The Italian Cultural Institute in Barcelona contributed to the organisation, together with the Institut d’Humanitats de Barcelona, of a cycle of conferences entitled “Primo Levi. Literature and testimony”. This initiative, which has been underway since November 8 and will continue until December 12, is curated by Marta Marin Dòmine.
Primo Levi became a fundamental witness of the Jewish experience of deportation to the Nazi camps through his writing. The course will reflect on the author’s role in the field of testimonial literature, not limited to the literary quality of his work but that also constitutes a real knowledge of the construction of testimony through a life’s journey. A lesser-known aspect of Levi, his profession as a chemist, will also be addressed. A profession that played a crucial role in his survival inside the Auschwitz-Birkenau camps profoundly influenced his literary work. He approached the literary work with the distance that makes observation possible and, later, through the mediation of writing, reflection and analysis.
A few months away from the 35th anniversary of Primo Levi’s death, the lectures in the programme also aim to analyse the resonance that his reflections may have in the present, concerning recent phenomena such as the #metoo and the #blacklivesmatter or the pandemic.
The course runs in parallel with a series of screenings at the Filmoteca de Catalunya.
Registration: https://www.instituthumanitats.org/es/cursos/primo-levi-presencial
Marta Marin Dòmine is a writer and researcher. She directs El Born Centre de Cultura i Memòria. She was a professor at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo (Canada), directing the Center for Memory and Testimony Studies. She has also collaborated with research groups on memory and testimonial literature at the University of Barcelona and the Université Paris-Sorbonne. Her research and literary creation revolve around exiles and memory, inheritance and oblivion. Always following the thread of memory, he has also made documentary films. In 2017, she created the audiovisual installation “Je vous offre las oiseaux / Us ofereixo els ocells al Museu d’Història de Barcelona” as a tribute to the victims of the Holocaust. The installation is now travelling to various cultural centres.
