Narrative Perspectives for Contemporary Art: Brera and Its Living Protagonists

Within the framework of the dissemination activities of the IartNET project, Rosanna Ruscio delivered a lecture at the University of Malta dedicated to contemporary artistic research and the development of new methodologies for documenting, interpreting, and narrating contemporary art. Opening the programme with the presentation Pluralism and Interdisciplinarity: Cataloging, Narrating, and New Ways of Narrating Contemporary Artworks, Ruscio examined how contemporary artworks can be documented through multiple narrative strategies combining archival research, cataloguing practices, oral histories, and artist interviews. The lecture highlighted the importance of embracing methodological plurality in order to capture the complexity of contemporary artistic production and avoid reducing artworks to predefined interpretative models. The event also featured presentations by Luca Esposito, Deborah Caivano, and Oliwia Mucha, which addressed, respectively, the relationship between Brera students and the Pinacoteca di Brera, collective artistic practices developed within and beyond the Academy, and the challenges of mapping and narrating artworks through cataloguing and interviews. The conference fostered an active discussion among students and faculty members, focusing on the relationship between artists and the cultural contexts in which they study and work, as well as on the role of research as an open and evolving process.