Andrea Bagnato and Oliver Basciano: ‘Terra Infecta’ [Talk]

Join Andrea Bagnato and Oliver Basciano for a talk as they explore how disease has shaped colonisation, segregation, and stigma.

TICKETS

How has disease been used as a tool of control? Architect Andrea Bagnato and journalist Oliver Basciano explore the subject, and the role architects, planners, and health experts have played.

Bagnato will present his book Terra Infecta (MACK), which uncovers how the modern quest for sanitation shaped Italy’s urban and rural landscapes. The book examines the disappearance of Venice's wetlands, urban renewal and displacement in Naples and Matera, and critiques modern hygiene while highlighting moments of community, healing, and resistance.

Basciano will discuss Outcast (Faber & Faber), his journey to demystify leprosy from the Romanian border to the northern provinces of Mozambique. It reveals the image of medieval leprosy to be a nineteenth-century myth invented to justify gross mistreatment of patients.

Thursday 19 February
19:00

Frobisher Auditorium 1
Barbican Centre, Silk St
London EC2Y 8DS
United Kingdom 

More about Terra Infecta 

In Terra Infecta, Andrea Bagnato tells an unfamiliar story about a well-known place. Since the early days of tourism, the cities and landscapes of Italy have been bywords for beauty and grandeur. But, at home and abroad, the same places have also been haunted by associations with disease and uncleanliness, often more to do with politics than conditions on the ground. Ranging from Italian unification to the aftershocks of Covid-19, and drawing on architectural records, medical history, and the author’s own travels, Terra Infecta reveals the lived realities of grand schemes, traces of vanished communities, and forgotten histories of collective organisation and resistance.