LIVE IN CONSTANT FEAR OF THE WESTERN DESCENT INTO . BUT I DIGRESS. THE CLUB IS BUMPING...

I LIVE IN CONSTANT FEAR OF THE WESTERN DESCENT INTO . BUT I DIGRESS. THE CLUB IS BUMPING, THE ALCOHOL IS FLOWING, EVERYBODY LOOKS GOOD. THERE IS MUCH PAIN IN THE WORLD BUT NOT IN THIS ROOM.

VA, Curated by Ariane Sutthavong, Christy Eóin O’Beirne, Katherine Jemima Hamilton

The edition is the second half of a two-fold manifestation: an exhibition focusing on the re-eroticisation of (political) bodies, and this book, which includes texts and visual works regarding the revitalisation of language through poetry.

As a collection of poems, essays, and other textual and visual interventions from artists in Italy, the book implements poetic language as a strategy for resisting constant hegemonic appropriation. The structures of capitalism have reduced language to an exchange of information, stripping it of its affective—and therefore political—power and potential. As Franco Berardi writes in Breathing, “poetry is precisely the excess that goes beyond the limits of language, which is to say beyond the limits of the world itself.” The contributions to this publication work in this land of excess, conceiving of language, politics, and love beyond informational circulation and exchange, reinvigorating our social and political imagination.

The book is edited by Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo’s YCRP 2023 curators in residence, Ariane Sutthavong, Christy Eóin O’Beirne, and Katherine Jemima Hamilton, and includes contributions by Riccardo Benassi, Sandra Cane, Ilenia Caleo, Giulia Crispiani, Andrea Lo Giudice, Flavia Tritto and an interview with Franco "Bifo" Berardi.

published by AXIS AXIS
graphic design by Federico Antonini
200 pages, 12 x 19 cm