Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici

Fabrizio Matarese completed his studies at the University of Pisa, earning a bachelor's degree in Disciplines of Entertainment and Communication with a thesis on American film noir. He continued his studies with a master's degree in History and Forms of Visual Arts, Entertainment and New Media, discussing a thesis on the aesthetic relationships between painting and cinema.

After university, he was a Research Fellow at the Signals & Images Laboratory of the CNR Institute of Information Science and Technologies "A. Faedo" in Pisa, where he worked on the VERO (Virtualità intErattiva nel paRco di pinocchiO) project in collaboration with the Carlo Collodi National Foundation.

The project consisted of the development of a prototype augmented reality system to be used in the Piazzetta dei Mosaici, created by artist Venturino Venturi, located within the Pinocchio Park, which is located in Collodi (Pistoia).

For the realization of this project, it was necessary to conduct art-historical research on the Pinocchio Park, the poetics of the artist Venturino Venturi and his work the Piazzetta dei Mosaici, which flowed into a monographic volume, Venturino Venturi e la Piazzetta dei Mosaici del Parco di Pinocchio, written together with researcher Massimo Magrini.

His main areas of interest include Visual Culture, Aesthetics, Media History, Historical-Artistic Heritage and the possibilities of Human-Computer Interaction offered by digital technologies.

Ludic forms of historical narrative.
Autunno caldo e Anni di piombo

My research project is structured starting from the study of the relationship between historical narrative and games, whether analogue or digital.

The basic idea is to investigate the forms of historical narrative in games in relation to the representation of the 60s and 70s in Italy.

The research hypothesis is that popular media, and games in particular, can implement historical signification strategies that are not exhaustive but unique and irreplaceable by other media forms.

The questions guiding the investigation are: how do games make the past meaningful? What peculiarities do these media have for historical representation? And what are the limits? What stories can only be told by games?

The main aims of the research are: 1) to provide a formal interpretation model to understand how games make the past meaningful; 2) understand how the games represented the period of the 60s and 70s in Italy, focusing attention on two macro-themes: the Autunno caldo (worker and trade union struggles) and the Anni di piombo (terrorism, massacres and tension strategy).

The reasons that led me to set up the research in this way are many but can be summarized in two main causes. The choice to analyze games and, partially, also cinema and audiovisual, lies in the fact that these media are among the sources most used by the general public to inform themselves and to build an image of the world and history. It therefore appears of capital importance to analyze and understand how these media can tell the past and produce meaning starting from representations of shared memories.

The choice instead to dedicate itself to the historical representations of the 60s and 70s decades of the Italian twentieth century concerns two factors: first of all, I believe that this very dense and controversial period of our history is still far from having been completely analyzed and understood (at least as far as popular conscience is concerned); and secondly, the two macro themes on which I will focus have been the subject of a notable historiographical representation through the medium of play which provides further elements to the trans-media debate on the meaning of our common past.

The structure of my research project is structured as follows: the first chapter will consist of a theoretical introduction on the themes of historical narrative, articulating the existing frictions and the possibilities of synthesis between historiographical method and popular historical narrative. I will try to untangle some ambiguities that are taken for granted regarding the difference between past and history. I will start a discussion about the importance of memory and the relationship between the latter and the representation of the past.

The second chapter will analyze the formation of the disciplinary field of Historical Game Studies through the most important texts that contributed to the complete definition of the discipline. We will explore and derive the most important ideas developed in this field. Concepts such as "developer/historian" and selective authenticity will be discussed and exposed; we will also discuss the difference between representation and simulation and the various simulation styles of games identified by scholars in this field.

The third chapter will describe in detail the methodological approach to analyzing the games, which is essentially divided into two phases. The first consists of a series of interviews with the authors of the games focused on understanding the method and form of the historical research carried out by the development house: the use of sources, the collaboration with professional historians or with defined archives, the media form of documents analyzed; all these themes will be at the center of the interviews to understand the work carried out in the pre-production phase. I will also investigate, through content analysis tools, the collective reception of these games by examining articles from the specialized press and user comments on various forums. The second phase will be that of analyzing the actual games: they will be examined with an approach similar to that defined as "close reading" in the literary field. I will analyze both the representative (textual, visual, audio) and simulative (rules, processes, mechanics) apparatus of each game.

The fourth chapter will consist of a historical overview of the trade union struggles, political clashes and large workers' demonstrations that animated the 60s and 70s of the twentieth century in Italy, with an in-depth analysis of the period called the Autunno caldo. This historical fresco, drawn from historiographical texts, audiovisual documents and films, will then be put in relation with the games that deal with these themes, specifically: Corteo, developed by Massimo Casa, Giulio De Petra, Alvaro Lojacono, Piergiorgio Maoloni, Sergio Zoffoli who, taking up the typical mechanics of war games, it represents a demonstration that ends in a clash between political activists and the police. The second game that I will analyze and relate to the indicated historical period is Mirafiori 1969, which Giaime Alonge and Riccardo Fassone designed with the students of the game design laboratory of the Dams of the University of Turin and also with us doctoral students of the game design curriculum and simulates the internal dynamics of the factory between Fiat, the trade unions and the extra-parliamentary movement which then led to the revolt in Corso Traiano on 3 July 1969. The third game which constitutes a bridge between the first (Autunno caldo) and the second historical theme (Anni di piombo) is Wheels of Aurelia developed by Santa Ragione which is a "road game" set on the Via Aurelia in the 70s containing several references to the history and culture of the time.

The fifth chapter will deal with the historical events and the most important events of the Anni di piombo, delving into specific issues not totally resolved such as the strategy of tension, the coup d'état projects (Piano Solo, Borghese Coup) and particularly nefarious massacre episodes (Bologna massacre , Ustica massacre). Also in this case the historical context is put into communication with the analysis of the selected games: Il Golpe, a war game developed by Marco Galandra and published by Mondadori Giochi which deals with a hypothetical coup d'état in Italy; Colpo di stato developed by We Are Muesli which proposes a historical investigation into the issue of the Borghese Coup; Progetto Ustica, developed by IV Productions, which is a game about memory that reconstructs the events of the massacre of the same name and finally BO 020880 which is an interactive graphic novel conceived, produced and created on a voluntary basis by IPID - Italian Party of Indie Developers which aims with an innovative means to commemorate the victims of the 1980 Bologna station massacre by reconstructing the historical elements regarding the perpetrators and possible instigators of the massacre.

Finally, the sixth chapter will consist of the conclusions of the work.