UN is a photographic diary by Giovanna Silva guiding us through the United Nations Office headquarters in Geneva. A chat-like narration unveils spaces, thoughts, eye catching details and is overlapped by images of halls, old phone booths filled with plastic wrap, textured walls, floors and ceilings, rows of tables and chairs, either straight or curving, like rollercoasters.

“I shoot five hundred and sixty-seven photos in thirtyfive minutes. The genre is known as now or never, and it’s a fairly commonplace form of delirium in this line of work.”

The pictures, all taken with an iPhone, offer an instant and almost sneaky glimpse into the architecture and ordinary life of the building, now stripped of its inaccessible status.

Choosing Venice as the most suitable place to describe natural and social complexities, Altrove. New Fictions sets the outcomes produced by a group of scholars and artists during their residencies in the Venetian lagoon. The contributions that follow come, in fact, from crossing the stimuli proposed by Altrove Project (2018-19) and from recognizing art and its narrations as a powerful tool to reach newer and more coherent disciplinary hybridizations.

Riconoscendo Venezia come il luogo più adeguato per descrivere complessità naturali e sociali, Altrove.New Fictions raduna i risultati delle ricerche portate avanti da un gruppo di studiosi e artisti durante le loro residenze nella laguna veneziana. I contributi che seguono, infatti, derivano dagli stimoli proposti dal progetto Altrove (2018-19) e dall’aver considerato l’arte e le sue narrazioni come uno strumento potente nella creazione di nuove e più coerenti ibridazioni disciplinari.

#4 of Loc. Fies 1, a series by Centrale Fies

Note sugli oggetti performativi
Remarks on the performative objects

Mali Weil è una piattaforma artistica nata nel 2008. Crea performance espanse e stratificate che comprendono anche la realizzazione e diffusione di linee di design, format audiovisivi e prodotti editoriali. Mali Weil indaga le potenzialità della performance come spazio di creazione e diffusione di immaginari politici. Questo volume raccoglie e ordina le note della ricerca teorica e pratica di Mali Weil sul design di oggetti performativi.

Mali Weil is an art platform created in 2008.
It creates expanded and stratified performances which also include the implementation and dissemination of design collections, audio-visual formats and editorial products. Mali Weil explores the potentials of the performance intended as a space for the creation and dissemination of political imageries. This book is an organized collection of the remarks regarding the theorical and practical research carried out by Mail Weil on the design of performative objects.

“I was in the pool of the hotel, it’s awesome! … my gosh just what I needed and guess what? I managed to get the autograph of Chip ’n’ Dale, like, not just Chip or just Dale, both! I found them outside the hall chattering about something. I’d like to go for a ride on Dumbo’s choo-choo later and then maybe after we can finally jer ……. …………. …………………………………………………..”

“Sono stato nella piscina dell’hotel, è fantastica! … mio dio ci voleva proprio e indovina un po’? Sono riuscito ad avere l’autografo di Cip e Ciop, cioè non solo Cip o solo Ciop, tutti e due! Li ho trovati fuori dall’ingresso che confabulavano. Dopo vorrei fare un giro sul trenino di Dumbo e poi magari dopo ci facciamo una bell ……. …………. …………………………………………………..”

Valerio Nicolai

published on the occasion of the exhibition Flavio Favelli Il bello inverso, Ca’ Rezzonico, Venezia
texts by Gabriella Belli, Flavio Favelli, Antonio Grulli

“I believe one of the densest images of Venice, despite all its history and its art places, is the photo of huge letters spelling out ‘Coca Cola’ in St Mark’s Square, written in birdseed and then completed and implemented by the pigeons until its disappearance.”

“Credo che una delle immagini più dense di Venezia, sia, nonostante la sua storia passata e i suoi luoghi d’arte, la foto della grande scritta Coca Cola in piazza San Marco, degli anni Sessanta, con le grandi lettere formate dal becchime e compiuta e realizzata dai piccioni fino al suo dissolvimento.”

Flavio Favelli

#3 of Loc. Fies 1, a series by Centrale Fies

A roulotte. A tiny and portable pavilion. A bar. An ephemeral gathering place. An homage to the Fun Palace; the cult project by architect Cedric Price and theatre director Joan Littlewood that back in the 60’s wanted to realize a university of the street, a laboratory of fun. Little Fun Palace brings together artists, philosophers, economists, scientists, engineers, musicians, architects, sociologists, writers, meteorologists, teenagers exploring every aspects of realty in its diverse areas and shapes. This is a seriously spontaneous survey releasing intelligence from any cirrus of intellectualism.

