Economics, talent of thinking

https://www.tutorsalus.net/index.php/en/economia-1-talento-di-pensiero-2/492-constructive-solutions

In the picture : brick prototypes for the Children’s Hospital at Entebbe, 35 km. from Kampala. Following the building tradition of the soil ‘pisè’ in Sub-Saharan Africa, the new Children’s Hospital of ‘Emergency’ www.emergency.it was built at Entebbe, in local soil bricks integrated with reinforcing and waterproofing substances, thanks to a collaboration with Politecnico of Milan. The Hospital, which is a pole of excellence among the most important in a large area and has been designed by Renzo Piano together with ‘TAMassociati’, today is able to offer free specialist assistance to children who need surgeries with advanced techniques and qualified personnel// ’Behind the impossible’, www.buromilan.com ‘Design Week’ Milan - April 17-23, 2023/ ‘Fuori salone’ www.fuorisalone.it

What is behind the feasibility of a building ?

‘Behind the impossible’ is an attractive title for this ‘Fuori Salone’ by BUROMILAN[1], well visited during the ‘Design Week’ in Milan : a non-celebratory valuation of one’s thinking at work, starting from an intuition – or already a partnership of thinking – able to deal  with the feasibility of different non oppositive competences.

Technical experience is at the origin of the intuition itself that will prove to be a projects : already the experience of the art workshop – not isolated, but capable of co-presence and union – of our very rich Middle Age and that generated the today’s Academies Polytechnics Factories.

However there is an oneiric experience – never forgotten, also when not translated in words – since one’s birth which entrusts to the sleep the ri-proposition of that irreplaceable journey towards life that every newborn goes on, and of the hurdles up to the solutions encountered and crossed to get to be born. From there first, from this ignored thinking which even resurfaces without fanfare, a skill passes – or not, and then we stay in the darkness of psychic poverty –  that we reductively call ‘technical’, to connect forms materials structures to make them livable places up to the cities of man.

Marina Bilotta Membretti / Cernusco sul Naviglio – June 3, 2023

[1] Milan Ingegneria Spa.

Trainings before the competition/ Milano, Arena Civica and Palazzina Appiani – ‘Walk and Middle Distance Night’ April 29-30, 2023.

“As a matter of facts when the reality principle comes into the pleasure principle, it doesn’t mean the dismissal of the pleasure principle, but a better safeguard of it.”[2]

What does bring in the reality principle to the point of requiring a subject – and a child mainly – to be represented so he, or she, can invest psychically in it ? “There is a subject for unconscious…”[3], that’s true.

There is, on one side, the subject of the imagination that – neurotic – averts from reality and in the only comforting capacity may even continue an unfulfilled destiny.

However, on the other side, the lack of fulfillment itself increases – for another subject – the importance of the reality and of the psychical work, which is quite different from the psychical imagination or fantasy.

Here it is the springing, and here it is one’s disposition to ‘springingness’, that cannot be prescribed because it follows an individual judgement of productivity – or unproductiveness – of a specific psychical investment.

It is, as a matter of facts, an experience of analytical work the ‘economical psychic occurrence’ about which Freud specifically noted in 1911, and furtherly then in the following years and works. 

Not fantasy or imagination, not behaviour : rather an individual evaluation, hardly amenable to removal, since the removal actually proved its flop.

Marina Bilotta Membretti / Cernusco sul Naviglio - May 16, 2023

[1] I owe this article to the term ‘saltità’ (I translated with ‘springingness’), as coined by the psychoanalyst and University professor Giuseppe Oreste Pozzi in his intervention to the presentation of the book ‘Generazione DAD. Scuole, politica e psicoanalisi’, at care of Irene d’Elia (Pequod editore, 2022) at the ‘Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense’ in Milan, last April 29, 2023.

[2] ‘Precisazioni sui due principi dell’accadere psichico’, (1911) S. Freud in OSF VOL. 6 Bollati Boringhieri 2012, p.458

[3] Cited from the intervention of professor Giuseppe Oreste Pozzi.

Original painting by Gianni Russomando.[1]

It’s an affection, imputable then : the affection of whom – if swindled – doesn’t disown satisfaction.

Marina Bilotta Membretti / Cernusco sul Naviglio – March 14, 2023

[1] Gianni Russomando, biographical note : “I’m born in Vercelli (1956), graduated at the ‘Istituto di Belle Arti di Vercelli’, I describe myself as an ‘amanuense’ (medieval hand-painter) and far from expositions and competitions.”

Edina Altara (1898-1983) was born in Sassari where her talent in drawing very soon made itself known : she participated in 1917 to an exhibition of Art in Turin and her collage, titled ‘Jesus salvadelu’ was acquired by king Vittorio Emanuele III (still today the work can be found in Rome, at the Loggia d’Onore in Quirinale). At first she devoted herself to drawing for ceramic productions (plates, saucers, tiles then framed as in the above picture), in 1934 she went to Milan to collaborate with fashion sketches at the magazine ‘Grazia’, and in 1942 also at the magazine ‘Bellezza’ edited by Giò Ponti, as well as ‘Stile’ and ‘Domus’ and up to collaborations for the furniture of five Italian ocean liners. She was fashion illustrator for the magazine ‘Rakam’, for ‘Il Giornalino della Domenica’ – a publication of ‘Domenica del Corriere’ dedicated to teenagers – for various advertisements (cosmetics, beauty products) and illustrator of novels on magazines. Two exhibitions in the last months did show a few of her most beautiful works : ‘Edina Altara. La mia Sardegna’ at the ’Art Port Gallery’ at Olbia, and ‘Edina Altara. Mondi di carta’ at the ‘Galleria Siotto’at Cagliari.

