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SUMMARY:"The Last Supper of the Midwest: Staging Rituals and Revolt in a C
 arpenter-Gothic Farmhouse" a Lecture by Filippo Falciotti / TPOD
DTSTART:20251013T180000
DTEND:20251013T200000
DTSTAMP:20260919T030852Z
UID:f49f44ad6db0f7dd715d12375c9e8a007f9919c914b71fe629ac5d3a
CATEGORIES:Conferences - Seminars
DESCRIPTION:Filippo Falciotti\nAbstract\nGrant Wood\, a central figure in 
 the “Regionalist Triumvirate” and best remembered for American Gothic
  (1930)\, painted Dinner for Threshers in 1934. Though often overlooked
 \, the work is emblematic in its engagement with typological and social th
 emes\, as well as its nuanced representation of domesticity. Emerging duri
 ng the Great Depression and shaped by a broader cultural project of emanci
 pation\, Regionalism sought to ground American identity in local realities
 . Wood’s painting enacts his own “Revolt Against the City” by anchor
 ing its subjects in the rituals of rural life. While the farmhouse has tra
 ditionally been analyzed either in economic terms or through its architect
 ural features\, this lecture will shift attention to its representationa
 l dimension\, interpreting it in dialogue with Wood’s broader body of wo
 rk—his images\, writings\, and housing experiments. The lecture will of
 fer a layered reading of the painting\, presenting the sectioned interior
  as the stage of a domestic temple\, where both architecture and human fig
 ures are abstracted and function as vessels of collective memory. Drawing 
 on early Italian pictorial traditions\, Wood transformed the harvest meal
  into a tableau rich in religious symbolism: humble\, mass-produced utensi
 ls—borrowed from both childhood memory and mail-order catalogues—becom
 e ritual objects in their own right. While the farmhouse has traditiona
 lly been analyzed either in economic terms or through its architectural fe
 atures\, this lecture will shift attention to its representational dimen
 sion\, interpreting it in dialogue with Wood’s broader body of work—hi
 s images\, writings\, and housing experiments. Through the combined use o
 f digital reconstruction and iconological as well as semiotic inquiry\, 
 this lecture will advance the notion of analogous reading: an interpretive
  practice that situates the work within a field of relational and associat
 ive correspondences. Rather than isolating formal details\, it seeks to un
 derstand how each compositional decision operates as part of a lexicon of 
 counter-discourse\, articulating Wood’s artistic and political vision. I
 n this sense\, the analogous is not a metaphorical device but a mode of as
 sociation—an instrument through which images\, forms\, and meanings beco
 me structurally bound to one another.\n\nBio\nFilippo Fanciotti is an a
 rchitect\, artist\, and PhD candidate at the Laboratory of Arts for Sci
 ences (LAPIS) at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). 
 His doctoral research investigates digital architecturalrepresentation 
 both as a critical framework for analyzing images as repositories 
 of spatial and material data and as a pedagogical tool for teachi
 ng Art and Architectural History. At EPFL\, he is chargé de cours in
  Théorie et techniques de la figuration architecturale and head of A
 rchives de l’Imaginaire\, under the direction of Nicola Braghieri. He h
 as previously taught Digital Form and Movement at the Institut für Ar
 chitektur und Medien\, Technische Universität Graz\, and led a design s
 tudio at the Polytechnic School of the University of Genoa. He is the edit
 or of Promenades dans Rome (Silvana Editoriale\, 2023) and of CONTROFI
 RENZE68 (Silvana Editoriale\, forthcoming)\, a project supported by the 
 Italian Council 13 grant. Fanciotti is co-founder of the architecture coll
 ective False Mirror Office\, through which he engages in workshops\, exhi
 bitions\, research\, and design practice. Alongside his independent work a
 s a visualizer and architect\, he has collaborated with the Milan-based st
 udio P-A-N\, the Genoa-based studio una2 architetti associati\, and M
 VRDV in Rotterdam. His artistic practice as a painter has been represente
 d by Lariot Collective (London\, Madrid) since 2021\, andremains in ac
 tive dialogue with his digital art production and research\, with which it
  shares both processes and operational tools—most notably the use of the
 matic atlases conceived as instruments for constructing discourses through
  images.\n\nImage: Grant Wood’s Dinner for Threshers. Reconstruction dr
 awn by Filippo Fanciotti.
LOCATION:SG 294.22 https://plan.epfl.ch/?room==SG%20294.22
STATUS:CONFIRMED
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