“A sudden shift in our relationship with the dead, or in the geography of the afterlife, can have unthinkable consequences…”
-Ivan Cenzi
The University of Padua has long been associated with daring research. In the early modern era especially, the school was a bastion of learning that attracted experimental thinkers who passionately investigated and dissected the viscera of the visible and invisible worlds. Many of these scholars, such as Galileo Galilei, Andreas Vesalius, Girolamo Cardano, and Pietro Pomponazzi, specialised in natural philosophy, anatomy, and the occult.
Today Padua is still renowned for its rigorous educational curricula, but over the last two years the university has maintained an innovative programme on death studies. One of the course lecturers is none other than The Thinker’s Garden’s old friend, Ivan Cenzi. An author, filmmaker, and “evangelist of dark wonder”, Cenzi is also the creator and director of Bizzarro Bazar, a popular digital wunderkammer.
We caught up with Cenzi to learn more about his lectureship and current projects.
The Custodian: Could you tell us more about your relationship with Padua’s Morgagni Museum?
Ivan Cenzi: I have fond memories and deep feelings for that museum. It was the first place Carlo Vannini and I set out to photograph. Although the book ended up being delayed and was published as the fourth installment of the Bizzarro Bazar Collection, it was actually meant to be my very first book. Working there for a week or so, selecting specimens, moving jars and taking notes was a new and exciting experience.
When you spend some time among human remains–whether it’s mummies, skulls in a charnel house or anatomical preparations–you enter a peculiar emotional state: the tendency is to endow these remains with a personality, because a human specimen is a liminal entity, it’s both an object and a subject. I realized I was handling those preparations with the utmost respect and a sense of gratitude, almost having a silent conversation with those suspended, floating bodies. I came to think that, although we consider ourselves rational beings, we are still imbued with magical thinking; and it’s not necessarily a bad thing. Attributing a soul (i.e. a character, an identity) to dead/inanimate things might well be a delusion, but in some ways it is also a sign of love. I would even dare to call it a humanist trait.
And then the most curious thing happened. Just as we were spending hours upon hours each day taking pictures of skeletons, dried bodies and malformed fetuses, I received a much-dreaded phone call from my doctor who diagnosed me with multiple sclerosis.
What we were doing in that pathology museum suddenly took a much deeper meaning. Yet strangely, as my life was being turned upside down, it all made sense. Reality sometimes has to get surreal in order to pull the rug from under your feet and force you to cope with its mystery: that’s the irruption of Wonder into our established, ordinary worldview.
So, as you can imagine, writing that book at that specific time played a fundamental part in processing my new situation: it became a confrontation with the physical and philosophical significance of disease.
There’s this passage from the Chuang-Tzu which always resonated with me: two characters are looking at a graveyard when suddenly a tumor grows on their arms. “Do you dread it?”, asks one to the other, and the latter replies along these lines: “You and I were contemplating the process of change, the constant transformation, and now change has caught up with us. Why would I have anything to resent?”
C: How long have you been associated with the University of Padua?
IC: Since we first went there in 2014, I have remained good friends with the curators of the Morgagni Museum and with the Pathology department staff. I am very proud that my book arose some interest, and may have played a part in the museum getting the funds for a full renovation. I also did some talks in Padua over the years, for instance at the annual Scientiae conference on early-modern science, and at the wonderful International Congress on Anatomical Ceroplastics and Wax Modeling.
Then, about two years ago, I began teaching some classes at the FISPPA (the Department of Philosophy, Sociology, Pedagogy and Applied Psychology of the University of Padua).
C: How did Padua’s new course in the “iconology of death” come about?
IC: Death studies have been an established field of study in Anglo-Saxon countries for a long time now, but they are relatively new to the Italian academic reality. As far as I know, Padua is the only place in the country where both a course in Psychology of End-of-Life Relationships and a master in Death Studies are held. The merit goes to one enlightened professor, Ines Testoni: she managed to tear down some cultural barriers, and she is doing a fantastic job in gathering for her courses some of Italy’s most brilliant death experts.
As far as I’m concerned, my academic background is rooted in visual arts and media; therefore my classes focus on the ways death has been portrayed in Western culture, and on how even the subtler changes in these depictions can impact the cultural, economic and social structure. A sudden shift in our relationship with the dead, or in the geography of the afterlife, can have unthinkable consequences: after all, human beings never really live “in the world”, but rather within the symbolic representation they make of it.
C: What initially inspired you to create a web series? What can you tell us about the next season?
IC: Over the years, I was approached by a few production companies with the prospect of doing a show, but having worked in TV and cinema for 15 years I knew the business and was quite skeptical about the creative outcome, so I always turned down their offers. But then my long-time friend and collaborator Francesco Erba stepped in: having him as the director and animator of the series–a person whose inventiveness, professionalism and skills I blindly trust–won me over.
This second season will be, I hope, even more surprising than first one. It will feature strange scientific experiments, eccentric characters, human marvels and all kinds of astonishing historical curiosities. Our mission is to suggest this world is a much weirder place than we fathom; and, in doing so, make the audience realize there’s so much to learn from the odd and the bizarre. I have this naive belief that curiosity, and an interest for all that deviates from our so-called “normality”, may be in the long run an antidote for intolerance and fear of the Other.
C: What led you to feature the Musei Civici di Reggio Emilia?
IC: The place is truly unique, because it actually houses several museums at once: many diverse collections are found throughout the wings and corridors of the same building, a palazzo that’s been part of the city life for eight centuries. Most of these collections have a tremendous historical value. There’s the private wunderkammer of the famous Lazzaro Spallanzani, the first scientist to apply the scientific method to biology and physiology in the eighteenth century; there’s Gaetano Chierici’s prehistoric archaeology collection, perhaps the only one still arranged according to 19th century classifications (in this respect the Musei Civici are also a meta-museum of sorts, detailing the history of cataloging, taxonomy, nomenclature etc.).
The same location also features a huge taxidermy collection, a wonderful anatomical cabinet, a portico with a collection of ancient marble sculptures, the Roman and Medieval mosaics hallway, the ethnology section… When it comes to filming the live parts of a show, it does not get much richer than that. For each episode, we had the luxury of choosing a specific setting that could fit the story we were telling.
C: Anything else to share about your forthcoming talks and books?
IC: Season two of the web series will premiere in the first months of 2021, so I am going to be quite busy with post-production; but I have been planning a couple of new books that hopefully will see the light some time next year.
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