New York, NY – Today, The Center for Italian Modern Art (CIMA) announces its bi-annual Study Day, on June 12th from 10am-6pm, tied to the research center’s current exhibition "Nanni Balestrini: Art as Political Action – One Thousand and One Voices," curated by Marco Scotini and on view through June 22, 2024. 

The exhibition honors Nanni Balestrini (1935-2019), an influential Italian artist, poet, and novelist renowned for his avant-garde artistic practices and engagement in the socio-political movements of the 1960s and 1970s. Balestrini approached experimental poetry with a visual sensibility stemming from the artistic use of collage, and with a compositional practice that gave importance to the editing and recombining of existing texts (especially newspapers, magazines, and political slogans) in search for the expression of a collective enunciation. He worked side by side with contemporary composers interested in the creative potential of stochastic music and the relationship between computer technology and art. 

The Nanni Balestrini Study Day will feature a keynote address by Professor Gian Maria Annovi from the University of Southern California, followed by scholarly panels exploring the exhibition's themes. CIMA’s Research Fellows will join both prominent and emerging scholars in this intellectual exploration to investigate the themes at the center of the exhibition within and outside of established critical frameworks.

The conference will take place in person at the Center for Italian Modern Art (421 Broome Street, 4th Floor, New York, NY 10013). General admission is $15, while members and students can attend for free. Full programming below and get tickets here. 

9:30AM — Coffee and Registration

10:00-11:00AM — Keynote Address

• Gian Maria Annovi (University of Southern California), Lyric Machines: Genealogy and Afterlife of Nanni Balestrini’s Avant-Garde Poetry

11:00AM-11:30AM — Coffee Break

11:30AM-13:00PM — PANEL 1 – Spaces of Sounds of the Long 1968

• Emanuela Garrone (National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art, Rome), The Gruppo 63 and the GNAM

• Federica Parodi (Yale University), Translating Walls, Locating Bodies: Nanni Balestrini’s I muri della Sorbona

• Sara Colantuono (Brown University), Tam Tam to Autoritratto: Truth and Resonance in the Sonic Experiences of the Years of Lead. [ZOOM]

• Andrea Capriolo (University of Udine), ‘MaconDolore MaconDolcezza: Hopes and Illusions of the Youth Movement at the End of 1977 [ZOOM]

1:00PM-2:00PM — Lunch Break

2:00PM-3:30PM — PANEL 2 – Cutting-up Reality: Interpretations and Legacies of the Collage Technique

• Nora Siena (Cornell University), Rethinking Positionality to Neutralize Posture: Nanni Balestrini and the Cut-Up Technique Before, During, and After 1969

• Marica Antonucci (New York University in Paris), Nanni Balestrini, Collage, and the Aesthetics of Operaismo

• Meriel Tulante (Thomas Jefferson University), Sebastiano Vassalli: Legacies of the Gruppo 63 and the Neoavanguardia

• Anna Szirmai (CIMA Fellow, Central European Research Institute, Budapest), Artists from Eastern Europe: a Comparison

3:30PM-4:00PM — Coffee Break

4:00PM-5:30PM— PANEL 3 – Muses Remixed: Nanni Balestrini across Media

• Nicola Cipani (New York University), Balestrini’s Musa Obliqua: Reading Tape Mark I

• Alessandro Giammei (Yale University), Close Reading Distant Writing

• Julia Okołowicz-Szumowska (University of Warsaw), Una mille centomila voci per comunicare. A Subversive Counterpoint of Nanni Balestrini and Luigi Nono

• Francesca Zambon (CIMA Fellow, Brown University), On Blackouts as Repression and Resistance: From Balestrini’s Blackout to Contemporary Territories of Struggle

ABOUT CIMA:

Founded in 2013, CIMA is a public non-profit dedicated to presenting modern and contemporary Italian art to international audiences. Through critically acclaimed exhibitions—many of them bringing work to U.S. audiences for the first time—along with a wide variety of public programs and substantial support for new scholarship awarded through its international fellowship program, CIMA situates Italian modern art in an expansive historic and cultural context, illuminating its continuing relevance to contemporary culture and serving as an incubator of curatorial ideas for larger cultural institutions. CIMA works to add new voices to scholarship on modern Italian art with annual fellowships that open fresh perspectives and new avenues of research. A visit begins with a complimentary espresso, followed by an informal exhibition tour with one of the resident fellows. Visitors are welcome to linger for additional viewing and conversation.

CIMA ON THE WEB:

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PRESS KIT:

https://shorefire.com/roster/cima

FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT:

Mikaela Duhs (mduhs@shorefire.com)