture. Reflections on the sidelines of Procida 2022 on events, narratives, images. – The contribution focuses on the “Capital of Culture” cross-referencing the characteristics, in terms of discourses and governance, assumed by the event – in its different declination at the European and Italian scale – with the new instances developed for tourist attraction and city branding’s goals. The two events will be explored with reference to the designated Italian cities, from the evolution of European Capital of Culture (ECoC) program to the invention of the Italian Capital of Culture (ICoC) initiative. The focus on the impact of ICoC, on the sidelines of Procida 2022, will allow us to reflect on the dynamics and contradictions produced by the cultural event on a tourist location already known for literary and cinematographic representations, in order to grasp the interrelations between the event and the new narratives and images conveyed.

Urban green spaces as proximity tourism destinations: the potential of the Maredolce - La Favara complex between care practices and heritage enhancement. – Proximity tourism allows residents to experience familiar places in new ways and to perceive otherness in an elsewhere that does not imply distance. In urban settings, green spaces offer an evocative appeal that can be emphasized when combined with interest in the presence of heritage emergencies. Therefore, it is possible to reflect on the potential of green areas in urban settings and the implications for tourism and sustainability challenges. Green spaces in cities generate crucial connections that strengthen communities while contributing to local development. This article aims to analyze the role of heritage communities in the care and enhancement of urban green spaces as destinations with the aim of promoting critical tools useful for more equitable and sustainable planning of green space enhancement strategies for tourism. This research explores the case of the Maredolce - La Favara complex (Palermo) with a qualitative methodology that included participant observation and field survey. The green space is subject to processes of care put in place for decades by a group of inhabitants who work for the enhancement and involvement of the area in the representation and governance policies of the city. The processes and dynamics related to the context under study are analyzed to highlight how heritage walks, as effective practices of proximity tourism, can contribute to sustainable urban development that enhances local in-stances of signification and affective belonging to places.

Dantesque Geography as a genre of the Italian geography between nineteenth and twentieth centuries. – In Italian geography between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries developed the “dantesque geography” which appears to be not a mere research topic, but a real genre that shared to characterize the history of the discipline in that period. It is circumscribed nearly by the two sixth centenaries of the Dante’s birth and death or more precisely between the Italian unification and the coming of fascism. The essay reconstruct its origin and development from Covino (1865) to Revelli (1922). The “dantesque geography” dealt with the Dante’s cosmology, geographical and cartographical knowledges, also for the contributions, among others, of Dalla Vedova, Bertacchi, Mori, Magnaghi. Its main purpose, however, is to shape an image of Italy as a natural and linguistic region that present itself as a prophecy and historical legitimation of contemporary Italy and its territorial aspirations and so it produced also some maps of “dantesque Italy”. The theme of the Italian boundaries according Dante, particularly the northeastern border, is therefore central.

Natural images of Dante’s underworld. – Dante Alighieri’s ability to represent the reality of the afterlife is known. The effectiveness of this representation is entrusted by the author to the use of similitudes. The main goal of this research is to underline how the similitudes used by Dante refer mostly to the natural world and how the author constructs the infernal geography through physical and concrete data of an experiential world to which every man can refer to. This attitude of Dante to “speak in images” (visibil parlare), then, is investigated as the main cause that has allowed and inspired so many successive transcodes from literature to the visual arts.

Marginal places and resistance in the filmography of Djibril Diop Mambéty. – The filmography of Djibril Diop Mambéty allows reflection on the manner in which urban Senegal takes part in the narrative through a form of decolonial representation. The director focuses on the peripheries of Dakar, a territory marked by colonialism. As the camera explores the urban environment, images and sound become instruments with which to control heterotopic spaces. By redirecting power through a painful negotiation between colonial legacy and a new, deviant focus, these tools show the irreducible otherness of places within the filmic discourse. Mambéty’s critical gaze is also manifested through his protagonists, who belong to a human universe that remains on the fringes of society. These are subaltern figures who, through their sense of se débrouiller, implement practices of resistance within a social and territorial framework permeat-ed by the informal economy.

Animal cities. Mediated experiences and collective narratives for unnatural geography of the wild. – The clear separation – conceptual, ethical, spatial – between man and wildlife (Whatmore, 2002) remains to this day one of the most fascinating topics of reflection around our relationship with the environment. The cultural history of the wild, especially in its North American roots, hinges on the preservation of territories marked by the absence of appreciable anthropic traces, an exotic, ahistorical nature, in open contrast to urban and peri-urban areas, understood in an Enlightenment sense as spaces of civilization, themselves purged of the presence of the non-human. A binary biogeography that unequivocally identifies the right space for the human, placed at the centre, and the non-human, at the margin. Yet, this stark contrast has been brought to the centre of both scientific debate and public interest, especially during the historic 2020 lockdown, when images and multimedia content have extensively documented the fragility of this strict division of space. Starting from a reconstruction of contemporary mass media discourse, the contribution, therefore, aims to document how the emergence and circulation of grand narratives such as that of ‘nature spaces’ or the ‘awakening of nature’ can reveal epistemological dynamics common to different socio-economic contexts, but also substantially different responses to the various phenomenologies of the wild. The very notion of the margin as a dividing border between man and nature is discussed in relation to the descriptions and representations mobilized by newspapers and social media, to explore the possibilities and potentialities of a reunion between human and non-human, even in non-domesticated forms, in anthropized environments such as those of cities.

