About Torino Spiritualità
Torino Spiritualità is a privileged space for reflection. It is a home for those who never stop asking questions. Far from the hustle and bustle of everyday life, it is the place where we can search for the deepest meaning of our being and our time.
Four days of meetings, dialogues, lectures, and readings to grow together through debates, exchanges and encounters between consciences, faiths, cultures, and religions from all over the world.
A project of Fondazione Circolo dei lettori launched in 2005, Torino Spiritualità has become an event not to be missed for more than 25,000 people from all over Italy. An actual community of thought and search, the soul of a productive dialogue made of words and silences, listening and experiencing.
Philosophers, theologians, historians, writers, artists, scientists, politicians, and economists from all over the world accompany the public’s journey. Their voices offer a plurality of ideas and perspectives. Every year, local and national associations, agencies, cultural and research institutions contribute to giving shape the event. The intent is never to give answers, but rather to raise new questions.
From the city centre to its suburbs, from urban spaces to the surrounding region: at Torino Spiritualità the spirit of spaces is a subject and an inspiration for research. Theatres, places of worship, libraries, museums, and the hills of Turin: Torino Spiritualità transforms the city and the territory into an open space for reflection.
The previous editions
2022 | SKIN
The epidermis reveals a lot about who we are: it is an intimate archive, map and memory, to the point that every trace on our skin – a wrinkle, a mole, a fingerprint, a scar, a tattoo – is the mark of a individuality, the visible palimpsest that we carry around. The image chosen this year, an ancient lava rock marked by the traces of an improbable and poetic contact, intends to allude precisely to this infinite wealth of encounters of which our epidermis is witness and threshold: some ephemeral, others lasting like crystallized flowers forever in stone.
But in its being a threshold, the skin also refers to the interiority it hides, as the well-known phrase of the poet Paul Valèry states, according to which there is nothing, in man, deeper than the skin: it is in the extreme border that we discover what that we are, because it is there on the surface that things are exposed to light. Even those that we usually define as “of the spirit”.
2021 | THE DESIRERS
The outbursts and emotions, the inexhaustible drives that inhabit us; the aspirations that shape the inner changes; but also the shortcomings, of the emptiness which is sometimes unsettling but which also suggests new achievements.
The Desirers is the theme for 2021, inspired by the times we are living in, for an edition entirely dedicated to desire as a spur and impulse, as a tension that is the nourishment of life itself. Today more than ever we are “desiring”, looking for new horizons, antithetical vastnesses compared to the present we are living.
2020 | BREATH
Breathing reveals every fold of human feeling: the cut breath because of fear, the held one because of waiting, the quick and dry inhalation of surprise, the big breath of fatigue, the deep breath of concentration and of prayer. And it is no coincidence that the breath innervates all philosophical and spiritual traditions: it is the pneuma of classical Greek, it is the vital breath that God breathes into man, it is the prana of the Indian tradition.
2019 | ENDLESS NIGHT
There are many sides to the night, and they stir up different emotions. Some fear its sinister darkness, others enjoy the intriguing dances of its shadows. Some want to run away from its lack of clarity, others search for it, as it is a place for rest, respite, and reflection. Torino Spiritualità 2019 is a journey through the night to measure the intensity of darkness, the shapes of shadows, the impact of the light that shakes us – the light outside and inside of us.
2018 | I’D RATHER NOT
A firm and concise, gentle yet unshakeable objection to express our dissent against these blurred times. A refusal that does not stem from hostility, fear or individualism, but rather from the inner desire to protect our own humanity and that of others. Even when this choice comes with a high price.
2017 | LITTLE ME
Do we remain or become children? Do we refuse to grow up or, as adults, do we unearth a treasure that we thought lost?
2016 | DISTINCT ANIMALS
Silent and enigmatic, animals live next to us every day, yet their point of view is the perspective of the ultimate “other”. A constant provocation that reveals something new about our way of inhabiting the planet.
2015 | THE HUMAN MIX
That complex mix of matter and transcendence that builds and unites people.
2014 | THE INTELLIGENT HEART
How many times in life do the mind and heart work as good allies? Favouring one or the other, we run the risk of living a half-life. When we learn how to harmonize them and let them work together, we realize what it means to be full human beings. This is the “intelligent heart”: the “formidable combination” of reason and feelings.
2013 | THE VALUE OF CHOICE
Choosing means shaping ourselves, constantly reinventing our lives. To choose is to avoid conditioning, to bring order to the chaos of our desires, to subvert our habits. To choose is to never stop searching for the meaning of life.
2012 | THE WISDOM OF A SMILE
Often, even what seems light soon reveals its weight. But honest wisdom and the bright intelligence of a smile escape this fate and let us look at the world and infinity with new eyes.
2011 | IN THE END. LIVING ON THE EDGE OF TIME
Reflecting on the end tells you not to give up on your responsibilities. In fact, it forces each one of us to confront ourselves, more than we would normally do. Living on the edge of time can teach us a method to endure this world. Even to the point of reversing a prophecy.
2010 | FOR FREE
When our hands are empty, our heart is exposed. When our hands are filled, what we receive echoes the soul of the giver. The value of gift as a bond that can strengthen the spirit of a community.
2009 | DIS-ILLUSION
Using introspection and reflection to unveil appearances and reveal what truly is is the common thread of all great religious traditions, philosophy, and of that continuous digging in ourselves that is our life.
2008 | HOPES
Impulse towards the future, trust in what will happen, or responsible, active investigation of the present: an exploration of hope in the private and public sphere, in everyone’s daily life and in current affairs.
2007 | BODY AND SPIRIT
Knowledge and experience, pain and pleasure: by mapping the connections that exist between body and soul, we can go beyond the links that are normally established between personal identity and society, science and faith.
2006 | CONFLICTS
Conflicts can only be overcome and solved if we acknowledge the need for coexistence. For a shared global citizenship.
2005 | QUESTIONS TO GOD, QUESTIONS TO PEOPLE
Fundamentals and fundamentalisms, what non-believers believe in, new morals.
Info
Fondazione il Circolo dei lettori (+39 011 8904401 | info@circololettori.it)