{"id":4731,"date":"2022-06-30T12:05:00","date_gmt":"2022-06-30T10:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.purgatorioadarco.it\/?p=4731"},"modified":"2022-07-08T15:57:35","modified_gmt":"2022-07-08T13:57:35","slug":"comizi-di-donne-sound-installation-di-marco-messina","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.purgatorioadarco.it\/en\/comizi-di-donne-sound-installation-di-marco-messina\/","title":{"rendered":"Comizi di donne &#8211;  Video installation by Maria Teresa Annarumma"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Video installation &#8211; curated by Maria Teresa Annarumma<br><\/strong>Opening 30th of June 2022 h.19.00<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-columns is-layout-flex wp-container-core-columns-is-layout-8f761849 wp-block-columns-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\" style=\"flex-basis:100%\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large is-resized\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.purgatorioadarco.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/comizi-di-donne-total-15-1-1024x139.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-4484\" width=\"1006\" height=\"136\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.purgatorioadarco.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/comizi-di-donne-total-15-1-1024x139.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.purgatorioadarco.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/comizi-di-donne-total-15-1-300x41.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.purgatorioadarco.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/comizi-di-donne-total-15-1-768x104.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.purgatorioadarco.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/comizi-di-donne-total-15-1-1536x208.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/www.purgatorioadarco.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/comizi-di-donne-total-15-1-2048x278.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1006px) 100vw, 1006px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Complesso Museale Santa Maria delle Anime del Purgatorio ad Arco-Naples&nbsp; Via dei Tribunali 39&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-vimeo wp-block-embed-vimeo wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<p class=\"responsive-video-wrap clr\"><iframe title=\"Comizi di donne (2022) Film curated by Maria Teresa Annarumma\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/722138032?h=3b5f742423&amp;dnt=1&amp;app_id=122963\" width=\"1200\" height=\"675\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">During the pandemic thousands of women lost their jobs (in Italy, 98% of the people fired as a&nbsp; result of the pandemic have been women and it has been calculated that globally women have&nbsp; lost around $ 800 billions in income) and of these very many came to be overwhelmed by the lack&nbsp; of effective welfare support (the series of lock-downs pushed women in many cases to be the only&nbsp; one taking care of their children or of their elderly and infirm parents). Now we are living at a time&nbsp; of a new war in Europe in which we see men in conflict with other men, men trying to negotiate,&nbsp; men trying to flee but being turned back and driven to war by their own people. And women?&nbsp; Women escape with their children, women wait, and women become part of the landscape of&nbsp; war. It is a scenario that we could have seen through centuries. It is a scene my mother knew as a&nbsp; child and one from which I have been spared.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Women\u2019s lives have been always under pressure, across centuries, even if with different&nbsp; consequences depending on the specific context. They have needed to fight social, economic&nbsp; and political structures which set apart the participation of women and which exploit their work&nbsp; (domestic and not).&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Nowadays, in our societies, it\u2019s common to imagine women as emancipated and as free to shape&nbsp; their lives as they choose, but, of course, the daily reality for the great majority of women is very&nbsp; different. Much of daily life is experienced as an obstacle course in which the problems to be&nbsp; negotiated, economic, social and political, are still very much present, even where the cultural and&nbsp; societal circumstances can be said to have changed. If we have, for example, almost universally&nbsp; overcome the limited access to jobs (recognizing at the same time that there are many countries&nbsp; in which this is not yet the reality) because of political decisions shaped by economic as well as by&nbsp; wider social pressures, there are still very significant differences in the levels of wages between&nbsp; men and women.