11.05.2023

DEARS READS

Performance, Poetry, Reading, Milano

H18:30
‘STATE OF MIND/STATO D’ANIMO’ series

Dates
11.05.2023
Location
Milano
Category
Performance, Poetry, Reading
Information

H18:30
‘STATE OF MIND/STATO D’ANIMO’ series

The event will take place at H18:30 at Istituto Svizzero, via del Vecchio Politecnico 3, Milan. Free entry. 

DEARS READS

As a magazine dedicated to writing practices at the crossroads of art, poetry and experimental writing, DEARS explores forms of language which open up new ways of living together. It is conceived as a space of manifold dimensions in which a diverse range of voices and perspectives can meet and echo each other. Five issues have been released since its creation in 2020. Besides its physical format, DEARS has expanded into readings, performances, and audio-pieces presented in various venues and festivals, such as Kunsthalle Basel (Basel), Material (Zurich), Sonic Matter at Last Tango (Zurich), Topic (Geneva), EXC Librairie (Paris).

Editors: Nicole Bachmann, Delphine Chapuis Schmitz, Robert Steinberger.
Graphic Design: Guillaume Mojon.

During the event at Istituto Svizzero in Milan, DEARS will present their transversal approach, give a glimpse of their work, and discuss how the magazine has developed over the past three years. The presentation and discussion will be followed by readings by the authors Florinda Fusco, Marianna Maruyama, and Dzifa Benson. Writing between poetry, art, and performance, the three authors have contributed to issue 1, 4, and 5 of DEARS under the incentives to.gather, at.tending, and ever.over.

Biographies:

Florinda Fusco has published in various Italian and foreign magazines. In 2001 she published Linee (Zona) and with Il libro delle madonne scure (Mazzoli 2003), illustrated by Luigi Ontani, she won the Delfini Prize. She translated the poetic work of Argentine writer Alejandra Pizarnik from Spanish, winning the Bernard Simeone National Translation Prize (2004). She published Tre Opere (oedipus) in 2009 and the multimedia book Thérèse (Polìmata) in 2011. She has participated in various poetry festivals in Italy and abroad. She collaborated with the Operabianco theatre research company on the work Ma and wrote for them Film-Macchina della vista e dell’udito (published in 2017 by Camera Verde). The bilingual text The book of the dark Madonnas was published in 2020 with the Logosfere di Zona series. She has written monographs and several essays on modern and contemporary Italian literature. Her new book Il compleanno e altre opere came out in 2022 with Argolibri. Materia osservabile and Quaderno non matematico are forthcoming. Her texts have been translated into English, French, Spanish and Greek.

Marianna Maruyama is an artist and writer based in The Hague. She is interested in love and translation. Her work has been performed and exhibited at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam; documenta14 Parliament of Bodies, Kassel; The Jewish Historical Museum, Amsterdam; Manifesta 11, Zurich; The Centraal Museum, Utrecht; IMPAKT festival, Utrecht and CAC Vilnius. Selected publications include: Performing Security (The Fifth Season, 2019); Translation as Method (Kunstlicht, 2017); Three Movements (Casco/DAI, 2013); Farocki’s Living Room (Harun Farocki Institut, 2018). Since 2016, she has been active as an artist-researcher at the invitation of the Sedje Hémon Foundation in The Hague.

Dzifa Benson is an award-winning Ghanaian-British multi-disciplinary artist whose work intersects science, art, technology, the body and ritual which she explores through poetry, prose, theatre, performance, art curation, immersive technologies, essays and criticism. She received a Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowship, was shortlisted for the inaugural James Berry Poetry Prize in 2021 and toured South Africa with the British Council in 2010. Her abridgement and adaption of the National Youth Theatre REP Company’s 2021 production of Othello, in collaboration with Olivier award-winning director Miranda Cromwell, toured the UK. Her byline, covering poetry, theatre, music, fiction and non-fiction appears in the Telegraph, the Financial Times, the Times Literary Supplement, Wasafiri and Poetry Review. In 2022, Dzifa Benson held poetry and curatorial residencies at Whitstable Biennale, Pallant House Gallery and at Orleans House Gallery for its Lines of Dissent exhibition. A BBC Contains Strong Language 2022 poet, Dzifa Benson is a fellow of Hedgebrook and holds a Master degree in Text & Performance from RADA and Birkbeck.

The event is part of STATE OF MIND/STATO D’ANIMO, a series of events at Istituto Svizzero in Milan.

Since autumn 2020 we retrace the state of the art, the world and the soul through a series of events, which include screenings, dialogues, listening and workshops. STATE OF MIND/STATO D’ANIMO is also nurtured by the experience of the pandemic and lockdowns, which has taught us, among other things, that reading opens up to new worlds, that people can be close to each other even through the Zoom platform or that taking care of oneself and others is redeeming. Moreover, if on the one hand this period has allowed us to focus, once again, on ourselves, on the other hand it has sensitised our eyes to new and re-evaluated aspects of life: our state of mind and the state of the world. We reflect on the issues that concern us and to which we want to devote ourselves; on the things we can do and what we want to learn; we ask ourselves in what world we live in and under what conditions we want to work. We are convinced that art and culture are fundamental in this context, as they ask questions and provide food for thought.

STATE OF MIND/STATO D’ANIMO’s events are linked to the exhibition programme of Istituto Svizzero, and also draw on other themes. The project involves artists and other players in the art world, from Switzerland, Italy and the rest of the world.

The event may be photographed and/or video recorded for archival, educational, and related promotional purposes. By attending this event, you are giving your consent to be photographed and/or video recorded.