SESSION 3: IN QUALCHE LUOGO LONTANO: ROMA

May 18, 2021 at 6pm at the Spanish Academy, Rome.

In our third session of In Qualche Luogo Lontano: Roma (In Some Far Place: Roma), Giulia Damiani, Sara Giannini and Arnisa Zeqo will be presenting From the Volcano to the Sea: An Encounter with Le Nemesiache.

In Some Far Place: Roma is a programme part of Space is The Place/The Place is Space taking place in the city of Rome. Space is The Place/The Place is Space aims to analyse the role of art as a critical practice which offers tools for stopping, looking and situating ourselves in the world; for creating situations and imagining ways of living and producing space. It is a programme whose structure takes the shape of periodical encounters in different forms, such as presentations, reading sessions, walks and art productions.

FROM THE VOLCANO TO THE SEA: AN ENCOUNTER WITH LE NEMESIACHE

This talk introduces the exhibition From the Vulcano to the Sea. The Feminist Group Le Nemesiache in the 1970s and 1980s Naples curated by Giulia Damiani with the support of Sara Giannini and Arnisa Zeqo, and with an exhibition design by Maud Vervenne. The show took place in Rongwrong in Amsterdam (13 October 2020 – 1 May 2021) and is a collaboration with the Amsterdam-based performance art organization If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution.

Founded by philosopher, artist and writer Lina Mangiacapre in 1970, Le Nemesiache was an open group of exclusively female participants. Together, they constructed a ‘different daily life’, reclaiming mythology as an embodied practice of feminist transformation. Developing from Giulia Damiani’s encounters with Le Nemesiache and her research on the group, the exhibition presents for the first time the group’s archive dwelling upon their expansive work across film, performance and activism. Their methods and ritualistic practices, purposefully blurring the lines between art and politics, were strongly embedded in the natural and supernatural landscape of Naples, from its volcanic fumes to its archaeological ruins.

Dr Giulia Damiani (lives and works in London and Amsterdam) is a writer, curator and performance collaborator. In Amsterdam she was the fellow of the 2019-2020 edition at If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want to Be Part of Your Revolution and she’s currently editing the organisation’s upcoming publication from the edition on Ritual and Display. She completed a PhD in the Art department at Goldsmiths University, London (2021 AHRC scholarship) on the archive of the feminist group Le Nemesiache from Naples and has been writing new performances inspired by the group’s ritual investment in their natural, supernatural and urban landscape. She’s been teaching in the MA Curating at Goldsmiths as well as guest lecturing and tutoring at Sandberg Instituut, Rietveld Academy, the Dutch Art Institute and SNDO in Amsterdam. Her collaborations with artists bring together practices of myth-making, magic, landscape and the language of evocation and invocation.

Sara Giannini is a curator, writer and collaborator, currently affiliated with the Amsterdam based organisation If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want to Be Part of Your Revolution. Sara studied Theatre and Semiotics in Italy, and before her engagement with If I Can’t Dance, she has worked independently, initiating long-term projects such as the online library Unfold and the curatorial platform Heterotropics. In 2016/17 Sara was a Fellow at the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, where she researched aphasic language and scoring in relation to the archive of René Daniëls. In 2018 she was a Curator in Residence at the Bard College Centre for Curatorial Studies (NY), where she has read and lectured about ecstasy and the flesh of the voice. Sara held teaching positions at the Dutch Art Institute, KABK in The Hague, Das Arts, SNDO and Sandberg Instituut in Amsterdam. She is presently working on a project that follows the spirit of Italian actor, director and writer Carmelo Bene.

Arnisa Zeqo is an art historian, curator and educator. She is based in Amsterdam, lived in Rome during her childhood and was born in Tirana. She is the director of rongwrong, a space for art and theory in Amsterdam. Her work is embedded in artistic practices around performance, fiction, art histories and education. A recent terminology she is developing focuses on the “conceptual body” and the intersections between performance and conceptual art. In 2015/17, she worked for documenta 14 in Athens and Kassel where she was responsible for the education programs (aneducation) in Athens and initiator of the Society of Friends of Ulysses Carrion within the public program The Parliament of Bodies. She has worked in teaching at various institutions such as the Master in Art Praxis at the Dutch Art Institute, ArtEZ University of the Arts, Arnhem. In 2016/17, she was also a guest lecturer at the Athens School of Fine Arts. In 2017, she was a Dutch resident affiliate at the American Academy in Rome through the Mondriaan Fonds and her research focused on gossip, scandal and good manners. In 2015, she read Franz Kafka’s diaries and took long walks along the Hudson River when she was curator-in-residence at the Center for Curatorial Studies Bart College (New York County). The writings of Jane Bowles and June Jordan lend a liberating feel to their methodologies.

In qualche luogo lontano: Roma is developed within the framework of the MAEC-AECID Art, Education, Science and Culture Grant Programme at the Royal Academy of Spain in Rome.