TURIN. The international conference “Mina, the voice of silence: presence and absence of a pop icon”, which will take place on the web channels of the University of Turin, opens on Thursday 25 March and will continue until Friday 26 March. Curated by Giulia Muggeo (professor of History of cinema at the University of Turin), Gabriele Rigola (professor of History of cinema at the University of Genoa) and Jacopo Tomatis (professor of Popular music at the University of Turin). This is the first conference in the world dedicated to the great singer and performer and takes place on the days of her 81st birthday (after being postponed exactly one year ago on the occasion of her 80th birthday).
Organized by the University of Turin Dams, by the CRAD (Actor and Divism Research Center), Sylvia Scarlett Gender Media Lab of the University of Turin, in collaboration with the University of Genoa, the Université de Picardie Jules Verne, National Museum del Cinema di Torino, Italian IASPM and Italian Song Portal, will see the presence of scholars and scholars from all over Italy and international speakers from the United Kingdom, Australia and France, experts in the history of cinema, history of music, semiotics, fashion and costume, of television.
The conference will see the extraordinary participation, with pre-recorded interventions, of two prominent guests: Ivano Fossati, who agreed to talk about his work with Mina, and Massimiliano Pani, Mina’s son and his main collaborator from the Eighties to today, who had a long conversation about his work. Four events (dissections) will be held on the UniTo channels on 25 and 26 March: The voice of silence, Conversation with Massimiliano Pani, Mina on magazines and Conversation with Ivano Fossati. These appointments will be interspersed with eight panels of pre-recorded speeches and four live round tables.
Mina goes through – in presence and absence – the last sixty years of Italian history. From his debut on the screens of the “Musichiere” and in the first musicarelli between 1959 and 1960, up to his “physical” farewell to the scenes in 1978, and again in his more recent “virtual” appearances. Pop icon, pioneer of a sophisticated song, symbol of a refined and elegant TV, contested model of female independence, record entrepreneur, columnist: Mina represents – in the history of Italian media and customs – a unicum, hardly traceable to consolidated analysis paradigms . Its artistic history is also a multiple observation point on the cultural phenomena that characterized the twentieth century.