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But if we are generally aware of wage disparities, or that women are still very often victims of a&nbsp; double morality in society in which they are judged very widely for their sexual choices or even<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">their clothing style (thinking of the way in which this is put under a magnifying lens in sexual&nbsp; harassment cases, the judgement being decided on the evidence of a too short dress or the&nbsp; contents of a mobile phone that betray a too eager interest in carnality), I believe that it is even&nbsp; more important to give attention to the daily efforts that women have the habit to face even just&nbsp; to get the most basic of equal opportunities in life: how many times should women still have to&nbsp; face the life determining choice between maternity or career? How many times should women&nbsp; have to substitute for the lack of welfare to support children or elderly people in care, sacrificing&nbsp; their own hopes and aspirations? And how many times will a business plan, reorganization, a&nbsp; \u201cdownsizing\u201d, inevitably result in the women employees being \u201clet go\u201d while the men get to&nbsp; stay? It is in these daily decisions, and in many others like them, that the imbalances and&nbsp; inequities that persist deform lives and betray not only individual hope but the hopes of society,&nbsp; of men as well as of women.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We have all experienced directly or indirectly situations of gender inequality, it is sadly evident&nbsp; that this is a social injustice commonly accepted as the normality, maybe regrettable, but just the&nbsp; way things are. After the \u201cgolden age\u201d of the feminist movements and the several achievements&nbsp; that they got, we haven\u2019t seen a wider cultural revolution. Instead, there has been a progressive&nbsp; polarization of the female fight for a personal agenda, always recuperated and contained by the&nbsp; lack of a collective determination. The wave of attention to women\u2019s predicament ebbing in the&nbsp; face of overfamiliarity, economic recession, the next big thing, gender disparity, and the&nbsp; assumption that everything had changed &#8211; when, as we see from where we are today, the look,&nbsp; the dress, the means of expression, may not be the same but so much that we hoped and&nbsp; believed would be different remains much as it was. It\u2019s well into the twenty first century and still&nbsp; this is how things are. The promise of a way forwards through the economic demands of society&nbsp; for a larger and better educated work force, or the seeming invitation of new technologies that&nbsp; would free women in every part of their lives, in the home, in their families, in the new work place,&nbsp; even in dating and in pleasure, bringing with it a new limit, a new condition, so much like the old&nbsp; one.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The pandemic and the consequent economic and social crisis showed us how much the belief in a&nbsp; new society built solely on the promise of new technologies capable of freeing people, was a&nbsp; chimera, as the promise has always been, the new freedoms and benefits opening to new cages,&nbsp; new brutalities, and the same old inequities, but yet more extreme. It was the first time since the&nbsp; start of the industrial world, and its globalization, that production was everywhere curtailed and&nbsp; the workers forced to stay home where they were dependent on technologies that both enabled&nbsp; their lives and developed dependencies that constrain them. And this didn\u2019t only help to push&nbsp; forward new, and sometimes more dramatic, forms of worker\u2019s exploitation, the consequences of&nbsp; which are yet to be played out, but was able to create a polarization of individuality &#8211; the yet more&nbsp; isolated mother and career, the home office worker, the gig economy worker waiting for a call&nbsp; that may come just one day a week, the on-call taxi driver, etc. A world that emerges from the&nbsp; sense of personal and societal danger and the feelings of the lives of family, friends, neighbors,&nbsp; and fellow workers, being precarious and uncertain, emerges from the isolation that many&nbsp; experienced, maybe for the first time, into a precarious present. There is both the memory of a&nbsp; very recent past and a collective social and psychological hurt, and, for many, loss, as well as an&nbsp; uncertainty about the present. What we have witnessed through this time, everywhere and&nbsp; throughout society, was the need of care and relation: the care which many missed because social&nbsp; relations were limited, and the care that many others were in need of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The large project of Comizi di Donne, of which this is the final part, began with Pier Paolo Pasolini&nbsp; and his understanding that we need to attend to the living, and to lives for too long overlooked.&nbsp; And, with this, relating Pasolini\u2019s thought to that of Fernand Braudel and the social historians of&nbsp; the \u201clongue dur\u00e9e\u201d. The work taking as its base a conception of history as being traced through&nbsp; everyday lives and not, as convention had for long determined, of history as a chronicle of events,&nbsp; of great men, and great victories. For Braudel history as the everyday is the history of the world&nbsp; that carries all being, of which great events are only one, and by no means the most significant,&nbsp; part.