“The coordinating role assumed by the tailor towards different artisans employed in the making of a garment helps to better define the contours of the craft performed by this craftsman who, according the legislator, was the main originator of novelties.”[1]

Individual competence is science of thinking, or unconscious, to whom conscience begins to address respectfully. 

Marina Bilotta Membretti / Cernusco sul Naviglio – February 24, 2023

[1] ‘L’arte del sarto nel Medioevo’, by Elisa Tosi Brandi 2017 Soc. editrice ‘il Mulino’, p.48

Original painting by Gianni Russomando.[1]

“On one hand we have evidence that also a subtle and difficult intellectual work, which normally requires rigorous meditation, can be done preconsciously without coming to consciousness. There is no doubt on such cases : they occur for example when sleeping. A subject can be found himself, or herself catching, soon after waking up, the solution to a difficult problem, mathematical or whatever else, to which during all the day he, or she, was in vain applying.”[2]

“What makes some cognitive operations more difficult and hard than others ? What achievements should we acquire with the currency of attention ? …Today we have tentative answers to those questions.”[3]

Freud sensed that any ‘perception’ – not only phisical, strictly speaking - is the result of an individual ‘assessment’[4]  which doesn’t need conscience to go to goal : even, the presence of conscience can prevent thought from grasping those experiential perceptions which are indispensable to intellectual synthesis.

Marina Bilotta Membretti / Cernusco sul Naviglio – February 15, 2023

[1] Gianni Russomando, biographical note : “I’m born in Vercelli (1956), graduated at the ‘Istituto di Belle Arti di Vercelli’, I describe myself as an ‘amanuense’ (medieval hand-painter) and far from expositions and competitions.”

[2] ‘L’Io e l’Es’, S. Freud (1922) in ‘OSF – Vol.IX’, Bollati Boringhieri 2020 p.489

[3] ‘Pensieri lenti e veloci’, D. Kahneman (2011) – Mondadori Libri SpA 2022, p.46

[4] “It is the concept of the law of the motion of body named ‘drive’, where the source of satisfaction is an Other one (i.e. an external subject). Memory is one of the species of thinking.”, ‘Il pensiero di natura. Dalla psicoanalisi al pensiero giuridico’, Giacomo B. Contri – SIC Edizioni 1998, p.85 Nota 7.

‘Working memory’, by F. Duranti[1] : drawn from the exhibition ‘Glossario clinico di Psichiatria per Immagini’ – Pavia, ‘Hangart Studio’ October 8 – 23, 2022.

“System 1. It operates quickly and automatically, with little or no effort and  no sense of voluntary control.

 System 2. It directs attention to the demanding mental activities that require focus, such as complex calculations.”[2]

“ It takes longer to say ‘automatic system’ than ‘system 1’ so that the first expression takes up more space in our working memory. Everything occupies working memory reduces our ability to think.”[3]

No regard, then, for starting work as thinking capability to inform us about limits of our competence is not a characteristic of conscience.

It is the unconscious, as a matter of fact, able to supply us with this not ambiguous, quick message : whose communication, however, depends on how much conscience considers oneself independent of thought initiation.

Any reaction forming[4] is, by logic, secondary to an initial assessment on the offer to which it refers.

Marina Bilotta Membretti / Cernusco sul Naviglio – February 6, 2023

[1] The biographical notes are drawn from the brochure available at the exhibition// Franco Duranti has an academic background in Fine Arts and in Conservatory  of Music in Milan : hsi own work merges with an activity as an Art therapist in hospital (Milan, Pavia, Legnano). In 1988 he begins a long quest to give life to a ‘ Clinical Glossary of Psychiatry for Imaging’ – these are notebooks of working – ended only in 2021 and starting from a field observation of patients attending the Art Laboratories inside the Health Units : it is a study aimed at distress and emotional sides, a trace to observe what cannot be observed with a strongly calligraphic graphic language, as supported by an active career as engraver.

[2] ‘Pensieri lenti e veloci, D. Kahneman (2011) Mondadori Libri SpA, p.25 / As far as ‘Sistema 1’ and ‘Sistema 2’ D. Kahneman cited ‘Individual Differences in Reasoning. Implications for the Rationality Debate’, by K. Stanovich and R. West in ‘Behavioral and Brain Sciences’, 23, 2000.

[3] ‘Pensieri lenti e veloci, D. Kahneman (2011) Mondadori Libri SpA, p.37

[4] ‘L’Io e l’Es’, S.Freud (1922) in ‘OSF – Vol. IX’ Bollati Boringhieri 2020, pgg.496-498