"L'offensiva di carta". An illustrated journey from the Luxardo Collection to modern-day comics. An exhibition opening in Udine (Italy)


We're happy to announce the opening of the exhibition "L'offensiva di carta", an illustrated journey dedicated to the First World War years, from the Luxardo Collection to modern-day comics.

Infoline:
"L'offensiva di carta"
La Grande Guerra illustrata, dalla collezione Luxardo al fumetto contemporaneo
The Great War: an illustrated journey through time, from the Luxardo Collection to modern-day comics
Castello di Udine, 31 March 2017 - 7 January 2018
E-mail: civici.musei@comune.udine.it
Web: www.civicimuseiudine.it
Curated by Giovanna Durì, Luca Giuliani, Anna Villari
in cooperation with Sara Codutti and Fernando Orlandi

The exhibition opening these days in Udine (Friuli, Italy) displays an amount of artworks coming from the Luxardo Collection. Luxardo is the surname of a doctor of the Friuli area that was able to collect immediately after the end of the First World War more than 5600 magazines and monographs. The Luxardo Collection, now part of the collection of Musei Civici, is a large window from where people can view what was produced in terms of illustration and propaganda images in the different armies and fronts. The exhibition develops and takes into consideration the appearance of the cinema as an essential tool for the control of an already biased imagery. The last section of the exhibition is dedicated to the "new" art of illustration and comics, introducing to the works of artists such as Joe Sacco, Gipi, Manuele Fior, Jacques Tardi and Hugo Pratt. The exhibition will run untill the beginning of January 2018.

“Panoptico”, the sound art installation by Greta Lusoli at Castello di Duino

Opening: March, Saturday 25th at 11.00 a.m., at Castello di Duino's Bunker (via Duino 32, 34011, Duino Aurisina – Italy) - The participation to the opening is by reservation only (via mail at info@iodeposito.org or via the B#Side War App)

Opening hours: from 25th March 2017 to 2nd April 2017; from 9.30 a.m. to 5.30 p.m. (closed on Tuesdays). Free entry.


Infoline: www.iodeposito.org; www.bsidewar.org


In collaboration with the Gruppo Ermada Flavio Vidonis and the Castle of Duino, IoDeposito Ngo presents on Saturday 25th March at 11.00 a.m. the sound art installation PANOPTICO by Greta Lusoli, at the Castello di Duino's Bunker. The event is organized thanks to the support of the Friuli Venezia Giulia Region and the patronage of UNESCO and it will be available until the 2nd April 2017: from 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. (closed on Tuesdays). This new appointment belongs to the third edition of the diffuse artistic and cultural Festival B#SIDE WAR, which is promoted by IoDeposito through numerous Italian and international events such as exhibitions, conferences and research project (www.bsidewar.org).

One hundred years ago, Europe looked like a big open-air prison: almost fifteen million people used to be trapped inside inhuman war jails and even more civilians were trapped between refugee camps and their own houses, living a life of destruction and deprivation. The sound art installation PAN-ὀπτικός by Greta Lusoli relates to that terrible war scenario trying to evoke and reconstruct in the mind of the listener the archetype prison designed by the philosopher and jurist J. Bentham at the end of XVIII century. Born with the intent to make the jails more efficient, less expensive and easier to monitor, the  Bentham's structure provided only one warden who, standing in the centre of the building, was able to guard at the same time all of the prisoners in their cells developed in a circle around the central space. In this way the prison cells became transparent: the privacy of the prisoners and the preservation of their intimacy (so, their inner identity) completely disappeared, stoking a dangerous process of objectualization and dehumanization of the prisoner.

PAN-ὀπτικός works through a stratification of its deepest meanings: there are at least three intrinsic factors related to this immaterial but complex intervention of public art. The first analysis is a sensorial one: to evoke the cruel architecture of Panopticon, Greta Lusoli project into the proxemic space of the listener a vibrant, deep, screeching and unpleasant sound that resonate inside the chest and memory of the listener with universal and archetypical echoes of a primordial energy, reminding to ancestral alert signals.  This sound create an emotional correspondence, as a summa of all the alert signals coming from the animal world, including the most primitive ones whose have been extinguished. The second level of interpretation tunes the experience of this 18th-century architecture with the tragedy of contemporary conflicts. The choice of an architecture as a symbol of an unseen reality (but too much common in our contemporaneity) hit the headlines from a mathematics and conceptual proportion trough that the sound resonate in the space: the minutes within a year are divided with the numbers of prisoners that every year, today, are victims of conflicts. In fact, the sound reverberates every 5 minutes and 53 seconds, underlining the impressive quantity of war prisoners that nowadays still loose their freedom in conflicts. Finally, a third metaphorical matrix concern to the dissociation of polarities see-be seen. The vastness of the conflicts that is gripping the entire world is not read today by our eyes but, thanks to the sound that powerfully touch the deepest strings of our soul, it can be clearly perceived in our minds.