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cComizi di Donne\u201d aims at the revolutionary possibilities of what art can be, how it may act, with&nbsp; us as protagonists in its making. And to do that, we propose from this also a revolutionary reading&nbsp; of the history of Naples and of Neapolitan women supporting the idea of the New Neapolitan&nbsp; Republic: The Republic of Women, a step that was prefigured by the female voices of the sound&nbsp; installation by Marco Messina that marked in its revolutionary assertion the transition between the&nbsp; past, of Pasolini and Braudel, and the contested present.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Of course, Naples is the city where this project takes place, but I also believe that the history of&nbsp; Naples and of the first Neapolitan Republic, as well as the history of a part of the Neapolitan&nbsp; feminist movements, can give us a possible alternative settlement in a new shared awareness.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This is the proposal of Comizi di Donne: an affective art of caring and relation, and a new republic&nbsp; of Naples.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Why Naples&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Historical background&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Naples has several historical and social sides which can be seen as being particularly helpful in&nbsp; this. The revolution and the establishment of the Republic of Naples in 1799, even if can be seen&nbsp; as very distant from us in time, had several aspects to it that have significance for us now. And&nbsp; one in particular: despite its having been a revolution from an intellectual \u201delite\u201d, it was totally&nbsp; focused on the idea that the core of every democracy was the education of all the citizens. Those&nbsp; who later in the century will be called proletarians. The fatal irony of course is that this republic&nbsp; that was founded in the notion of the emancipation of the people was to be overthrown by the&nbsp; very citizens it longed to free, as the populous, manipulated by the deposed monarchy and&nbsp; estranged from the revolution, rose up against it and brought it down. In doing so opening the&nbsp; way to the return of a corrupt and slowly degenerating regime that would last until the events of&nbsp; the later part of the century, and the coming of another, more equivocal, revolution, a republic&nbsp; that would come to diminish Naples and the Neapolitan world.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Looking at this history alongside the path of the feminist movements of the later part of the&nbsp; twentieth century in Naples, we can see so many parallel experiences, even across the almost two&nbsp; centuries that separate them. And these can be inspiring for a different historical understanding. It&nbsp; is because of this that our conversation began with the association \u201cMadrigale per Lucia\u201d&nbsp; concerning what I believe is a significantly interesting part of the history of Italian feminism&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">reflected in the life of Lucia Mastrodomenico and the \u201cMensa dei Bambini Proletari\u201d (Canteen of&nbsp; proletarian children) of which she was one of the founders.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A laboratory of activism born in 1973 the Mensa showed, in the 10 years of its life, that political&nbsp; consciousness needs to be able to develop pragmatic answers responding to people\u2019s needs, to&nbsp; help and to be useful. It was set up when several leftist intellectuals decided to challenge the&nbsp; difficult reality of what was one of the poor districts in Naples (actually feeding and giving&nbsp; educational tools to hundreds of children). With it they experimented in the forming of a feminism&nbsp; that could look without illusion or prejudice to the everyday life experience of women in&nbsp; attempting to understand in what pragmatic ways they could be helped to free themselves from&nbsp; the struggle simply to survive.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The story of the \u201cMensa\u201d can show us that even when there is at the center of a feminist&nbsp; approach to society an interpretation of women\u2019s skills, like the practice of caring and the&nbsp; attention to relations, skills in which they are already valued, it is possible to see an alternative&nbsp; way of living daily life which can free them from much that oppresses them. A change which&nbsp; makes a giant difference to individual lives and to a community. In fact, through the testimony of&nbsp; some women who were part of this group (between them also Cinzia Mastrodomenico), we will&nbsp; see that education, caring, and attention to relation, which are still significantly a part of women\u2019s&nbsp; daily lives, can be democratic instruments in the forming of a new society, as it was hoped by the&nbsp; first Neapolitan Republic.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But it may also be imagined that the gap of recognition of the reality of this part of female&nbsp; experience, so widely overlooked, can be seen to be one of the reasons in which the cultural&nbsp; revolution hoped for by feminism found an incomplete outcome. It may be that the distance&nbsp; between intellectuals and the simple practical issues that women face and from which many&nbsp; intellectually engaged women, through education, inherited wealth, and familial security, are&nbsp; distanced, however sincere their purpose, could be the reason of this incomplete revolution. It is&nbsp; of course true that these are not only matters of class and inequality, arguments continue to rage&nbsp; around race and ethnicity, cultural distinctions, religion and historical division. That which&nbsp; separates, and which traps us in an unbroken cycle of disappointed hope, has deep roots.