Una roulotte. Un padiglione piccolo e portatile. Un bar. Un luogo effimero di aggregazione. Un omaggio al Fun Palace; il leggendario progetto dell’architetto Cedric Price e della regista teatrale Joan Littlewood che negli anni sessanta volevano realizzare un’università della strada, un laboratorio del divertimento. Little Fun Palace mette insieme artisti, filosofi, economisti, scienziati, ingegneri, architetti, sociologi, scrittori, meteorologi, adolescenti esplorando ogni sfaccettatura della realtà nelle sue diverse forme e aree di riferimento. Un’indagine seriamente spontanea che affranca l’intelligenza dai cirri dell’intellettualismo.

#2 of Loc. Fies 1, a series by Centrale Fies

On the Folds of Real by the Lens of Performative
NOTE ON TRANSLATION The texts of this publication are works with their formal and linguistic autonomy. Translations were only possible in those cases where this autonomy is not compromise

Nelle pieghe del reale attraverso la lente del performativo
NOTE SULLA TRADUZIONE I testi che troverete in questa pubblicazione sono lavori con una loro autonomia formale e linguistica. Le traduzioni sono state possibili solo in quei casi in cui questa autonomia non veniva compromessa

#1 of Loc. Fies 1, a series by Centrale Fies

Recordings from an empty country, sequences for the montage of a seductive landscape that promises the pleasure of actions on the territory, and renews the sense of “letting oneself go” in the concept of abandon.

Registrazioni da un Paese vuoto, sequenze per il montaggio di un paesaggio seducente che invita al piacere di azioni sul territorio e restituisce all’abbandono il senso di lasciarsi andare.

with a short story by Jordan Hruska

“Above all, how are we to imagine a relation between a thing and its image, between matter and thought, since each of these terms possesses, by definition, only that which is lacking to the other?”

Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory

texts by Lucia Amara, Joe Kelleher, Anastasio Koukoutas

All for All! is a trip through All! (2012-2017), a project conceived by Kinkaleri and instigated by the voracious attacks on language committed by William Seward Burroughs. It intentionally strays beyond the limits of theatre and dance, suggesting an outside and setting the possible into motion along an undecidable boundary between the body and language.

“This book is a testament against the immaculately quaffed cunts who live their lives on social media networks hoping to score big points because they manipulated the perfect lie via filters and apps, that ape artifice and exaggeration. It is a much needed example of the down and dirty, the all to real, the in your face – fuck you – to false standards of an unattainable beauty that is based on bullshit and deceit that dominates Western culture and acts as just another consumer con, preaching conformity and product placement as it tries desperately to erase the individual.”

Lydia Lunch

#7 of Carte blanche, a series edited by Sara Marini, Alberto Bertagna
illustrations by Riccardo Miotto | photographs by Sissi Cesira Roselli

There is an area between Venezia and Venice, between the reality and the logo, between the city and its brand. In this middle-earth conflicts rise frequently like fumes, clashes between truths and promises. In this space the imagination finds the humus needed to manifest itself. Here the two cities face off, mingle, declare war on a daily basis, they exchange the meaning of things and words. Only the stranger who lives in Venezia, remaining a stranger, can see this limbo; only by looking at Venezia in Venice and living the two dimensions with detachment can one understand The Possibility of an Island.

published on the occasion of the exhibition Natura quasi trasparente, Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Venezia

“With a few simple elements Di Maggio reflects, and makes us reflect, on profound concepts such as nature and time, and she does so through the instability and equilibrium of a work which, being alive, requires constant care, ministering and attention to halt its inexorable decay. Elisabetta plays with a clear contrast between different times: that of real life – an ephemeral, precarious and changeable time – which vibrates in the fragile ivy leaves; and that of fiction, the eternal time of the stuccos; plant simulacrums that the real plants intertwine with to weave new trails. […] The natural beauty that resides in this ephemeral balance between life and death is what Elisabetta, aware of its fragility and unpredictability, tries to pinpoint with her complex and discrete art.”

“Con pochi e semplici elementi Di Maggio riflette, e ci fa riflettere, su concetti densi come quelli della natura e del tempo, e lo fa attraverso l’instabilità e l’equilibrio di un’opera che, essendo viva, necessita di una cura costante, di accudimento e attenzione, per rallentarne l’inesorabile decadenza. Elisabetta gioca con un contrasto evidente tra tempi diversi: quello della vita reale – un tempo effimero, precario, mutevole – che vibra nelle fragili foglie di edera; e quello della finzione, il tempo eterno degli stucchi, simulacri vegetali cui le piante vere s’intrecciano, intessendo nuovi percorsi. […] In questo effimero equilibrio tra vita e morte risiede quella bellezza naturale che l’arte complessa e discreta di Elisabetta tenta di fissare, consapevole della sua fragilità e contingenza.”

