Overmorrow’s Library

Overmorrow’s Library
A podcast series by Federico Campagna

The Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève is presenting Overmorrow’s Library, a podcast series by Federico Campagna. The library for ‘the day after tomorrow’ is dedicated to books and authors whose work explores the limits of the ‘world’ as the frame of sense through which our consciousness experiences the chaos of reality. Each new episode presents a book that engages with the challenge of world-making, with the end-time of a world, or with the eternal unworldly. Spanning mysticism, politics, mythology, philosophy, video-game design and more, the shelves of Overmorrow’s Library are a space for experimenting with the apocalypse, and with the ignition of new cosmogonies.

 

Federico Campagna is an Italian philosopher and writer living in London. His latest books are ‘Prophetic Culture: Recreation for Adolescents’ (Bloomsbury, 2021), ‘Technic and Magic: The Reconstruction of Reality’ (Bloomsbury, 2018), and ‘The Last Night: Anti-work, Atheism, Adventure’ (Zero Books, 2013). He is a lecturer and tutor at KABK, The Hague, and has presented his work in institutions including the Warburg Institute, the Royal Academy, the 57th and 58th Venice Biennale, Documenta 13, Winzavod Center, Jameel Art Centre, Tate Modern and the Serpentine Gallery. He is the director of rights at the radical publisher Verso Books.

Episode 1: Overmorrow’s Library
​Federico Campagna introduces the “Library for the Day After Tomorrow”. A podcast series on worlding, worlds, apocalypses, apocatastases and post-future culture.

Images credits: The Gilgamesh Tablet (Library of Ashurbanipal), 7th c. BCE. © The Trustees of the British Museum.

Episode 2: Franco Berardi Bifo, “The Third Unconscious” 
Federico Campagna presents Bifo’s 2021 book “The Third Unconscious” in the context of the decades-long work of the Italian Autonomist philosopher.

Images credits: Jean Frédéric Schnyder, Dritchi IV, 1985. Courtesy de Kunstmuseum Bern, Toni Gerber Collection.

Episode 3: Franco Berardi Bifo on the contemporary psychosphere
Franco Berardi Bifo discusses his book “The Third Unconscious” and the state of the contemporary psychosphere.

Images credits: Franco Berardi ‘Bifo’, L’apocalisse (quadro primo), 2020. Courtesy of the artist.

Episode 4: Simone Weil, “The Iliad or the Poem of Force”
Federico Campagna presents Simone Weil’s 1939 essay “The Iliad or the Poem of Force” in the context of her mystical existentialist philosophy.

Images credits: Virgilius Solis, The Suicide of Ajax, 1563.

Episode 5: Julia Gale on Simone Weil’s life and mysticism
Playwright Julia Gale discusses her personal and theatrical interpretation of Simone Weil’s life and thought.

Images credits: Photography of Simone Weil

Episode 6: Stefano Gualeni, “Virtual Worlds as Philosophical Tools”
Federico Campagna looks at Stefano Gualeni’s books “Virtual Worlds as Philosophical Tools” (2015) and “Virtual Existentialism” (2020) and at the cosmogonic function of play.

Images credits: The Royal Game of Ur, 2600BC-2400BC. Wood game-board. Courtesy of The Trustees of the British Museum.

Episode 7: Stefano Gualeni on how to philosophize with a digital hammer
Stefano Gualeni presents his philosophical take on digital worlds and virtual subjectivity.

Images credits: Stefano Gualeni, Here, 2018. Video game.

Episode 8: Frances Yates, “The Art of Memory”
Federico Campagna looks at Frances Yates’ work on the philosophy of mnemotechnics in her 1966 book “The Art of Memory”.

Images credits: Giulio Camillo, Memory Theatre, 1510.

Episode 9: Bill Sherman on Frances Yates and Aby Warburg
Bill Sherman, director of the Warburg Institute, discusses the work of Frances Yates and Aby Warburg’s library.

Images credits: Aby Warburg, Der Bilderatlas Mnemosyne, 2020. Exhibition view. Courtesy of Silke Briel / HKW

Episode 10: Henry Corbin, “History of Islamic Philosophy”
Federico Campagna presents Henry Corbin’s 1964 “History of Islamic Philosophy” and his esoteric interpretation of philosophy and of  religion.

Image credits: Sultan Mohammed, The Miraj of the Prophet, 1539-1543. Opaque watercolor and ink on paper.

Episode 11: Tom Cheetham on Henry Corbin and James Hillman
American philosopher Tom Cheetham discusses the parallels between Henry Corbin and Jungian psychoanalyst James Hillman, looking in particular at the practice of “Creative Imagination”.

Image credits: Elijah and Khidr praying together, XI century. Illuminated manuscript version of Stories of the Prophets.

Episode 12: Russel Hoban, “Riddley Walker”
Federico Campagna presents Russel Hoban’s 1980 science-fiction masterpiece “Riddley Walker” and the problem of post-future life and culture.

Image credits: Punch with the Judge and the Hangman, 1870. Litograph.

Episode 13: Sarah Shin and Ben Vickers on otherworldly imagination
Ignota publishers Sarah Shin and Ben Vickers discuss their ongoing cultural work on the “techniques of awakening”.

Image credits: Hildegard von Bingen, God, Cosmos, and Humanity, 1165.

Episode 14: Pavel Florenksy, “Reversed Perspective”
Federico Campagna presents Russian theologian (and mathematician, engineer and philosopher) Pavel Florensky’s 1920 essay “Reversed Perspective” and his interpretation of the language of sacred forms.

Image credits: Andrey Rublev, The Trinity or The Hospitality of Abraham, 1411-1427.

Episode 15: Fr. Paul Butler on radical theology.
Liberation theologian Father Paul Butler discusses the radical interpretations of the Christian message.

Image credits: The oldest surviving depiction of Saint Francis, Benedictine abbey of Subiaco, painted between March 1228 and March 1229.

Episode 16: Elemire Zolla, “Children’s Awe” and Cristina Campo, “The Flute and the Rug”
Federico Campagna presents the philosophical take on children’s world-view and culture in Elemire Zolla’s 1994 “Children’s Awe” and Cristina Campo’s 1971 “The Flute and the Rug”.

Image credits: Ivan Bilibin, Stage-set design for Scene Two, Act Four of the opera the “Tale of the Lost City of Kitezh and the Maiden Fevronia” by Rimsky-Korsakov, 1929.

Episode 17: Arturo Campagna on children’s literature
6-years old Arturo Campagna discusses children’s literature and dispenses advice to writers for children.

Image credits: Rain Wu, Arion, 2019. Stoneware clay and glazes, 9x11cm. Courtesy of the artist.

Episode 18: Francesco Fusaro on musical cosmologies
Musicologist and producer Francesco Fusaro discusses world-building music across the centuries.

Credit: Francesco Fusaro, Tafelmusik Var. I, 2021. Collage, 65×92. Courtesy of the artist.