Windows • The theme of the 28th edition of scrittorincittà
WINDOWS is the title of the twenty-eighth edition of scrittorincittà, taking place in Cuneo from November 11th to 15th . The idea behind the festival stems from the fusion of two similar yet distinct questions. The first is an eternal question, one that has haunted humanity for millennia: where are we going? It's a question of meaning to which both the community and individuals each try to answer in their own way. But scrittorincittà immediately adds another. Not just "where are we going?", but "what are we looking at while we're there?"
Ours is a world that has always been on the move, a world that today often moves quickly, so quickly that it's hard to grasp its details: as soon as you stop to observe it, the world seems already changed, transformed. It feels like looking at a blurred photograph. Sometimes, however, the world moves too slowly: the desired changes seem never to arrive, the necessary revolutions move in slow motion.
What do we see as we move? What do we observe? What do we notice? What are the small and large changes in reality? What do we focus our attention on? What do we devote our time to? And above all: what do we really want to care for?
scrittorincittà will be inspired by Windows, because we're all on a journey. At home we have windows, the train has windows. School has windows, the bus has windows. Windows are made for travel.
Windows are a boundary between inside and outside, and metaphorically, people's faces are also windows. The poet Bernard Noël said: "The face always represents the temporary solution of a boundary."
A temporary solution, a world in motion, a gaze that rests on things, a desire to take care of them: these will be the ingredients of scrittorincittà 2026.
Even people who move out of necessity look at the world through windows. Even those who move because of war, poverty, or their own safety. How many photos have we seen of people behind the windows of rescue ships, of buses rescuing displaced people, of those deported by regimes? Happy looks don't always pass through the windows.
Are the screens of our computers, televisions, and smartphones also windows ? Perhaps so, today's technology is a digital window. But there's one timeless object that, for scrittorincittà, represents the most beautiful window of all: the book
The bookshop has windows, its books are the windows. That's right: books are windows. The world flows through books, and each time it's different, and readers enter it with their eyes, with their minds, with surprise and emotion. Books, just like windows onto new panoramas, attract and intrigue us, just as long as they pass before us.
Those who write books paint a different panorama every time, and books are windows because they open and reveal themselves. Windows maintain their shape, and direct our gaze toward worlds in motion, toward people who never stand still, toward words that elude and remain fixed. If you open a window, you let in new, fresher, more necessary air. The same goes for opening a book.
And when it's dark outside? The windows... reflect. They reflect the faces of those who look on, the faces of those around us: in the darkness they push us to reflect on this world awaiting humanity, which passes through people, identities, stories, books, technologies... Our relationship with the things of the world and with knowledge travels through the gaze of others.
When a new library, as is happening in Cuneo, its windows are inaugurated, of course. But above all, its small windows.
#sic2026 #windows