The monument is therefore a ripple in space, a signaling that acts there on an aptitude for symbolization and, at the same time, is a stimulus for the production of symbolic awareness. It’s the point in which one can look one’s own time in the eye, one can be contemporary with one’s own era and support a project for the future. For this reason the monument, even when it commemorates a past event, is always a monument to the possible. Otherwise it is once again an empty symbol, once again a catastrophe.
Lecture by Matteo Cavalleri, “A monument to the possible”, Research week, 30.10.2010
Levi himself distinguishes (and connects) memory and imagination affirming how his imagination before his memory was full of the faces of his companions. The power of thought derives from the function of the imagination. And therefore also from the activation of shapes and styles which are firstly of art. Likewise, imagination is necessary for memory, in that the latter must continually come up with ways of opening in the present a space for the past.
Lecture by Matteo Cavalleri, “A monument to the possible”, Research week, 30.10.2010
The monument, as with the symbol, implies and communicates to the present a memory for the future. It can refer to a genesis, to a foundation, to a capability or a project regarding the collective, it can very well have a relationship – even precise or deep – with the history or with an origin of this. But this history or this origin, in order not to be hypostatized and become empty symbols, must, in an authentic monument, have the renewed character of a destination to reach: they must be able to be thought of as a project, a tension able to solicit a new crossing, a pathway. The destination is the origin, Karl Kraus would comment.
Lecture by Matteo Cavalleri, “A monument to the possible”, Research week, 30.10.2010