Cognition & Symbolic Structures

In Fabrizio Ruggiero’s research, cognition is not understood as a purely internal mental faculty, but as a field articulated through symbolic configurations. Perception does not precede the image; it is shaped within regimes of visibility that structure what can be seen, thought, and articulated.

Symbolic structures do not operate as representations of an external reality, but as dispositifs through which reality becomes intelligible. They configure the horizon within which experience takes form, delimiting the conditions under which meaning can appear. What comes to consciousness is inseparable from the symbolic order that renders it legible.

Within this horizon, artistic practice does not merely produce images, but intervenes within the economy of perception. The work displaces habitual regimes of visibility, opening zones of opacity and suspension in which perception is compelled to confront its own limits.

The symbolic is thus conceived not as a closed system of signs, but as a dynamic field in which meaning is continuously negotiated. Cognition emerges as a relational process, situated within historical, cultural, and perceptual frameworks that shape what can be known and experienced.

Within the ART_HUB constellation, this research axis situates the work as a modulation of visibility: not the transmission of knowledge, but the reconfiguration of the conditions under which knowledge becomes possible.