Elisabetta d'Inghilterra, Lecture-performance 37ª Biennale di Venezia, 1976 by Vincenzo Agnetti

Publication Elisabetta d'Inghilterra by Vincenzo Agnetti brings, for the first time in book form, the complete word-for-word transcription of the lecture-performance presented by Agnetti on 21 July 1976 in the rooms of the Giudecca in Venice, as part of ATTIVO, a programme organised by Tommaso Trini during the 37th Venice Biennale.

The performance belongs to Agnetti's Teatro Statico – a theatre that unfolds, as the artist himself stated, "inside the observer". The scenic setup was conceived to draw the viewer gradually and almost imperceptibly into the work: a room with twelve photographic images, a table, a chair, a light, two microphones (A and B), and the performer-orator alternating between critical action and storytelling. Fifty years on, the video recording of that event has been transformed into a book: a pure transcription, word for word, image for image, of what happened then.

Vincenzo Agnetti (1926-1981) was a Milan-based artist, poet, and theorist, a central figure in Italian conceptual art. Trained at the Brera Academy, he developed an interdisciplinary practice spanning literature, visual art, philosophy, and performance. His work consistently interrogated the instability of language and the ambiguity of systems of meaning – from the Macchina drogata (1967-68), a modified typewriter that omits letters from the alphabet, to the NEG (1970), a record player that captures silences rather than sound. His Teatro Statico – of which Elisabetta d'Inghilterra (1976) is a key example – proposed a theatre without movement, without characters, without text: a theatre that takes place entirely in the mind of the observer. He died in Milan on 1 September 1981.

published by AXIS AXIS
edited by Achille Filipponi
graphic design by Federico Antonini
2026, 376 pages (IT-ENG), 16 x 24 cm