June 2025

Faberllull is keen to reflect on ways of approaching the medieval era by generating a three-way dialogue between the past, the stories told about it and the instruments used to learn about it. During this residency, we will talk about productive continuities and discontinuities between the Middle Ages and the present era; the various types of neo-medievalism and its scope when considering contemporary society; and current theoretical models that throw light onto hitherto neglected aspects of medieval culture.

The study of the Middle Ages is the result of a hard-to-bridge historical distance: from one era to another the contexts from which questions about the past are formulated change, but often the questions that end up being asked are the same. To overcome this separation between past and present, the study of the Middle Ages is fostered by tools (philology, palaeography and historical grammar, among many other disciplines) that help to pin down the past and relate to it. Paradoxically, the complexity of these tools can end up creating technical barriers between current reading and past culture, obscuring or supplanting the original study object.

This event aims to highlight how studying this period has repeatedly served as a springboard for modern thought. It is the case, for example, of Karl Marx's interest in feudal economics, or the famous vision of the stultifera navis at the start of Michel Foucault's study on madness in the pre-modern era. In various times of crisis, points of support have been sought in the medieval era to be able to think about contemporary problems.