COSTRUZIONE DELL’UNIVERSO: Artists’ Magazines and Publications after Marcel Duchamp is a research project that gathers artists’ magazines and publications by various artists who were active in the realm of “periodical and irregular” printed matter from the 1950s to the present day, beginning with of the work of the visionary artist Marcel Duchamp. This significant and hitherto overlooked sector of artistic production explores the dimension of the newspaper and magazine as an artistic medium. The selection includes extremely rare, a-periodic, and extraordinary printed items, “sensitive” publications in which the artist first handedly draws and designs the cover, the inner pages, the image sequence, or conceives the overall form of the object as a unique, yet replicable work. The publication in this context is sometimes transformed into an open and collective container, capable of engaging and coordinating multiple artists in the same layout or across different issues. The title “Construction of the Universe” points out to the fundamental and pioneering role of the early 20th-century avant-garde movement, referencing the 1915 Manifesto “Futurist Reconstruction of the Universe”, the notorious artistic manifesto that was initially released as a flyer and resembled newspaper layout. The 1950s (when our research for this book began) saw a significant rise of a utopian perspective in which artists, finally liberated from the existential weight of world conflicts, often envisioned the creation of a new society, free of relics and debris, made of travelling architectures and wide open spaces, new languages, and characterized by a deep longing for emptiness, a thrust toward the brightness of the future and the cosmos.

Caretto/Spagna are precursors of ecologically engaged artistic practices. They see art as a radical experience of openness, undisciplinated research and involvement with the “things” of the world: the earth, seeds, people, stones, the museum, the river, the quarry, the tree, micro-organisms. Bright Ecologies traces and documents twenty years of their work, structured in research involving care, the transformation of matter, and experiments with form, through practices based on encounter, process, parcticipation and co-authorship.

Alessandro Saturno lives the landscape through the body, his memory and his experience, transposing trhough painting the concept of paesagire (landscape-action) that Andrea Zanzotto introduced in his poetry. The poet’s harsh struggle against a progresso scorsoio (‘sliding progress’) shows us the landscape as an essential condition for life and art. The poet described the landscape of his childhood, which reflected his relationship with his father and was a crucial influence in his developement as a man. The same goes for Saturno, with Naples and its sea becoming the ‘threshold’ of his works: a passage to a world that is real and ideal at the same time; a world that serves as both culture and dream; a wordl of the sould after also having been a world of experience; a place you know but do not know what to call. A nameless place.

Da Monterrey a Monteluco, a solo exhibition by Calixto Ramírez, is the result of the Mexican artist’s residency in Spoleto and around monteluco, a hill covered with dense forest that rises to the south-east of the city. During his stay, the artist created a series of works deriving from his direct contact with the natural landscape in this location. The exhibition is a tribute to Monteluco itself: to the strenght of nature – sometimes enveloping or overwhelming, sometimes more calm and measured – and to the relationship between the elements of the landscape and the artist’s ability to interpret it, as he interacts with the natural setting in a visceral way, which is always poetic and at times playful.

Ogni anno, al Carnevale di Sant’Eraclio (Foligno, PG), sfilano carri allegorici. Vengono fatti in cartapesta usando tre tipi di giornale: bianco (La Nazione), giallo (Il Sole 24 Ore), rosa (La Gazzetta dello Sport). Quattro prova ad aggiungere un quarto colore. Quattro può essere acquistato con o senza multiplo in edizione limitata.

Every year, during the Sant’Eraclio Carnival, there is a parade of papier collé floats. Three types of newspapers are used to build the floats: white (La Nazione), yellow (Il Sole 24 Ore), pink (La Gazzetta dello Sport). Quattro attempts to add a fouth colour to the floats. This version of Quattro comes with limited-edition multiple, a small float with which the book can be transported.

Contenuto Rimosso is an "experiment in psychoanalysis applied to the environment." A work on collective memory, it addresses the issue of depopulation of mountain areas, experimenting with a community art where community forms of life that have a centuries-old tradition survive, in alpine communities. In particular, Contenuto Rimosso ved refers to the paradoxical nature of a process of reconstruction that was at the same time a process of collective removal, the Rifabbrico in Cadore. On the evening of July 30, 1855, a fire destroyed the historic center of Lorenzago. The settlement was rebuilt, giving rise to Quadrato, a neighborhood that is now mostly uninhabited. Since 2012, the Contenuto Rimosso project has included the discontinuation of public lighting along the streets of the neighborhood and an installation of fires, flashlights and candles on the anniversary of the fire. Over the years, the action has become a new tradition, the village's main celebration. Contenuto Rimosso is not a "commemorative" event proper, because it does not celebrate or perpetuate the memory of anything. The reactualization of the memory of the fire is thought of as a trigger for a "counter-image" to emerge, for the local community to reclaim its past by using public space as a place for the elaboration of a self-image inverse to the stereotypical one. By ritualizing a recurrence and building a narrative around it, Contenuto Rimosso contributes.

