Lisa Andreani, currently a doctoral student at the IUAV in Venice with a project on cultural mediation, and Simona Squadrito, co-founder of Kabul Magazine and lecturer at the IED in Milan, talk, in dialogue with Elena Barison, about the REPLICA project they founded as an Italian artist’s book archive, addressing the theme of the archive and exo-publishing through multiple formats, on a curatorial and editorial level, questioning their definitions and modes of presentation.
Elena Barison: Hi everyone! Could you introduce the REPLICA project to our Arshake readers? How did it come about and what was its genesis?
Initially, Simona curated a small corner dedicated to artists’ books at the Libreria Utopia in Milan. However, it was difficult managing what was already a very complex project on her own. We met almost seven years ago and, with shared common interests, we started REPLICA in 2019, a research and curatorial project dedicated to artists’ books.
The decision to create an Italian archive for the artist’s book resulted from the realisation that Italy lacked such a reality, especially one with a contemporary outlook. In the first year, through two open calls, we started collecting books by artists, designers and performers, maintaining a flexible approach to the collection, which is now expanding through spontaneous donations and acquisitions. Interestingly, in light of the fact that it is difficult to define what exactly an artist’s book is, we are given a lot of very different volumes.
In recent years, REPLICA’s journey has taken well-defined directions. We have developed a focus on the 1970s and 80s, collecting historical pieces and, since 2023, we have mainly been devoted to research on the Antigruppo siciliano, for which we were awarded the twelfth edition of the Italian Council. The first book realised thanks to the prize funds will be published shortly and, in February, we will be submitting a draft for a theoretical volume on the Antigruppo to Postmedia Books. This will contain the entire history of our research.
Hi everyone! Could you introduce the REPLICA project to our Arshake readers? How did it come about and what was its genesis?
Initially, Simona curated a small corner dedicated to artists’ books at the Libreria Utopia in Milan. However, it was difficult managing what was already a very complex project on her own. We met almost seven years ago and, with shared common interests, we started REPLICA in 2019, a research and curatorial project dedicated to artists’ books.
The decision to create an Italian archive for the artist’s book resulted from the realisation that Italy lacked such a reality, especially one with a contemporary outlook. In the first year, through two open calls, we started collecting books by artists, designers and performers, maintaining a flexible approach to the collection, which is now expanding through spontaneous donations and acquisitions. Interestingly, in light of the fact that it is difficult to define what exactly an artist’s book is, we are given a lot of very different volumes.
In recent years, REPLICA’s journey has taken well-defined directions. We have developed a focus on the 1970s and 80s, collecting historical pieces and, since 2023, we have mainly been devoted to research on the Antigruppo siciliano, for which we were awarded the twelfth edition of the Italian Council. The first book realised thanks to the prize funds will be published shortly and, in February, we will be submitting a draft for a theoretical volume on the Antigruppo to Postmedia Books. This will contain the entire history of our research.
As for the management of the archive, for a period the collection was housed at Villa Vertua Masolo in Nova Milanese, where we created specific displays, while working and reflecting on the concept of book display. With the Villa closing, first due to Covid, then for renovations and, finally, coinciding with the end of Simona’s term as director, we started to develop the idea of a nomadic archive. At Spazio Volta in Bergamo and at PIA, the Independent School for Visual Arts and Curatorial Studies in Lecce, we sent boxes of books to the Langue&Parole Festival, which were selected according to meeting or project themes, such as travel or Italian bibliographical studies. The collaboration with PIA was of particular interest because it involved not only performative activation of the volumes by students, but also offered the school the opportunity to use the material provided by us.
In 2023, we jointly held the creative writing course at the Academy of Fine Arts in Syracuse, an experience that represented an important work on the archive. Through the annual workshops offered to students, new reflections and projects emerged from their analysis of the material held by REPLICA.
During the conception of the various curatorial projects, what were the main challenges you had to face when working with the exo-publishing materials? In your opinion, were there any exhibitions in which the use of the artist’s book research was particularly successful?
In the beginning, along with the topic of archiving, we questioned how to display artefacts which, by their very nature, allow for a breadth of forms and experiences, but we did not want to create a showcase effect that would “fossilise” objects and their democratic essence. We have not yet found a definitive answer, even in the area of safeguarding, so we continue to combine our curatorial and editorial work (The editorial dimension was developed through ATPreplica and the column for NERO Editions).
