Christian Caliandro's Meditation on the Contemporary

Christian Caliandro (born 1979), a contemporary art historian and cultural policy expert who teaches at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze and serves on the scientific committee of Symbola Fondazione per le Qualità italiane, reflects on the nature of the present and the contemporary in a personal essay published on Artribune. He defines the contemporary as precarious, provisional, ephemeral, mobile, mutable, transitory, interstitial, unstable, communal, and collective, describing it as a collapse of time. The essay references Adalberto Libera's Unità di Abitazione Orizzontale (1950-54), part of the Ina-Casa project in Rome's Tuscolano district, built in three phases from 1950 to 1960. Libera's design aimed to create a model neighborhood blending tradition and technological innovation, emphasizing the aggregation of dwellings and services for modern civic life. Caliandro contrasts constraining space with liberating space, quoting Edoardo Persico, and envisions the contemporary as a luminous, Mediterranean, vital, spontaneous cyberpunk, vernacular sci-fi, generosity, gift, and care. The essay also includes nostalgic memories of summer vacations in Moena during the 1990 Italia World Cup, with references to Totò Schillaci, Police's Synchronicity, and a Swiss Army knife. Artribune promotes its newsletters: Incanti (weekly art market), Render (biweekly urban regeneration), and PAX (biweekly cultural tourism), as well as a daily Lettera newsletter and a WhatsApp channel.