Forms of Resistance at the Margin of the City. The Vesuvian Area and the Environmental Issue across territories and representations. – This contribution proposes an exploration of the forms of civil and artistic resistance developed at the margins of the metropolitan city of Naples and, in particular, it focuses on the Vesuvian area and the environmental issue. It develops through cognitive path that considers the dialogue between the Mount Vesuvius and the community of his habitants, as well as the link between artistic production and environmental struggle, which characterize many narratives that come from these places since the Seventies. From Operazione Vesuvio project to the land art installation of Salvatore Emblema, the article highlights a chain of radical environmental sensitivity, which, despite the environmental devastation and social rarefaction of this zone of marginality, propose new ways of coexistence with the environment and the natural landscape.

Geographical observations on the Gilet jaunes movement: from inner-city violence to protest roundabouts. – Against a backdrop of economic crisis, climate catastrophe and anti-globalisation struggles, social protests characterised by a strong spatial rootedness have developed in the recent past. The contribution aimed to analyse the influence of spatial differences on the development and articulation of social movements, with particular reference to the role of space in violent expressions. In particular, the Gilet jaunes movement was analysed, which in terms of the complexity of political protest and the dialogue between protest demands and spatial context, seems to be a particularly significant case not only in terms of political symbolism but also in terms of spatial semiotics. Indeed, the movement developed in two main spatial contexts whose differentiations generated different declinations of the protest and different perceptual and representational processes.

The garden as a projection of a political space. – The creation of a garden repre-sents the effort to create, in a defined space, a project that refers to client in its representation. This element, which is the basis of his creation, suf-fers from a basic ambiguity. On the one hand the garden is definitely oriented towards his personality, on the other hand it is still an open space, natural and therefore usable and available.
These two elements become particularly evident in those gardens that have the explicit function of concretely representing their political character and therefore oriented towards establishing a strong relationship between the client and those who frequent it.
The example of the garden of Versailles represents the complete identifi-cation between the sovereign and his garden, providing many elements to understand how the perception of the park is a key element of Louis XIV’s own political project.

Anthropocene and geography. – The concept of Anthropocene is used today in many disciplinary sectors to thematize the issues concerning the enormous and growing impact of human activities on nature. His introduction in the field of geographic studies has placed at the center the reflection on the heart of geographic epistemology: the relationships between human societies and the environment, their ecological consequences, the interpretation of the landscape, the analysis and the critical deconstruction of representations, the relationship between physical and human geography in scientific investigation. The article discusses the contribution of geographers to research on the Anthropocene and presents some ideas on the role that geography can play in scientific research on the Anthropocene. On the one hand, geography can support the critical reading of the ways in which the Anthropocene has also become a concept widely used by the media, contextualizing and deconstructing narratives. On the other hand, also by using the potential of thematic cartography in visualizing data and allowing reflections and analyzes at different scales, helping to territorialize the Anthropocene narrative, highlighting the changes and processes in the different regions of the planet.

Environmental sustainability among socio-economic variables of influence and geographical determinisms. An analysis of the Italian scenario at nuts-3 level. – The process of awareness of the value of environmental sustainability is currently changing, also due to the the media lever that has catalyzed its dynamics both individually and collectively ones. At a European level, particularly, with the von der Leyen presidency, the orientations based on a vision linked to the Green Deal seem to have strengthened even more, according to which Europe must aim to become the first continent with zero climate impact by 2050, at the same time stimulating the economy, improving people’s health and quality of life, taking care of nature and in the absence of geographical differentials. The real effectiveness of these actions, however, will only materialize where integrated approaches will be adopted able to improve other variables directly related to the propensity for environmental sustainability. The present contribution, through a multivariate regressive analysis, a clustering methodology and the related cartographic representation, therefore tries to understand which are, in the Italian scenario (Nuts 3 scale), these socio-economic variables of possible influence, in order to clarify the territorial differentials that can be detected in the domain of sustainability.

