"A modest proposal. 'Factories of culture' or 'contaminated places' for cultural resistance".

Abandoning the solidity of modernity, the steel cage of rationality attacked by Weber, has also meant us becoming more than ever aware that the vocation of reason is pessimism albeit exercising the optimism of the will. Aiming at leaving behind modernism, modernity and also the cumbersome heritage of enlightenment-style rationalism, post-modernism takes on its epistemological valence of resistance (albeit not for all scholars) in its projection towards uncertainty, fuzziness, détournement and eclecticism, pastiche and ironical reconstruction, collage and, mindful of situational suggestions, even plagiarism. What do art and culture do if not continue to play by the rules of the historical avant-gardes that have just left the solid cage of modernity? If what has actually disappeared is the work of art (liquefied, or in a gaseous state), according to Bauman (2007) (“in the liquid modern world, the solidity of things and human bonds is resented as a threat”) on the opposite side we have also to consider spaces like factories, that had a strong, solid destiny in the industrial age, for which a lighter and more flexible future has been designed under the banner of creativity. So the optimism of the will urges towards a problem solving direction, that is to say the recognition, through continually increasing forms of attention to industrial archaeology, of a new and important way of creating culture through architecture and art and, at the same time, strong social impact. From a more economic perspective, giving fresh value to creative artists and crafts would certainly stimulate the labour market and favour occupation.