Chiara Bertola

published on the occasion of the exhibition Senza titolo, invisibile, dove le stelle si avvicinano di una spanna in più, mentre oltremare appare verso Sud-Est, e la luce focalizza…, Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Venezia

“Senza titolo, invisibile, dove le stelle si avvicinano di una spanna in più, mentre oltremare appare verso Sud-Est, e la luce focalizza… As is often the case with the works of Giovanni Anselmo, the lengthy title of the Venice exhibition is a long sequence, almost a short story, which describes the works we encounter. Above all, however, it is a succession of landscapes that open onto our imagination like windows. […] In all of his works Anselmo shows how everything is transformed, renewed and completed in relation to the environment they are in; as Germano Celant writes, the works become ‘solitary wayfarers which adapt to the environmental metamorphoses to the extent that they absorb the humours and the humus’”

“Senza titolo, invisibile, dove le stelle si avvicinano di una spanna in più, mentre oltremare appare verso Sud-Est, e la luce focalizza… Il titolo esteso dell’esposizione di Venezia, come molto spesso accade negli interventi di Giovanni Anselmo, è una lunga sequenza, quasi un piccolo racconto che descrive le opere che s’incontreranno. Soprattutto, però, è una successione di paesaggi che, come finestre, si aprono alla nostra immaginazione. […] In ogni suo lavoro Anselmo mostra come ogni cosa si trasformi, si rinnovi e si completi in relazione con l’ambiente in cui si trova a essere; perché le opere diventano, come ha scritto Germano Celant, ‘viandanti solitari che si adattano alle metamorfosi ambientali, tanto da assorbirne gli umori e l’humus.’”

Chiara Bertola

“Bart Julius Peters is a master in combining objective reality with his subjective fiction, making the material world that surrounds us collapse in front of our own eyes. The objects and images he portrays are doorways into the human mind—they are projections of our hopes, dreams, and desires; they are symbols of the failures and successes of our aspirations, of our material absence or presence in the world, and of our most secret sexual fantasies as well. By looking at his images, we almost inevitably project their beauty onto our present and future life, which end up trapping us with their withering and fading romanticism and erotic tension.”

Tommaso Speretta

#6 of Carte blanche, a series edited by Sara Marini, Alberto Bertagna

This reader is the result of a cycle of seminars and an exhibition developed by the Iuav University of Venice around the notion of heritage. The publication focuses on issues related to the status of heritage in the contemporary; the study and use of archives; restoration strategies; and heritage as a place of transformation.
Nowadays, the notion of Heritage is besieged by multiple perspectives. Thoughts, materials, architectures and cities are all parts of heritage, a claim that stirs reactions, as well as creates expectations of the materials themselves. These must produce memory and future, restore monetary wealth and culture, tell ethical stories and extol aesthetics. However, the siege can also become an orchestra rehearsal in which the reactions and expectations call into question the successful performance of the symphony. An orchestra rehearsal (like the one in Fellini’s famous film of the same name) is an opportunity for reflection, for rehearsing a single instrument and verify the harmony it produces with other instruments.

#5 of Carte blanche, a series edited by Sara Marini, Alberto Bertagna

A history of the hidden and the forbidden in the urban landscape, born out of a research project conducted on Genoa’s night life
What happens when the music’s over? What happens when the lights turn off? What happens when the lights turn elsewhere? This is the story of what you do not want to see. This is the story of what you do not want to watch. This is the story of what you do not want to know. This is the story of the hidden, this is the story of the forbidden. This is the story of the unspoken, the inscrutable, the unsearchable, the unfathomable, the impenetrable. This is the story of empty, void, vacant, shallow, vacuous, frothy, null, insignificant, pointless, vain, invalid, disabled, bereaved, bereft, destitute, blank, emptiness, gap, rifle, dump, deplete. This is the story of a city, this is also the story of all cities. This is the story of the Dark Side of All of Us.

