Abstract
How can artistic processes be an indicator of social life? In fact, all artistic phenomena mediate the socio-political transformations taking place in the contemporary planetary world, as they are means of self-reflection of a society. In contemporary times, more and more individual actions are collectively disjointed but united by the same imagery, though ‘affectively oriented’ and oscillating between politics and society, relying increasingly on imaginary communities defined by social platforms. In this uncertain balance, it is essential to grasp the link, which holds together (if it does hold them together) the value dimensions and the affective-emotional load they carry, in relation to socio-political and cultural institutions. If it is true that individuals are asked more for emotional and irrational reactions now than in previous times, due to the rapidity of the virtual reality and the ephemeral experience of the metaverse, it is also true that the antidote to such loss can be found in the use of theatre as the art of staging models of reality. Theatre, as such, is a process but also an institution, leading and organising social needs.
In this respect, institutions are the ‘places’ for the social organisation of collective needs, and as such they have the fundamental function of acting as an intermediate link between the reality of individuals and the structures of the organisation of collective living and the economic-political power of a society.
Social participation is an indicator of potential social cohesion, resistance, and transformation in a relational-bound society in a time when society is slowly disrupted from within, due to social platforms and networks, which are evoking sociality but eroding it from within.