17 November 2025
Campus Leonardo Room: 2.2.4.
11:15 – 13:15 hours
Moderators
Luca Maria Francesco Fabris
Politecnico di Milano, Department DASTU
Discussants
A History of Film Exhibition Places
Virgil Darelli – Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore
Imaginary Theaters: a media archaeological approach on movie going
Giancarlo Maria Grossi – Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore
Cinema is not just a physical space; it is also shaped by cultural practices, economic factors, and imagined desires. This is why we speak of a dispositif, or a socio-technical configuration that organises social functions. However, the cinema has always been an unstable entity, taking different forms throughout history and in different contexts. We address actual cinema spaces, ranging from early projection venues and movie palaces to parish and community theatres, suburban multiplexes, and today’s locally rooted single-screen cinemas. These spaces influence protocols of attention, social interaction and immersion. Conversely, we explore imagined cinemas: unrealised designs, speculative architectures and visionary media environments that project alternative futures of shared spectatorship. The workshop examines the evolution of the cinema to explore how collective viewing experiences might continue to evolve in the present day.