An important role is played by the location. The Castel of Duino, completely destroyed due to its proximity to the front during the First World War, was under bombardments of the allies on Monfalcone during the Second World War. Villagers used to seek refuge inside the big Bunker, venturing into the deep cave and waiting in the dark that the worst was over. The sound art intervention, installed in the last room of the basement, take the listener at the same time in one space and in many others, comparing the “now and here” of the listener physical presence, with the “then and there” of the victims and prisoners of the conflict. A vibrant and harsh sound will vibrate inside the bunker of the castle, reflecting an old fear that can be dissolved only  by the light expectancy coming through a window in front of the sea.

Contacts:
Web: www.iodeposito.org; www.bsidewar.org
Direction: info@iodeposito.org
Press&Communication: daniela.madonna@iodeposito.org

Mario Puccini, an Italian World War One writer. The opportunity to know his work in Trieste

Press release

Mario Puccini comes back in the city which gave the title to one of the most representative Italian memorialistic war report of the Twentieth Century, his Davanti a Trieste. The critical edition curated by Tancredi Artico and published by Mursia will be presented on Friday the 3rd March at 6.00 p.m., in the Ubik book store in Trieste (Piazza della Borsa, 15). The new edition is the editorial result of a research projects undertaken by IoDeposito Ngo, in collaboration of Friuli Venezia Giulia Region and with patronage of UNESCO and Council of Europe. The study project has involved many pofessors, Ph.Ds and university researchers. The book launch of Trieste belongs in fact to the third edition of the diffuse artistic and cultural Festival B#SIDE WAR, which is promoted by IoDeposito through numerous Italian and international events such as exhibitions, conferences and research project (www.bsidewar.org).
 
The prolific author Mario Puccini (Senigallia, 1887 - Rome, 1957) was one of the literatus of «Voce» (the most important Italian magazine of the early ‘900) circle, who have been able to deeply influence the fortunes of the following history of literature affecting particularly the neorealist poetry. As many times defined by Vasco Pratolini «one of the master the Italian literature must bring justice», Mario Puccini have been also a soldier, crossing, during the First World War, all the Friuli Venezia Giulia territory, from the Carso to the Piave. From this human experience, in which the literary experience merges with the bellic one, is born a war diaries trilogy that includes Dal Carso al Piave (1918), Davanti a Trieste (1919) and Così ho visto il Friuli (1919), which represents one of the most important memorial and literary record about World War I on the international scene. 

Davanti a Trieste is a staunch and empathic portrait of war days, in which is presented the collective feeling of his comrades and is shown how they perceived reality as if they were a single organism. Lieutenant Puccini gets therefore straight to the heart of things, with his desire to pay tribute to the men who sacrificed their own lives with a valorous and touching simplicity. The writing is limpid and incisive, focused on a strong attention to the human dimension of the conflict, trough an effective formal modernity free from aesthetic temptations (which is the distinctive style of the whole Puccini's literary creation).
 
Thanks to the clear and anti-rhetorical prose, Puccini's pen is able to weave the warp of storytelling with a disarming balance between the immediate crudity of the historical evidence on the one hand and, on the other hand, the human experience transferred to the reader in the form of a poetic literary language, which yearns for salvation and redemption from a senseless and brutal war, able to engulf the reality. The pulsating and genuine compassion of the war-man intertwines with a strong sensitivity about the formal and linguistic experimentation: Puccini's triptych on the Great War is in fact a work able to represent the emotions of a great humanity and at the same time of linguistic and literary innovation, presenting itself as an organic historical evidence of events and of the past of the war. The book curator Tancredi Artico portrays Davanti a Trieste as an «exceptional direct testament of the Great War, which can be at the same level of others Italian literary war works as Guerra del ’15  by Stuparich or Giorni di guerra by Comisso»: Puccini was able to create a memorial work important for its anticlassical statute and for the peculiar chronological concatenation, which makes of writing a mean of salvation. 

(In the above images of Trieste, the quay and Via del Pane)

Contacts:
Event's link: http://www.bsidewar.org/en/upcoming/presentation-of-the-volume-davanti-trieste/
Details: Friday the 3rd March, at 6.00 p.m.; at Ubik book store, Piazza della Borsa, 15, Trieste.
Web: www.iodeposito.org; www.bsidewar.org
Direction: info@iodeposito.org
Press&Communication: daniela.madonna@iodeposito.org