In F FOR FAKE, Massimo Sandal, molecular biologist, science teller and scientific journalist - author of La malinconia del mammut -, together with Lisa Ferlazzo Natoli and Maddalena Parise, explores the persistence of life and the unsustainability of its silent ruin, reasoning on the problem of pseudo-sciences and the concept of “truth” in science. The ecological crisis and the pandemic are of a disturbing complexity that no-one can handle individually, and so what happens? What happens is that we create narratives to shield ourselves with idealistic worlds. With all due respect to those who believe that narratives are a type of harmless intellectual pastime, we are living in a period in which narrations compete, literally warring with each other; sometimes bloody wars in which science - never neutral - is midway between victim and perpetrator.

An ex-molecular biologist, Massimo Sandal began his career as a science writer in 2011 for a number of publications, including Le Scienze, Wired, Facta and Il Tascabile. He often studies the interaction between science and society, the mechanisms and disfunctions of scientific practices, biodiversity, evolution, extinction and the crises affecting the biosphere. His first book, La malinconia del mammut, an exploration of the history, science and culture of the extinction of living creatures, was published by Il Saggiatore in 2019. He lives in Aachen, in Germany.

The event is part of the series ENDLING E ALTRE COSE PERDUTE, by lacasadargilla.
ENDLING E ALTRE COSE PERDUTE is an exploration of themes regarding the concept of “end”, viewed in its broad sense as extinction of species and society, but also of memory, time and relations. Extinction is not related exclusively to the classic idea of the extinction of species, of all those delicate and complex organisms that make up our planet, but also the “dead ends” of our lives, failed relationships and alliances, of our past and of a future that we can only catch a glimpse of. The Earth is our field of action, the only concrete place to experience life as we know it, the first field of study of the complex systems that provide the foundations of relationships, imagination, anthropologies and ecosystems that resist - barely surviving - geological, biological and human mutations.