On February 23, NABA Visual Arts Area with Meltemi editore will attend Testo 2024, the Florence publishing fair within Pitti Immagine, to unveil the “GeoArchivi” series, published by Meltemi Editore and directed by Marco Scotini (NABA Visual Arts Department Head). The event, set within Stazione Leopolda in Florence at Viale Fratelli Rosselli 5, will feature an engaging workshop titled "Reading Room femminista: why don’t you show your anger?" at 5 PM, followed by a compelling talk at 7 PM named "Asja Lacis fa Testo: femminismo, arte e rivoluzione" The workshop will be conducted by Elvira Vannini (art historian, critic, independent curator, and NABA lecturer), while the talk will feature interventions by Andris Brinkmanis (Bachelor of Arts in Painting and Visual Arts Course Leader), Eugenia Casini Ropa (translator of the first volume dedicated to Asja Lācis) and Elvira Vannini, moderated by Massiliano Guareschi.
The workshop "Reading Room femminista: why don’t you show your anger?"
How can we narrate a different story that has been silenced through a double erasure, as both afflicted by patriarchal stereotypes on one side and by invisibility linked to processes of colonisation on the other? The workshop "Reading Room femminista: why don’t you show your anger", promoted by NABA and Meltemi, will be open to the public from 5 PM and involves creating a feminist reading room, led by Elvira Vannini. Through a series of exercises aimed at fostering critical and performative imagination, participants will reinterpret and reenact a narrative collage from a range of visual and textual elements contained within the anthology "Femminismi contro. Pratiche artistiche e cartografie di genere" (Meltemi, 2023, edited by Elvira Vannini). A place where creativity transcends gender differences and becomes the freedom of desire and vision: a grasp on the world unbounded by others' standards.
The talk “Asja Lacis fa Testo: femminismo, arte e rivoluzione”
At 7 PM, there will be the presentation talk “Asja Lacis fa Testo: femminismo, arte e rivoluzione”, open to the public and moderated by NABA Lecturer Massiliano Guareschi. “Political concepts, party buzzwords, confessional formulas and deliveries have settled in her. She lives in a city of slogans, she lives in a neighbourhood of conspiracy-ridden terms, where every alleyway takes a party and every word echoes a war cry', is how Walter Benjamin refers to Asja in the portrait sketched in his book 'One-Way Street”. Andris Brinkmanis, curator of “Asja Lācis. L’agitatrice rossa. Teatro, femminismo, arte e rivoluzione”, during the talk will converse with Eugenia Casini Ropa (whose book “Professione Rivoluzionaria” maps out how the work and legacy of this significant figure influenced the committed generations of the 70s) and Elvira Vannini to identify connections that stem from the book part of the “GeoArchivi” series about the Latvian actress, theatre director, and playwright (which aims to propose a decentralization of artistic studies from aesthetics, in favour of their multiple implications with gender, politics, and cultures).
NABA at Testo 2024 in Florence
Friday, 23 February 2024, from 5 PM
At Stazione Leopolda
Viale Fratelli Rosselli 5, Florence
NABA workshop in collaboration with Meltemi Editore "Why don’t you show your anger?"
Sala Munari 2, from 5 PM to 5.45 PM
To participate, click here to register
Entrance with ticket
NABA talk in collaboration with Meltemi Editore "Femminismo, arte e rivoluzione. A partire da Asja Lācis"
Sala Bazlen, from 7 PM
Entrance with ticket until full capacity is reached