Networked communities/invisible cities. Internet Pioneers @ H.C. Andersen Museum

Cultural heritage is at risk if it is hidden and ignored: the goal of our project is to make visible the invisible. Paul Otlet and Henri La Fontaine – founders of the discipline of Documentation, now known as LIS – pursued an ambitious objective: the automatic management of worldwide knowledge by the means of technological tools (at that time, mostly, microfilm) and using innovative interpretative classification codes (UDC-Universal Decimal Classification). This web of knowledge among people of every countries would also operate as an active force for peacekeeping. During the 1920s Otlet kept in touch with the artist Hendrick Christian Andersen to plan a World City, an utopian vision meant to empower and bring together the leading world institutions. Andersen’s sketches commissioned by Otlet are still displayed in the Andersen Museum in Rome; but they are very little noticed and studied. Therefore, in the Museum there are invisible cities (never realized); and invisible knowledge (the disciplinary area of Documentation); and invisible colleges and communities too (artists and Internet pioneers; gay and lesbian communities; antagonist thinkers, etc.). A change of perspective is tremendously needed to preserve Cultural Heritage in a cultural way (meaning, literally, using the methodologies of Cultural Studies as a critical approach). To pursue this aim, our project includes a virtual exhibition at the Andersen Museum, made with MOVIO, an open source software created by ICCU (Italian Central Institute for Unique Catalogue) and social network events. A “trusted” repository will also be implemented to host current research on the topic. We are strongly convinced that the experience of artists as Andersen and of scholars as Otlet and La Fontaine have left a precious legacy that can act as a positive stimulus for communities of the future.