Posted to Instagram by La Repubblica and L’Espresso Settimanale illustrator Mauro Biani (@maurobia) on Dantedì (March 25) 2021. The image was also shared on La Repubblica.
Contributed by Carmelo Galati (Temple University)
Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture
Posted to Instagram by La Repubblica and L’Espresso Settimanale illustrator Mauro Biani (@maurobia) on Dantedì (March 25) 2021. The image was also shared on La Repubblica.
Contributed by Carmelo Galati (Temple University)
“This TikTok video by the Uffizi Galleries uses works by Emilio Demi and Carlo Albacini and the song ‘Gotta Go My Own Way’ from Disney’s hit 2007 movie High School Musical 2. It plays on the moment Virgil leaves Dante in Purgatorio.” –Contributor Kate McKee
The TikTok video was posted on Dantedì (March 25) 2021 in honor of the 700th anniversary of Dante’s death.
Contributed by Kate McKee (Bowdoin College ’22)
“Voidopolis is a digital performance about loss and memory that is currently unfolding over 45 posts on my Instagram feed (@kmustatea). Started July 1, 2020, it is a loose retelling of Dante’s Inferno, informed by the grim experience of wandering through NYC during a pandemic. Instead of the poet Virgil, my guide is a caustic hobo named Nikita.” –Kat Mustatea
Featuring a Dantesque cast of characters ranging from the Virgilian Nikita to a mohawked Minos, a gruff ferryman named Kim and a withdrawn George Perec, Mustatea’s Voidopolis weaves through the pandemic-deserted streets of Manhattan, a posthuman landscape of absence and loss, bearing witness to its vanishings. Voidopolis won the 2020 Arts & Letters “Unclassifiable” Prize for Literature, and received a Literature grant from the Cafe Royal Cultural Foundation.
To read more about both the process of the piece and its influences, including Dante, see the interview with Mustatea featured in Dovetail Magazine (2020).
Mustatea’s project at Ars Electronica 2021
The project’s website
“Unknown to Dante, there is a 45th circle of Hell known as ‘Twitter.’ It used to take 140 steps to get there, but after the expansion of residents it is now 280 paces to reach your destination. To be sure, calling this beloved social media network the 45th level of Hell is quite an accusation, and I must support it with evidence. Well, these days I should at least try to support it with evidence. Come to think of it, who needs evidence when I have Twitter? Alas, I will do my best to use logic. This will make one time in a row.” [. . .] — Ian Winer, Medium, August 2, 2019.
See the whole “Dante Alighieri racconta la politica” Facebook page here (last accessed January 13, 2021).