Lisa Andreani and Simona Squadrito continue their conversation with Elena Barison, talking about REPLICA, the project they founded as an Italian Archive of the Artist’s Book, to address the theme of the archive and exo-publishing through multiple formats, on the curatorial and editorial level, questioning their definitions and modes of presentation.
Elena Barison: Starting with the notion that making archives can be read as an artistic methodology, have you ever reflected on whether REPLICA, in its way of producing an archive of artists’ books, can also take on the dimension of artistic practice?
In our case, we have never felt the need to develop a practice that goes beyond curatorial or mere research, but certainly, more generally, we have been drawn to the artist archive as an interesting subject to explore and from which to draw inspiration for new forms of design. In particular, the ways in which artists create the rules of their own archives or how they approach editorial and paper materials can be found in part examined within some of the interviews in the Archive Actualized column such as the one on Chiara Fumai’s Archive conducted with FUR, but also the one addressed to the Alberto Grifi Cultural Association. The artists’ libraries, their way of ordering boxes, following an identification that follows the names of friends and closest collaborators, led us to read these spaces also as archives of relationships.
In 2021 you took part in ii’s Initiatives. The days of Initiatives were the first opportunity to step outside the museum and art context, to actively intervene in urban space and among people. How did you present REPLICA to the public?
REPLICA’s action during the festival spread like wildfire among the participants, developing throughout the days of the initiatives. Accompanying from time to time all the performances that made up the program, the audience was given our edition entitled The Exploding Ticket, consisting of ten envelopes each containing an excerpt of a chapter from William Burroughs’ novel of the same name. Through the cut-up method, the writer’s words were revisited and each envelope was filled with small explosives. The audience could freely keep them and obtain at the end of the ten-day festival the complete edition or open them and enliven the atmosphere through the popping of firecrackers.
In 2022 you presented at ArtVerona, A Red Tulip. Sicilian Antigroup, and in 2023 you won the Italian Council award with the project Sicilian Antigroup: a translocal study. How did the interest in Antigroup come about?
We were on vacation together in Sicily when Lisa introduced the topic of the Sicilian Antigroup, which she had recently discovered. We immediately became passionate about this then unknown poetic movement, and we recognized its value, including that related to its oblivion: the Antigroup is not even remembered in Sicily and has been erased from Italian historical memory, while paradoxically it is more recognized in the United States. The project was born with a certain spontaneity, but now we would like to create an articulated exhibition that integrates all our various practices: the book, the manifesto, the performance and the reading.
From the very first months of research, we identified the fundamental themes of Antigroup: the union of poetic word and militant political action (Poesis and Praxis), poetic word united with political action, experienced in the street, in the square, as a book open to different contexts; the transnational dimension, which is manifested both in the link with the United States, thanks to the presence of an American exponent, and in the relationship with the Mediterranean – the latter aspect we are delving into particularly in relation to the censorship of Rolando Certa’s Un popolo è un popolo, a poem that expressed the closeness of one of the Antigroup founders to the Palestinian people; and finally, alternative publishing in opposition to the official publishing of the strong powers, which they named the cultural establishment.
From the moment you started researching the Sicilian Antigroup, has the topic in any way influenced your approach and methodology? In a sense are you engaged in carrying on with REPLICA the urban and social guerrilla warfare of the Antigroup to provoke change or even just to promote peace?
Antigroup research has certainly left important marks on what is REPLICA’s research more generally. Although we have never talked about it, we feel a strong need for a dimension of community and sharing. It is as if we have naturally moved away from a series of productions that could have a mere stylistic and graphic result, as if a look and an idea of activation of our research, of these objects, through the involvement of others has been implemented.
We presented the Antigroup projects with events that were collective and collegial in nature, through readings, in which we listened to each other, giving of ourselves and conceding something stronger and more tangible in the community of people. With respect to the presentations we made, an interest was triggered that we did not expect, even when we went to present the research in Helsinki in the context of the Islands & Seas festival, New Spring Garden and in collaboration with PUBLICS (May 30, 2024), there were many people interested in viewing the materials, sensitized by the storytelling and the idea that in any case in the 1970s there were encounters between the peoples of the Mediterranean. The work done by the Antigroup should be rethought as a reenactment to talk about current issues and problems that continue to persist.
After the reading in Monbijoupark (Berlin, July 24, 2024)-organized following the request for censorship of one of the Antigroup poems by the Conz Archive, one of the cultural partners that initially supported us in the Italian Council call-we felt the need to look for other allies, other people, to get out of the cultural insiders’ seats and go into public places, with people inattentive and unprepared.
Another important moment for us was the second reading, An Arrow Against the Tank (Sept. 22, 2024), which was done at Casa Cicca Museum (Milan) with all the trappings and people were really involved. It was exciting.
The elusive nature of the artist’s book has led us to explore multiple ways of sharing it with the public. Our project is multi-layered: it archives and collects, acts as a research device, and uses ever-changing languages while maintaining a stimulating approach. A book can generate a series of very different actions, functioning as a reticular system.
From the Sicilian Antigroup we learned how to develop a solid research project. Our approach follows a rhizomatic philosophy, drawing strength precisely from our deep personal differences.
REPLICA
Vedi anche:
Intervista (Pt1), Arshake, 17.01.2025
immagini: (Cover 1) REPLICA, Il biglietto che esplode – Iniziative di ii, curated by Lisa Andreani, Maziar Firouzi, Francesca Pionati and Tommaso Arnaldi, Rome, 08.05 – 19.05.2021, courtesy the Authors (2) Installation view, Un Tulipano Rosso. Antigruppo siciliano, curated by REPLICA and Viaraffineria, intervention by Giuseppe De Mattia, ArtVerona 2022, credits Matteo De Nando ( 3) Antigruppo siciliano: uno studio translocal, independent publication supported by Italian Council (EditionXII, 2023), curated by REPLICA (Lisa Andreani and Simona Squadrito), 2024. Design: Miriam Sannino and Valerio Di Lucente ( 4) Una Freccia Contro il Carro Armato, poetry reading by Antigruppo Siciliano, curated by REPLICA (Lisa Andreani and Simona Squadrito), Emma Rose Hodne, Floriana Grasso, Carola Provenzano and Giulia Currà, Casa Cicca Museum, Milan, September 2024 (5) ARROW AGAINST THE TANK, reading curated by REPLICA (Lisa Andreani and Simona Squadrito) and CROSSLUCID, Monbijoupark, Berlin, July 2024.
