MUdec United - Issue #2

MUdec United, under the editorial direction of Carlo Antonelli, is the magazine of MUDEC – Museo delle Culture di Milano, directed by Marina Pugliese. It starts from Milan and extends threads of relationships with the most disparate points on the planet. Threads that connect scholars and scholars, writers, artists, places, stories, and ideas. In relation to the exhibition EXPOSURE. Art, culture, fashion in and out of the showcase (MUDEC, Mar. 1–Sept. 8, 2024), the second issue of MUdec United addresses the theme of display, from questions of exhibition-making to a broader reflection on vision and desire. Within the "classical museum display," the showcase exposes the object to the viewer and simultaneously creates a barrier between them. In ethnographic museums, the "neutralizing" effect of the display case tends to affect the works, depriving them of their original context and function. This issue of MUdec United assembles a selection of texts by scholars and artists such as Andreas Angelikadis, Paul Basu, Federico Campagna, Mariuccia Casadio, Lorenzo Castore, Rachaporn Choochuey, Theo Eshetu, Alex Foti, Marco Giusti, Guido Guerzoni, Wissal Houbabi, Katya Inozemtseva, Arto Lindsay, Kit Mackintosh, Wayne Modest, Giuseppe Ricupero, Sara Rizzo, and Tobias Rees. Tales of theft, unreturned items, self-concealment and self-exposure, precious objects, and digital subjects showing off, all the way to the phantasmagoria of fashion: the second issue of MUdec United is a showcase of the "showcase," an incubator of narratives and a reflection on how human beings interact with a world shrouded by the glass barrier of an atmosphere struggling to contain an increasingly opaque, blistering air, exposing us to the imminent dangers of our own making.