monitor books art
twelve o’clock, April 27, 2021 – 17:14
Edizioni Morra / EM Arts publishes a summary of the works of the artistic association Mennillo-Castiglione told by experts on theatrical-environmental performances, installations-expo and other events from 2001 to 2020
The book-box set Buch der Freunde by Domenico Mennillo has just been released for the Morra / EM Arts Editions, born on the occasion of the 20 years of activity of lunGrabbe, an opening created in November 1999 in Naples by the will of Mennillo and Rosaria Castiglione; lunGrabbe (www.lungrabbe.it), a multidisciplinary experiment between environmental theater, architecture and the poetic word, in 20 years of activity has created actions, performances, installations, poems-concerts, exhibitions, films, shows and literary research publications. His works have been hosted in festivals and reviews such as La Biennale di Venezia X International Architecture Exhibition, Fresco Bosco (curated by Achille Bonito Oliva), Triennale di Milano, Benevento Città Spettacolo, Napoli Teatro Festival Italia (directed by Ruggero Cappuccio), Primavera dei Teatri, Donnaregina Foundation for Contemporary Arts.
Buch der Freunde contains writings and interventions made by scholars and artists on the occasion of environmental theater performances, installations-expo and events created by lunGrabbe from 2001 to 2020.
Thus the author speaks of it in the introductory text of the volume:
“The friendly need (Freunde) for a book (Buch) that would host the interventions dedicated by poets, scholars and artists to the twenty-year work of LunGrabbe, was born in the first place as a direct homage to a precedent Book of friends, published by Hugo Von Hofmannsthal in 1922. Secondly, the present Buch der Freunde comes to life as a form of rewriting of that same idea of gift contained in the Buch Hofmannstahliano (in Hofmannsthal understood as a tribute to authors related to his writing present in the volume, with texts selected by H. himself ), here understood as thanks and gratitude for all those who have broadened the horizon of the discourse of LunGrabbe with their writings, their ideas, their explicit betrayals-slips; a thank you that here we want to extend to all those who have participated in the work of the group with their presence, as collaborators or as participants in the single event or initiative proposed over the years ».
The volume is accompanied by an apparatus of notes that traces the genesis of each single text; a Chronological Theater-Museography of the work of long (relating to the first performances of the works selected in this volume) makes it easy to place each single event with the text collected in this volume. The volume is completed by a bibliography relating to the activity of the group and a short biography (BioAutori) of each author present in this publication with their own text. In the appendix, on the other hand, there is space for the unpublished scores of three performances of lunGrabbe, or VISUAL POEM 1976 (Nitsch Museum, Naples 2014), Two Distices (Gallerie L’Espace d’en bas, Paris 2017) and Hypno-Mnemata (Sala Assoli, Naples 2020).
The structure and the index (with some variations) follow the previous volume by Mennillo, “Some Architectures of Naples 2003-2013. The theater of LunGrabbe in Neapolitan architecture “(edited by Raffaella Morra and Loredana Troise, drawings by Rosaria Castiglione, Morra / em arts editions, Naples 2014), in which all the scores of the performances and installations of LunGrabbe, object of the texts and interventions by Buch der Feunde.
The two volumes can be read in a specular way and offer a wealth of references that return, at least in part, the complexity and density of twenty years of encounters, visions and affectivity, concentrated in particular in the city of Naples, the elective point of long for his explorations of the architectural space in the aesthetic and artistic fields.
«In this work on space», says Mennillo from the text mentioned above, «it remains fundamental to have lived and worked in these twenty years between Naples, its province and the entire region, a territory that expresses one of its greatest and most lacerating contradictions precisely in its relationship with the space and the natural and artistic beauties it hosts; a relationship essentially lived in abandonment, in carelessness, but at the same time lived with a strong and visceral attachment found in few other Western communities ».
“Buck der Freunde”, on the other hand, contains texts by Pierandrea Amato, Tommaso Ariemma, Jean-François Bory, Andrea Cardillo, Maria Rosaria Castiglione, Iain Chambers, Alessandra Cianelli, com.plot SYS tem, Giovanni Conforti, Maria D’Ambrosio, Stefano De Stefano, Beatrice Ferrara, Mauro Giancaspro, Mimmo Grasso, Stelio Maria Martini, Domenico Mennillo, Raffaella Morra, Tommaso Ottonieri, Stamatia Portanova, Davide Racca, Emanuele Rodo, Delio Salottolo, Stefano Taccone, Tiziana Terranova, Ferdinando Tricarico, Loredana Troise, and Maurizio Zanardi. Made of raw cardboard hot stamped with movable type at the Officine d’Arti Grafiche di Carmine Cervone and texts printed on Arena Natural Bulk paglino paper at Alfa Grafica srl in San Sebastiano al Vesuvio, for the first 50 copies it contains an etching of the signed and numbered author printed on the star presses of IL LABORATORIO di Nola by Vittorio Avella. Price: euro 30 (150 with etching and case).
Domenico Mennillo (Naples, 1974), graduated in Aesthetics at the Federico II University of Naples with a thesis on the relationship between Antonin Artaud and Gilles Deleuze. For the theater and the performing arts he publishes several volumes, including the catalog Some Architectures of Caivano 2002-2006. The theater of LunGrabbe in Caivanese architecture (IL LABORATORIO / le edizioni, Nola 2006) and Andromaca. Neoplatonic work in IV recreational rooms, with an essay by Lorenzo Mango (Edizioni Morra, Naples 2007); for poetry he publishes OPUS INFECTUM poems 1999-2008 (Bibliopolis, Naples 2010). In France and Ireland since 2016 he collaborates as editor with several cultural magazines, including: Celebrity Cafè (les presses du réel, Paris), # 591 (RedFox Press, Dugort e éditions Terracol, Paris) FREEING [our bodies] (les presses du Réel, Paris). Also in France, with Jean-François Bory, he directs for the posillipo & seine édition, the Festina Lente series, dedicated to the artistic avant-garde of Paris and Naples. Since September 2018 he has been Scientific Director of the Morra Foundation / Archives section, curating the Arrigo Lora Totino Fund and the Living Theater Fund, the latter for the SCABEC / Campania Region.
April 27, 2021 | 17:14
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