We express our condolences for the passing of Antonio Marazzi, 90 years old, former Chairman of the Commission for Visual Anthropology, IUAES.
Active until the last day of his life, and a sharp analyst of contemporary events, Professor Antonio Marazzi obtained tenure at Padua University in 1980 and held it until his retirement as Emeritus in 2009. As he once stated: “My initiation into anthropology did not occur through a traditional academic training process; rather, it was the result of two genuine moments of inspiration.” One was reading Lévi-Strauss in the late 1960s, and the other was meeting one of his mentors, Professor of Cultural Anthropology at the University of Bologna, Bernardo Bernardi, who immediately recognized his potential.
He had previously studied mathematics and economics at Bocconi University in Milan, his hometown. Only after several years following his completed master’s, during which he worked as a translator, editor, and journalist, did he start a PhD in anthropology at the University of North Carolina. He also spent several academic terms at Oxford and Cambridge Universities, New York University, the National Ethnological Museum of Japan Minpaku, Waseda University, and Paris 7, among others. His mentors included not only the Italian Bernardo Bernardi but also the British anthropologists Evans-Pritchard, Edmund Leach, and Jack Goody. Antonio Marazzi had a unique background as an Italian scholar, as his references were not primarily anchored in the national mainstream anthropology of the time but in the British social anthropological school. He later added visual anthropology to his repertoire, having learned documentary filmmaking while working as a professional journalist at the national Italian cultural TV channel.
His main fieldwork and corpus of publications (in Italian, English, and French) focused on the Tibetan diaspora in Switzerland and India during the first phase of his career. This was followed by an interest in Buddhism, the everyday relationship to the spiritual world in Japan, and culminating in the field of anthropology of vision, anthropology and perception, and the artificial body and robotics, viewed through anthropological lenses.
Among his publications are: “Mi Rai: In Giappone il futuro ha un cuore antico” (1990); “Lo sguardo antropologico. Processi educativi e multiculturalismo” (2000); “Giapponeserie” (2001); “Uomini, cyborg e robot umanoidi. Antropologia dell’uomo artificiale” (2012); “Un regard anthropologique sur la vision” (2002); “Antropologia della Visione” (2002, new revised edition 2015); “Antropologia dei sensi” (2010); “Un mondo artificiale. Le sfide dell’uomo contemporaneo” (2022).
His anthropological films cover themes as varied as diasporas and migration, the relationship between art and perception, and religiosity in Italy and Japan. Some are co-authored with his daughter, filmmaker Alina Marazzi. Among his films and videos are: “Anime Abbandonate” (1986); “Il Santo” (1986); “Yamabushi” (1984); “Ayamola” (1985, with Alina Marazzi); and “London Asia” (1999, with Alina Marazzi).
From 1986, he developed a research field in Japan, studying both the religious syncretism between Buddhism and Shintoism in contemporary rural and urban settings and later the relationship between the artificial body and technology embodied by robots.
In 1987, he was among the chairs of the Congress in Visual Anthropology at Minpaku, the National Anthropological Museum of Japan. In 1988, he organized a major congress reuniting the milieus of Visual Anthropology in Italy and Europe, culminating with the IUAES world congress in Zagreb. In the 1990s, he was very active in the curatorial contents of Festival dei Popoli, Firenze, and from 1986, he collaborated with the Istituto Superiore Etnografico di Sardegna, in Nuoro, for its ethnographic film festival SIEFF, until the last edition of this prominent Italian ethnographic film festival.
At NYU, he taught a course called “Visual Thinking,” which laid the basis for his deepening of the anthropology of the Visual, while he was hosted at the Culture and Media program led by Professor Faye Ginsburg.
In 1993, he was chosen as Chairman of the Commission for Visual Anthropology within the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, succeeding Asen Balikci, its founder.
Marazzi once recalled: “I understood my role in relation to the historical period we were living in, marked by the post-fall of the Berlin Wall and the opportunity to reunite with Europeans on the other side. After some initial tentative attempts, the role focused on Sibiu Astra Ethnographic Film Festival, with the first contacts from Asen Balikci, which I followed up on. Together with Simona Bealcovschi, it involved moving away from a showcase of documentaries on local folkloric events to new openings in visual anthropology and films with a different gaze and filmic language. In that spirit, I worked to ensure that the CVA could remain in Europe, approaching Göttingen…”
His activity as IUAES CVA chair in Latin America, was directed especially to Mexico and Argentina. In these countries, he was very active. In Mexico, Marazzi re-established contacts which were formerly made by Asen Balikci and developed the project ‘Transferencia de los medios audiovisuales a la población indígena’. In the Chiapas region, various communities were given a video camera to film what they found interesting. The post-production then took place at the television headquarters in Oaxaca. There are publications about it in Mexico.
As for Argentina, it was an intense and complicated relationship. Officially invited a couple of times to present conferences— he particularly remember one in distant Bariloche: “I would meet almost secretly with (I don’t remember the name) who taught at the University of Buenos Aires and had spent time in Paris in the entourage of Rouch and Susana Sel, and a group that had a small visual center at the University and a small independent ethnographic film production unit. There was a strong sense of opposition to the political regime, and I had to navigate carefully, according to a sad Argentine practice. It was a repeated experience that deeply involved me”.
He also served as the IUAES representative in the UNESCO Comité International de Philosophie et Sciences Humaines (CIPSH) from 1996. In 1991, he was a founding member of the Institute for the Study of Multiethnicity (ISMu) in Milan, a pioneering observatory and research cluster for that time. In 1998, he directed the research-action Socrates funded by EU, for the promotion of the condition of immigrant women and the recognition of their former diplomas in Europe, to help their integration and value of their competence.
After his retirement, as he recalled: “I devoted myself to an innovative field of study and research, which I have termed the anthropology of the artificial man, focusing on bionics, humanoid robotics, and the cultural and social reflections in human genetics and neuroscience research. Robots are now my new ‘savages’.” He liked to smile about it, of course.
Among the many messages following his passing, one can find the common traits he always expressed: gentleness, sophistication and elegance, sensitivity, determination to avoid patronizing the younger generation, and the ability to innovate without bragging too much about himself. He was a good listener, had a subtle sense of irony, and never failed to answer messages, helping researchers with the most diverse questions, following up with his students and maintaining friendships later, commenting and allowing each person to find his or her way, in freedom of expression and self-determination.
He leaves behind four children and six grandchildren, and a multitude of friends and colleagues spread on several continents.