#4 of Carte blanche, a series edited by Sara Marini, Alberto Bertagna
illustrations by Riccardo Miotto

This prospective study places Africa and the city of Durban at the heart of a project to reconnect the interrupted paths of modernity and of people’s emancipation. A singular reflection on architecture and spaces interlocking contemporary issues and dystopian narratives. The future is going to travel to the cities but the risk is that it stops in their antechambers, full of closed doors, where someone has turned off the light. And that interrupting the trip all remain stuck stepping on each others feet, until all the oxygen will finish. The images of our past also seem to be the images of our future. Images of huge crowds traveling by land and sea accompanied by the constant danger of sinking. Maybe it’s time to tear the future from this time-loop and give it a direction, reconnecting the interrupted path of the project of modernity with the need for emancipation from which it was born. And why not to start the whole thing from Africa where the first homo sapiens has decided to move 100,000 years ago. The book is divided into two parts: the first in seven short essays, the second into seven stories so as not to let the city sleep and with her who contributes in co-producing its spaces and its architecture, without exception.

#2 of Lights Out, a limited edition Artists’ Colouring Books edited by Nina Fuga

Pink Canyons is a silent narrative of a sudden lust-filled encounter between a cowgirl and an Indian girl and their threatening journey through a psychedelic Wild West at night.

#1 of Lights Out, a limited edition Artists’ Colouring Books edited by Nina Fuga

Black Out consists of a juxtaposition of intimacy and loneliness in the city at night.

Published in occasion of the exhibition
Shahzia Sikander: Ecstasy As Sublime Heart As Vector, MAXXI National Museum of 21st Century Arts, Roma

“Throughout my practice, I have persevered to create work with unpredictable diversity…” Shahzia Sikander
“Drawings, wall paintings, videos, books, prints, installations: in Sikander’s universe in the making are intertwined music, words, and images, Hindu deities, and the symbols of Western history. It is a language and a vision thanks to which one feels both enthralled and moved. The artist’s iconographic repertoires allude to apparently distant geopolitical contexts, which elaborate group events or sublimate personal experiences.”

“In tutto il mio lavoro ho inteso creare opere di imprevedibile diversità…” Shahzia Sikander
“Disegni, opere murali, video, libri, stampe, installazioni: nel suo universo in divenire si intrecciano musica, parole e immagini, divinità induiste e simboli della storia occidentale. Un linguaggio, una visione che affascina ed emoziona. Sono repertori iconografici che alludono a contesti geopolitici apparentemente lontani, che elaborano eventi collettivi o sublimano esperienze personali.”

Giovanna Melandri

Zaha Hadid’s pioneering vision redefined architecture and captured imaginations across the globe. In celebration of her career spanning four decades, Fondazione Berengo is hosting an abridged retrospective exhibition of her work showcasing many of the seminal paintings, drawings and models of Hadid’s repertoire. In a variety of media including photography and film, the exhibition conveys the unrivaled ingenuity and dynamism of Zaha Hadid’s work

Catalogue of the exhibition
Formes de l’affiche – Posters from Chaumont, curated by Eric Aubert, Giorgio Camuffo, Bevilacqua La Masa, Venezia

“Each poster proposes a different experience of quality. None claims to belong to a school or a superior style, even less to be an exception or marginal. It is a matter of demands – that can be in the scope of a historical, cultural and social considerations of the production of signs or that of individual expression, without which images would not have their own ‘quality’. Quality is to be understood as a chain of demands that pertain just as much to cultural values as to the concept and the formal and technical know-how – design, in short. The commissioner, the designer and the printer (particular attention was paid to the quality of the screen-printing) all bear the responsibility.”

Eric Aubert

Illustrated catalogue on the occasion of the touring exhibition Bellissima: Italy and High Fashion 1945-1968, MAXXI National Museum of 21st Century Arts, Roma, and NSU Art Museum, Fort Lauderdale

Bellissima: Italy and High Fashion 1945-1968 offers a new perspective on current fashion developments at the same time that it pays tribute to the founders of Italy’s unique and significant contributions to the history of design, from luxurious high fashion to everyday wear and everything in between.

#3 of Carte blanche, a series edited by Sara Marini, Alberto Bertagna

In the last of the wild lands: an exploration of the world’s least hospitable territories which have made and still make human settlement difficult or impossible. The study is conducted by means of three work tools: a Glossary, an Atlas and a travel guide. A Glossary, an Atlas, a User’s manual, a small land held in a box. These are the travel notes about the Last Lands, and the true Last Lands and their meaning at the beginning of the 20th century. Which words describe lands that are more whishes than true? How to represent the search for landscapes that are daily kept by a satellite’s eye? What to do with the “brown gold”, which has been already plundered, occupied, consumed and sometimes forgotten? This book is keeping the secret of an imaginary pioneers’ quest and impossible journeys, as everything is already known. This book wants to remind us of the capability of travelling and discovering, it shows the way of the Mount Analogue… The secret of land is held in a small box, and in the belief that something is still invisible, something is still kept unknown.

