Vincenzo Trione's 'Rifare il mondo' redefines avant-garde as operative category

In his new book 'Rifare il mondo. Le età dell'avanguardia', Vincenzo Trione argues that the avant-garde persists today as a 'posthumous avant-garde' of low intensity, visible in street art, activist gestures, pop culture, and digital platforms rather than in museums or the market. He constructs a transdisciplinary map that includes cinema, fashion, music, video games, and activism, applying a simple test: the ability to disorient the viewer and invent language. The book is structured by 'ages' (gold, silver, bronze) inspired by Hesiod, tracing genealogies from early 20th-century movements to contemporary neo-movimentism in Africa and elsewhere. Trione cites David Cronenberg's film 'Crime of the Future' as more artistically relevant than many biennials. He identifies a problematic continuity with the 20th century, where today's artists engage in dialogue with predecessors rather than patricide. The volume also examines the revival of Futurism in contexts like the Guggenheim, U2's Sphere in Las Vegas, and Alessandro Michele's cyborg-themed Gucci show. Trione sees technology as a double-edged sword: platforms like Snapchat unconsciously revive Surrealist ideas, but the utopian drive to 'remake the world' has largely faded.