Overmorrow’s Library

Image: The Rock Nobody Could Lft, etching by Rain Wu (2018)

Image credit: Ceramic figurine from the Moche culture of the north coast of Peru depicting a flute player.

Image credit: The prophets Elias and Khadir at the fountain of life, late 15th century. Folio from a khamsa (quintet) by Nizami (d. 1209); Timurid period. Opaque watercolor and silver on paper. Herat, Afghanistan.

Image credit: Womb Realm (garbhakosa-dhatu or taizōkai) mandala. Shingon tantric buddhist school, Heian period (794-1185), Tō-ji, Kyōto, Japan.

Image credit: 10th century Chola dynasty bronze sculpture of Shiva, the Lord of the Dance.

Image credit: Detail from the frontispiece of Hobbes’ ‘Leviathan’ by Abraham Bosse,1651

Image credit: Max Stirner in a cartoon by Friedrich Engels (1820-1895)

Image credit: Roman coin celebrating the assassination of Julius Caesar, issued in 42 BC

Image credit: Porphyry column decorated with group of two embracing older Tetrarchs. Rome. 293-305.

Image credits: Geometric nest of a pufferfish.

Image credit: Ernst Jünger and Albert Hoffman.

Image credit: Cosmic Rose Engraving from Amphitheatrum Sapientiae Aeternae by Heinrich Khunrath (1595).

Image credit: Throne Angels

Image credit: Antidotum tarantulae, a curative musical score from Athanasius Kircher (c. 1660).

Image credit: Francesco Guardi, Marina in Tempesta, circa 1765/70.

Image credit: Muhammad Ibn 'Ali Ibn Muhammad Ibn 'Arabi (D. 1240 Ad): Fusus Al-Hikam. Mamluk Egypt, dated 19 Dhu'l Hijja Ah 797/4 October 1395 AD.

Image credit: Portrait of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, by Tobias Stimmer, 1589

Musicologist and producer Francesco Fusaro discusses world-building music across the centuries.Credit: Francesco Fusaro, Tafelmusik Var. I, 2021. Collage, 65x92. Courtesy of the artist.

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.

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.

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.

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.   

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. 

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.

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.

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.

Bill Sherman, director of the Warburg Institute, discusses the work of Frances Yates and Aby Warburg’s library.Image credits: Aby Warburg, Der Bilderatlas Mnemosyne, 2020. Exhibition view. Courtesy of Silke Briel / HKW

Federico Campagna looks at Frances Yates’ work on the philosophy of mnemotechnics in her 1966 book “The Art of Memory”.Image Credits: Giulio Camillo, Memory Theatre, 1510.

Stefano Gualeni presents his philosophical take on digital worlds and virtual subjectivity.Image Credits: ‘Here’, video game by Stefano Gualeni. 2018.

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

Playwright Julia Gale discusses her personal and theatrical interpretation of Simone Weil’s life and thought.Photo: Simone Weil

Federico Campagna presents Simone Weil’s 1939 essay "The Iliad or the Poem of Force" in the context of her mystical existentialist philosophy. Image credits: Virgilius Solis, The Suicide of Ajax , 1563. 

Franco Berardi Bifo discusses his book “The Third Unconscious” and the state of the contemporary psychosphere. Image credits: Franco Berardi ‘Bifo’, L’apocalisse (quadro primo), 2020. Courtesy of the artist.

Federico Campagna presents Bifo’s 2021 book “The Third Unconscious” in the context of the decades-long work of the Italian Autonomist philosopher. Image credit: Jean Frédéric Schnyder, Dritchi IV, 1985. Courtesy de Kunstmuseum Bern, Toni Gerber Collection.

Federico Campagna introduces the “Library for the Day After Tomorrow”. A podcast series on worlding, worlds, apocalypses, apocatastases and post-future culture. Image credits: The Gilgamesh Tablet (Library of Ashurbanipal), 7th c. BCE. The British Museum, London. © The Trustees of the British Museum.