This first monograph dedicated to the work of Cleo Fariselli recounts the poetic and formal processes behind the moving image project Your Storm Our Dew (2023), which explores the contemporary collective unconscious at a time when states of emergency have become normalized. The artist transforms everyday items such as thermal blankets, protective suits, high-visibility vests, safety cones, and megaphones into creature that belong in the world of YSOD. These beings are both playful and unsettling, as seen in the large puppets that, illuminated by sudden flashes of light, emerge from the darkness of their habitat only to disappear again shortly afterwards to the amazement of those watching. Expanding upon the film, the contributions by Lucia Aspesi, Cleo Fariselli, Chus Martinez, and Guido Santandrea shed new light on the artist’s multidisciplinary practice. At the same time, they explore the shadows of anthropocentric thinking at the intersection of art and science, ultimately asking how the  past and the present inform the futures of our imagination. Exploring the imaginative power of the object elements typical of states of emergency, the artist gives life to a world of its own, illuminated by the incessant flashing of sirens, creating a new emotional, narrative and aesthetic environment.

The theme of the twelfth issue of Bolletti/no is… TIDE! Aldo can’t find the stone he was playing with…. The tide covered it up! This issue of Bolletti/no takes us on a discovery of what the water hides and shows when the sea level increases and decreases… Let’s create a small flip book together to observe this fascinating fenomenon.

Bolletti/no is an experimental didactic magazine published at each solstice and equinox for the duration of 3 years. It responds to the desire to give a physical and printed form to a series of practices experimented in the time of laboratory work shared with children and adults by Virginia Di Lazzaro and Giulia Filippi. Each issue of Bolletti/no is an invitation, a lense to read, and a tool for experimentation, creation, collection, and sharing. It is a journey into a world of small and big things, and things that are close to us and we see everyday. Each issue collects suggestions, narrations of experiences, prompts and leaves space for your own experiments. In addition to the 12 issues, there are going to be special issues and a conclusive “Annual Collection” will be the container for all the magazines.

La sostanza agitata exhibits the work of eleven artists under age 35 who share an interest in installational and plastic aspects, as well as the interaction between the work and the context in which it is displayed. The title refers to the experimental and hardly classifiable nature of the works on display, the diversity of the materials used, and an approach that declares an explicitly sculptural derivation between lightness and monumentality, irony, and issues that reflect the social changes in place. La sostanza agitata wishes to distinguish itself as a construction site of proposals, some of which are unpublished and made on site, a laboratory open to different perspectives: each artist is assigned a room, allowing the visitor to immerse themselves in the individual poetic, between organic and industrial materials, verticality and horizontality, movement and stillness, works formed from unique pieces and others that tend to spread up to a real multiplication. Catalog of the exhibition La sostanza agitata, a curated by Saverio Verini, artists: Francesco Bendini, Paolo Bufalini, Lucia Cantò, Giovanni de Cataldo, Binta Diaw, Bekhbaatar Enkhtur, Roberta Folliero, Jacopo Martinotti, Lulù Nuti, Giulia Poppi, Davide Sgambaro, 24 June – 16 October2023, Palazzo Collicola, Spoleto (PG).

Turbomondi (Stratigrafia) encompasses the project artist Andrea Martinucci developed between 2020 and 2023, dedicated to a research of suspended worlds populated by creatures investigating their integrity in a continuous evolution among themselves. Turbomondi is a collection of film treatments by the artist and screenwriter Laura Sinceri. It took the form of a unique screenplay that, from 2021, was entrusted to twelve people who interpreted it in a specific time frame, allowing them to write comments, make observations, remove pages, draw or even destroy parts of it. The layering of different voices and impressions that virtually redefines the meaning of the original text is transformed into a personal archive and a publication that traces the evolution and the plural transformation of its contents. Project contributions by Alice, Lisa Andreani, Maria Vittoria Di Sabatino, Aurelio Di Virgilio, Francesca Ferrari, Giulia Geromel, Marialaura Grandolfo, Pietro Librizzi, Zeno Piovesan, Cecilia Saita, Carla Subrizi, Cosimo Rizzo.

Launched on the occasion of the 700th anniversary of Dante Alighieri’s death, the project is the result of a profound analysis and reflection that involved various experts and scholars as well as photography experts from the ICCD and looks at the world of the Poet in a completely new way: it focuses on the objects, landscapes and other natural elements that Dante Alighieri deals with in his major works. The luminous and photographic narrative comes to life through a meticulous reconstruction of images and optical illusions from the three Canticles, with the aid of early analogue photographic processes. The works on display have become part of the contemporary photography collections of the ICCD and are enclosed in a volume named after the exhibition, published by Viaindustriae Publishing, which is the result of extensive research into typographic printing materials and techniques. The project was supported by the National Committee for the celebrations of the 700th anniversary of Dante Alighieri’s death. The photographs of the animals were realised thanks to the collaboration of the Civic Museum of Zoology in Rome.

Il Grillo Minerva is a story about an unknown city. A city built from animal stones. Two brothers, on a break from a long journey, somehow discover its existence. Artist's book by Francesco Cavaliere, printed in 100 copies

A Week from Monday is a publication with a CD that gathers together the sonic and visual results of the residency – with the same title – organized by Viaindustriae and Holydays in Scopoli (Italy, PG) in 2021. It is a diary of the seven days spent with visual artists Davide Barbini and musicians ksara, Vincenzo Marando, Steve Pepe between sound investigation, visual research, and exploration of the landscape. The seven days of the residency are mirrored in the seven tracks on the CD, as well as the seven ‘chapters’ of the diary. The theme of the project stems from its title, A Week from Monday, loosely quoting the title of John Cage’s A Year from Monday. Lectures & Writings, 1967, a theoretical work mixing reflections on working methods, compositional suggestions, social criticism, sound, music and philosophy. Central to the work that emerged was an investigation into song and voice. Davide Barbini’s work, is a video-diary accompanied by a series of drawings.