Convergence of web design and spatial, statistical, genomic and epidemiological information: the case of geo-dashboards in the Covid-19 crisis. – In response to the Covid-19 outbreak several organizations, as well as private citizens, considered the opportunity to design and publish online geospatial dashboards (geo-dashboard), blending geographical, graphical and statistical representation approaches. In particular, in this paper geo-dashboards are reviewed and conceptualized in the framework of online explanatory data visualization tools and GIS. The study presents the analysis of a significant number of relevant publicly available geo-dashboards to track, visualize, and communicate indicators related to the epidemic outbreak. Covid-19 is a significant case study on how and how much public communication in a pandemic crisis uses spatially related data and technique.

About the representations of the Crisis. Partecipatory audiovisual practices in the time of Covid-19. – This article aims to critically reconstruct the main methods and perspectives of audiovisual representation - expressed through the peculiar dynamics of digital communication - which emerged during the world crisis triggered by the Covid-19 emergency. Particulary, by analyzing the projects and forms of participatory audio-visual communication and documentation promoted on an international scale by private and public cultural institutions.

Cartography as a symbolic operator: the Covid-19 pandemic in Lombardy. – By anchoring itself to cartographic semiosis, the contribution intends to high-light the importance that cartography acquires within the media communication system, with particular attention to its use in the current health emergency. Indeed, cartography is conceived as a symbolic operator capable of actively acting to create knowledge and provide operational requirements in the Coronavirus emergency. Thanks to cartographic semiosis, it is possible to investigates the construction and communication mechanisms relating to the representation of the territory and the implementation of a cybercartography. This kind of cartography, if it is correctly constructed from a semiotic point of view, is an effective tool, through which it is possible to restore the social complexity of the areas most affected by the pandemic. This contribution will be exemplified on the multiscale mapping of Lombardy produced within the CST-DiathesisLab of the University of Bergamo.

From “Italia dei barconi” to “Italia dei balconi”. National identity at the time of Covid-19. - This work is part of the debate known as «Media Geography» (Zimmermann, 2007; dell‟Agnese, 2011) and it aims to critically investi-gate the collective processes of identity narratives produced by the crisis developed by the Covid-19 emergency in Italy. These processes are identified in the media mainstream narratives of the sense of a common belonging and representation (Foucault, 1980; Schwartz, 2008). The survey takes into consideration the period February-April 2020 and it has identified a chronology of “Us”, structured as follows: “Us and Them”, “Us”, “Us and us”, through a semiotic and visual approach, a structure that encourages us to reflect on the contrast between local and global. Finally, the close link between politics and identity narration is highlighted: through the media, it tends to build images that activate and orient collective narration, confirming that «the ideological mobilization of identity concerns the images of identity rather than identity itself» (Pollice, 2005).

With Egypt. Dialogical Space in the Communication of ENI by Enrico Mattei. – This article aims to briefly reconstruct the contribution given by the Il Gatto Selvatico review, some documentaries and photographic reports commissioned by Eni, in the representation of the important political-economic and cultural dialogue developed between Eni and Egypt during Enrico Mattei’s presidency. Articles, photographs and films able to significantly narrate the tangible signs of Eni’s international extension, representing in different circumstances the peculiar modalities of the encounter with the world of the other and of the consequent ability to “make communities” with the its inhabitants.

Il mio articolo riguarda l’arte contemporanea. Partendo dal presupposto che le carte geografiche siano espressione di potere e strumenti per costruire le identità politiche e nazionali, la mia ricerca esamina lavori artistici che, in qualche modo vi corrispondono.
Analizzerò tra gli altri, alcuni lavori di Maja Bajevic, Mona Hatoum, Zarina Hashmi, in cui l’uso della mappa è espressione visuale delle pratiche discorsive del potere: questi lavori mettono in scena con diversi strumenti, il meccanismo che unisce rappresentazione geografica e potere politico, rendendo visibile la costruzione del simbolico. L’arte permette di discutere in modo critico quanto le esperienze e le rappresentazioni siano parte del complesso processo in divenire, nel tempo e nello spazio, costruito dal discorso egemonico e anti egemonico. L’arte contempora-nea diventa per me strumento di analisi della relazione tra diversi tipi di rappresentazione e la costruzione del potere.

“Genuine” representations: an opportunity for geography or a new form of reductionism? – The increasing production of multiple and informal representations generated by large amount of available data and from several new kind of sources, it is the occasion to argue the relationships between the construction process of legitimacy and shared memory. It is underlined the role of geographical knowledge (both from cultural and neurological point of view) and the importance of geographer in order to distinguish different importance of individual representations from shared and common ones.

The cartography in the press: the case of  La Repubblica e Le Monde. –  This contribution analyzes the role of the cartography inside the press, italian and french. To such intention, have been compared  the cartographic representations, regarding the libyan conflict of 2011, published by two great daily paper, La Repubblica e Le Monde.

  The objective is that to underline how much the culture geographical influence deeply the conception, the production and the cartographic communication.