With the exhibition Multipli e unici (Multiple and Unique) at Edicola Radetzky in Milan in 2019, we presented what was perhaps the most straightforward paradigm to describe the artist’s book – both as a unique piece and in its multiple dimension. The display, created by Nicola Melinelli, allowed open objects to be displayed, with hammocks made of fabrics. Music compilations by Davide Bertocchi were presented, as well as a performance based on a book by Valerio Veneruso.
On the subject of multiples, we also inaugurated the section Multipli at Arte Fiera Bologna in 2023, which gave us a new opportunity to reflect on the object and the term, to explore its dimensions and understand how the artist’s book creates narrative-performative works which elude unambiguous definitions as they are subject to a certain problematicity and ambiguity.
In Bologna, although the context for shaping a radical display was not created, the process of inclusion and exclusion proved equally interesting.
One of the most significant exhibitions for the reflections generated was Spoken Narrative at Villa Vertua Masolo in 2020, where we collaborated with Francesco Pedraglio who, in addition to running a publishing house for publications related to fiction and narrative, creates book and performance works. The exhibition set-up included hanging fabric drapes that created imaginary tables with shelves and objects designed as elements to be read and activated. When the collector of one of the books on display asked us for a protective case, we suggested making a booklet to support further reading of the books and materials within the cases, which almost gave back a voice to their authors. Here the book became a place where communities of different voices were activated.
With the Archive Actualised project, first an editorial on the NERO platform and then an exhibition, we were able to address new questions. The initial column was conceived in 2022 from the idea of mapping the places where artists’ books are stored. In order to do this, we collected a series of interviews, which included the Baruchello Foundation, the collector Giuseppe Garrera, the collectors of P420 and the Alberto Grifi Archive, thanks to which we investigated the individual methodologies of archiving and reading what an artist’s book or an object book consists of. The project was then presented at Spazio Mensa in Rome, in dialogue with designer Valerio Di Lucente and Studio Julia. With a very simple set-up, consisting of foam mats on which sheets with the introduction of Archive Actualised were placed, and a large grid made of blue tape in contrast with the yellow colour of the room itself. Using nails, we hung extracts from the interviews on A4 sheets, together with the contacts and addresses of the archives, inviting the public to visit them. In this case, we also presented a kind of preview of the interview with the Alberto Grifi Archive by showing one of the Roman director’s films.
An experiment that we also like to remember is the one we did with Franco Ariaudo, a lecture performance of Sportification where the artist devised another way of presenting the book project. And the exhibition with Giuseppe De Mattia at Spazio Chiosi in Lugano in 2021, where we created Fogliaccio, a work about the archive and archival filing of the Tasso publishing house, including both the existing and the non-existent.
It is as if by reflecting on all these forms of showing and speaking, the object invokes an equally bookish dimension which has to be experienced.
… to be continued…
images: (Cover 1) Team REPLICA: Lisa Andreani and Simona Squadrito; (fig.2) Installation view, REPLICA. Italian Artist’s Book Archive, display curated by Parasite 2.0 and Furlani-Gobbi, Villa Vertua Masolo 2019, credits Martina de Rosa; (fig.3) Multipli e unici, curated by REPLICA, display curated by Nicola Melinelli, Edicola Radetzky, Milan 2019, credits Martina De Rosa; (fig. 4) Installation view, Un foglio è un foglio ma piegato enne volte diventa un libro d’artista, curated by REPLICA, Spazio Choisi, Lugano 2021, courtesy of Libri Tasso; (fig. 5) Installation view, Archive Actualized, curated by REPLICA, display curated by Studio Julia, Spazio Mensa, Rome 2022, credits Giorgio Benni.
Lisa Andreani is currently a PhD student at the IUAV in Venice with a project on cultural mediation. Over the years, she has taken part in multiple projects within institutions such as MACRO and MAXXI in Rome, most recently co-curating:After. Festival diffuso of Architecture in Sicily (22-29 April 2023).
Simona Squadrito is the co-founder of Kabul Magazine and a lecturer at the IED in Milan, where she teaches a course on Pasolini and on Art and Artificial Intelligence. She also teaches phenomenology of art, aesthetics and creative writing at the Academy of Fine Arts MADE PROGRAM in Syracuse.
