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1998.04.05
Piranesi’s Campo Marzio: from beginning to end
...a hyper essay whose underlying theme is the Campo Marzio’s beginning and its end. This concerns the notions of origins and demise, rise and fall, the great span of time, extremes and means, reenactment, and inversion. At the core of the essay will be the notion of chronology, but not just a chronology of Rome as a city and its individual buildings, but also the beginning and end of the Campo Marzio text (and illustrations), and, furthermore, the beginning and the end of my own investigation and research.
...the alpha-omega theme allows inclusion of all the diverse and complexly related issues. Above all, it will get me started by simply allowing me to start at the beginning. ...an experimental document. Indeed, Piranesi’s own method of narrative with twists and turns and inversions will be a guide. ...not a meaningless “bricolage.” In fact, a proof that the Ichnographia is percisely not a meaningless “bricolage.”
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