Rob Pruitt’s eBay Flea Market: Year 1 is an unconventional autobiography. It retraces one year in the life of Rob Pruitt through the quotidian objects that the artist once loved, consumed, then felt he didn’t need anymore. An extension of the real-world flea markets, that he has been organizing since the early 1990’s, this particular collection of belongings sold on eBay (www.robpruittsfleamarket.com) from September 23, 2013 to September 23, 2014 unearths precious fragments of Pruitt’s life while revealing his most material desires.

Tommaso Speretta

This cookbook consists of life stories and photo portraits where each recipe becomes a blind date – a culinary encounter with someone you don’t really know. 52 recipes from starters to desserts including a range of meat, fish, pasta, vegetable dishes, and a cocktail. By rejecting the usual categories and freeing itself from received culinary wisdom, it creates a new genre. This is indeed the first cookbook to feature recipes from punk, pop art, spiritual-medium, cosplay, veteran and many other types of cuisine. The recipe suggestions come from a diversity of cultures. If you wish to follow them, you need to be prepared to turn your kitchen into a place of unprecedented experimentation. If you believe that “we are what we eat”, then there is opportunity for change in the dishes of others.
Enjoy, if you wish.

#2 of Carte blanche, a series edited by Sara Marini, Alberto Bertagna

Future is Twelve Cities in Search of. Future is no Longer What it Used to be. Future is to Ask Yourself Where We Are Now. Future is an Utopian Vision, Future is also Back to Utopia: Future as Utopia. Future is Power, Power for a not Schedulable Life. Future as Practice. I Can Only Say One Thing About the Future: What I Wouldn’t Want it to be. Future is Visions, Visions of Future. Future is the Space of Expectations. Future is Architecture and Prophecy. Future is also Accidents: the City of Failure, Without Landscape; the Laboratory-City, Recycle and Repair. Future is the Hegemony of the Present: a New Aesthetic of Reality, the History of the Monkey and the Path. Future is Reform or Revolution? We Are Looking For Urban/Human Futures. But No More Alibis, please.

“Maybe later, late, when in theory you should have balanced out, the loss pounces and tears you up. Silence means resistence; to cling oneself to smells and things, to squeeze air, to endure. This time even insects lend a hand. You watch how they move, back and forth, and you get in their way. No matter when, or how, they are the ones who will suffer. Then, once the game is over, you return to the void.”

“Le mancanze si sentono, magari dopo, in ritardo, quando teoricamente dovresti averle metabolizzate e invece si fanno vive e lacerano. E tacere significa resistere, aggrapparsi agli odori e al resto, stringere aria e resistere. Questa volta anche gli insetti danno una mano. Li guardi che si muovono, avanti indietro, e poi fai accadere qualcosa. Non importa cosa o come, accade, e sono loro a farne le spese. Poi, finito il gioco, si torna al vuoto.”

Claudio Rocchetti

#1 of Carte blanche, a series edited by Sara Marini, Alberto Bertagna
illustrations by Riccardo Miotto | photographs by Sissi Cesira Roselli

There is an area between Venezia and Venice, between the reality and the logo, between the city and its brand. In this middle-earth conflicts rise frequently like fumes, clashes between truths and promises. In this space the imagination finds the humus needed to manifest itself. Here the two cities face off, mingle, declare war on a daily basis, they exchange the meaning of things and words. Only the stranger who lives in Venezia, remaining a stranger, can see this limbo; only by looking at Venezia in Venice and living the two dimensions with detachment can one understand The Possibility of an Island.

“Houses with complicated, unhinged, polyhedric shape. Tattooed, scratched houses. Anti-tectonic, unbuildable houses. Houses with incongruous, mutant and paradoxical geometries. Puzzling houses: convex or concave? Introvert or Extrovert? The mirror of the soul or of a delirious willpower.”

“Case a forma di poliedri complicato e sgangherati. Case tatuate, graffite, con segni antitettonici, e costruttivamente improbabili. Case con geometrie incongrue, mutanti e paradossali. Case rompicapo: convesse o concave? introverse o estroverse? Specchio dell’anima o di svolgimenti deliranti.”

Mario Lupano