In 2006, in coincidence with the opening of the Winter Olympic Games, Turin’s Egyptian Museum promoted the construction of a plastic sphinx—a magnified version of a piece of its collection—to be placed in a highly visible peripheral location of the city. Moving from the premise that the microanalytical study of seemingly marginal objects can shed a revealing light on processes of urban transformation, the paper discusses this sphinx as a testimony of the paradoxical entanglement of objects and temporalities that characterize neoliberal cities. Observed from the perspective of the public use of the past, the sphinx offers interesting clues for interrogating a historical phase in which institutions seem to have placed memory at the center of their urban regeneration strategies—only to easily lose the memory of their own actions. Observed from the perspective of its materiality, the sphinx shows to what extent post-industrial narratives are deeply rooted in the entanglement of actors and practices of the industrial city.

Sphinx. Writing Urban Histories of Useless Objects / De Pieri, Filippo (THE CITY PROJECT). - In: The Historical City: A Critical Reference and Role Model for Innovative Urban and Metropolitan Development / Cattabriga I., Chinellato E., Eghbali A., Loffredo R., Mutton Z.. - STAMPA. - Cham : Springer, 2024. - ISBN 9783031714726. - pp. 267-273 [10.1007/978-3-031-71473-3_30]

Sphinx. Writing Urban Histories of Useless Objects

De Pieri, Filippo
2024

Abstract

In 2006, in coincidence with the opening of the Winter Olympic Games, Turin’s Egyptian Museum promoted the construction of a plastic sphinx—a magnified version of a piece of its collection—to be placed in a highly visible peripheral location of the city. Moving from the premise that the microanalytical study of seemingly marginal objects can shed a revealing light on processes of urban transformation, the paper discusses this sphinx as a testimony of the paradoxical entanglement of objects and temporalities that characterize neoliberal cities. Observed from the perspective of the public use of the past, the sphinx offers interesting clues for interrogating a historical phase in which institutions seem to have placed memory at the center of their urban regeneration strategies—only to easily lose the memory of their own actions. Observed from the perspective of its materiality, the sphinx shows to what extent post-industrial narratives are deeply rooted in the entanglement of actors and practices of the industrial city.
2024
9783031714726
9783031714733
The Historical City: A Critical Reference and Role Model for Innovative Urban and Metropolitan Development
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11583/2995941