ABSTRACT
“A Calvinian architecture: An Italian-born artist living in Australia” foregrounds a migrant perspective on Invisible Cities, disclosing the languages and the places that mingle in the mind of an artist-reader who has travelled from Trieste to Australia at a young age and whose searching feet have returned time and again to Calvino’s book for reflection on shifting landscapes and soul-scapes. Central in Domenico de Clario’s chapter is his multilingual, multimedia, site-specific a calvinian architecture, an artistic project around fifty-six readings spanning fifty-six days (one more than Calvino’s fifty-five cities, which in turn are one more than the fifty-four cities in Thomas More’s Utopia) in Melbourne, Australia. The project, and the other Calvino-inspired projects described in a long coda, mirror de Clario’s journey through life and around the world and show how Calvino’s book has remained, over the decades, his best travel companion.
