Disarmed Bodies

The exhibition Corpi disarmati: la meccanica della normalità (Disarmed Bodies: the mechanics of normality) was officially opened on August 6 in the halls of Brentonico’s Palazzo Eccheli-Baisi. It addresses the issue of the numerous veterans that returned to their homes at the end of the First World War maimed in body and in spirit. The exhibition, open until 2 July 2017, was created by the Fondazione Museo storico del Trentino in collaboration with the Comune di Brentonico, the Servizio attività culturali della Provincia autonoma di Trento and the Istituto Luce-Cinecittà of Rome, and curated by Mara Dissegna, Rodolfo Taiani and Emanuele Togni.

During and after the First World War all the nations involved were faced with the question of reintegrating veterans into society. Many reported mental and physical impairments of varying seriousness: many "disarmed bodies" to return to a “normal” condition as victims of various mutilations or functional disorders. A huge problem whose solution relied on scientific and medical research, political-institutional initiative and the active involvement of large sectors of civil society. The answers were found in the design of increasingly complex prosthesis, the organisation of special rehabilitative vocational courses and, not least, in the construction of a public image of the mutilated as the personification of self-denial and heroism.

But not everyone could benefit from this opportunity: there were outcasts, people permanently affected by the experience of war and pushed to the margins of society, segregated in solitude. There is the case, for example, of those “defaced” by horrific facial injuries, loss of balance or important mental faculties such as sight, hearing and speech.

Rearmed, re-educated, reinserted, refused: these are the four sections of the itinerary called The Mechanics of Normality, which features photographs, films and objects. This connects with and continues the previous exhibition Surviving the War, which focuses in particular on the years 1916-1925.

Curators: Mara Dissegna, Rodolfo Taiani and Emanuele Togni 

Source: www.trentinograndeguerra.it