Presented on Wednesday 17 January 2024, in the Sala del Gonfalone of the Municipality of Salerno, the “Salerno Interviews 2023-2024 - Annabella Rossi: 'Living reality is already science'”, edited by Vincenzo Esposito and the Interdepartmental Laboratory of Anthropology “Annabella Rossi” – Unisa, with the collaboration of Ugo Vuoso.
The event enjoys the patronage and contribution of the University of Salerno Dispac-Department of Cultural Heritage Sciences, Disuff-Department of Human, Philosophical and Educational Sciences, Disps-Department of Political and Social Studies, CBA-University Library Center and the Municipality of Salerno and the Cassa di Risparmio Salernitana Foundation. The initiative, which sees the participation of 15 06|Film and the Icpi (Central Institute for the Intangible Heritage of the Ministry of Culture), has also been sponsored by Siac (Italian Society of Cultural Anthropology), the CEiC-Ethnographic Center of the Campania Islands (Institute of Historical and Anthropological Studies) and Kurumuni Edizioni.
The presentation was attended by – in addition to representatives of the University of Salerno – the curator of the event prof. Vincenzo Esposito, who brought greetings from the Rector Vincenzo Loia and the directors of the departments involved – Aiello, Cerchiai and Iorio – scientific director of the Anthropology Lab “A. Rossi”, Ermanno Guerra, delegate for Culture of the Municipality of Salerno and Michele Buonomo, vice president of the board of directors of the Carisal Foundation. Guerra and Buonomo applauded the choice to organize the busy calendar of events of the “Salerno 2023-2024 Colloquia – Annabella Rossi: 'Living reality is already science'”, between the University and the San Michele Complex of Salerno, so as to reaffirm the cultural relationship between the city and the university. “A relationship that needs to be consolidated”, Guerra underlined “and the fact that the initiative is spread over a long period of time helps to make it more effective”. "Like Annabella Rossi, I also feel like a cultural worker“, Buonomo said “this initiative is worth not only for its scientific contribution but also because it invests the entire territory with interesting performative and musical aspects”.
"The Salerno Colloquiums are a project born years ago with the late Franco Forte, with whom we had imagined celebrating key figures of Italian culture who in some way had a trait d'union with Salerno, so as not to lose their legacy of knowledge that had had important repercussions on the territory. The Salerno Colloquiums 2023-2024 - Annabella Rossi: 'Living reality is already science'" stigmatize two dates of celebration: what would have been the 90th birthday, in 2023, of the scholar born in 1933, and the fortieth anniversary - this year - of her premature death in 1984″, said Prof. Vincenzo Esposito, recalling the work carried out by Rossi at the University of Salerno, where she had taught Cultural Anthropology. Right at the University of Salerno, her former assistant, Prof. Paolo Apolito, founded an Anthropology laboratory named after her.
“Throughout her life as a woman, scholar and researcher, Annabella Rossi, a professional cultural anthropologist, has “lived the reality” of her interlocutors, both in the field and in the classroom, with the tarantate of Salento or with the participants in the “Feste dei povero” of Southern Italy; with her colleagues and her collaborators; with the students of the University of Salerno and with the staff of the MNATP-National Museum of Popular Arts and Traditions, now the Central Institute for the Intangible Heritage of the Ministry of Culture. She has built relationships with others, to dialogue with others of their culture”. Her teacher was the anthropologist Ernesto de Martino, to whom Annabella Rossi had asked what method one should use to be a good anthropologist and he had answered her, simply, to “live one’s experiences”, the method would come later, adding: “Living reality is already science”. Rossi took part in the De Martinian expedition on tarantism in Salento, an experience that changed her life, already marked in her youth by the principles of democracy and equality, developing an interest in art, photography, jazz music together with a very marked nonconformist nature. She graduated from the University of Rome in Literature, discussing a thesis in History of Art, in 1957; she frequented, among others, writers and painters such as Fortunato Depero, Enrico Accatino, Carlo Emilio Gadda, she met Mario Praz and Renato Guttuso. In view of the expedition in Salento in the meetings
in Rome, at de Martino's house, she met the other members of the multidisciplinary team: Diego Carpitella, ethnomusicologist, G. Jervis, psychiatrist, Letizia Comba, psychologist, Amalia Signorelli, anthropologist, Franco Pinna, photographer. It was June 20, 1959, when the scholar arrived, with the rest of de Martino's team, at the Cavallino Bianco in Galatina (LE), the inn that served as the operational base for the ethnographic mission. From that moment, she never stopped scientifically and humanly dealing with the phenomenon of tarantism, which she studied, investigated and described in about twenty years of activity (1959-1977).
Article published on 17 January 2024 - 17:37