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Messina\u2019s Nuova Repubblica Napoletana asserts that while the great promise and possibility of&nbsp; the first Neapolitan Republic was in the strength of its people, however it and they were betrayed,&nbsp; its base were, and continue to be, in its women, in general and in particular, in female social&nbsp; being and in individual lives. That is, in this hidden and essential part of the society that in the&nbsp; past would have been identified with the proletariat, but, in a time in which capitalistic&nbsp; exploitation is spread across every social class, it comes to stand for, to represent, and to most&nbsp; clear speak for, the reality of the female condition, and, form this, it comes to be the ground for&nbsp; revolutionary change.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What Nuova Repubblica Napoletana, as well as the stories that I have spoken about here, and&nbsp; that we are going to hear about in Comizi di Donne, show is also the attitude that is maybe&nbsp; peculiar to this city and which relates to the history of Neapolitan women. As becomes ever more&nbsp; evident: there is a Neapolitan incapability to go beyond the present, and the past, in near total&nbsp; blindness to the future. At the same time tradition, and of course superstition, are a part of daily&nbsp; life in constant conversation with the experience of each inhabitant. It is as though there is always&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">a sense of there being no horizon, and an awareness that it is pointless to plan for the future and&nbsp; that all experiences get lost beyond the life of those who live them.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The common rule is to get the best from the present without thinking too much about the&nbsp; consequences.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But women are about creation and future! And might it not be that part of this cultural and social&nbsp; malaise comes from the displacement, the denial, of the truth of the female condition which still&nbsp; looks in vain for social, cultural and political recognition?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Cultural reason&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Pasolini had a curious affection for Naples, writing, almost fifty years ago now: \u201c<em>(\u2026) <\/em><em>Although it&nbsp; has been a long time since I last visited Naples, Neapolitans are for me the kind of people that I&nbsp; really find likeable, and in addition to this they are ideologically likeable. They are the ones who&nbsp; have not changed during this time (the last ten years), and in fact they have always been like that&nbsp; (\u2026)\u201d <\/em>(<em>Lutheran Letters,1976). <\/em>What Pasolini could well have been describing is the kind of&nbsp; dramatic, direct and possibly theatrical way in which Neapolitans are used to live without filter,&nbsp; beyond the one of expression.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Naples, in terms of its urban development, doesn\u2019t really have at its center a distinct separation&nbsp; between districts that can be characterized by social class: it\u2019s possible, in many cases, that&nbsp; wealthy people and poor people live not only in the same districts but even in the same buildings&nbsp; (there are districts where this is not the case but they are outside of the center). This cohabitation,&nbsp; together with the high density of the city, allows for this kind of easy dramatic expression in the&nbsp; face of often significantly different cultural backgrounds. Diversity is, or has been, welcome (as in&nbsp; every port city) but alongside this there is the near impossibility of building the kind of bubble of&nbsp; protection, the separation, that contemporary cities have increasingly constructed around wealthy&nbsp; neighborhoods.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In fact, this peculiarity is considered by many a fundamental influence that Naples has had on&nbsp; Italian culture in the early XIX century and it\u2019s important to remember that it was significantly&nbsp; influential in post-war Italy of the twentieth century in the development of the cinema of&nbsp; Neorealism, and its reading of society and history which shaped in part Pasolini\u2019s filmmaking, and&nbsp; inevitably \u201cComizi di Donne\u201d.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Naples, until the First World War (until Mussolini decided to build up Cinecitt\u00e0 in Rome), was the&nbsp; center of Italian film production. The first Italian company of film studios, \u201cPartenope Film\u201d, was&nbsp; Neapolitan. The city had an illustrious history of theatre, production and performance, and the&nbsp; infrastructure to support the newly developing industry, it was also of course the base for the&nbsp; vibrant and prolific production of Neapolitan songs (which until now are internationally&nbsp; recognized). The films that were being made in the new studios were based on stories of social&nbsp; injustice and a dramatized reality that was familiar to the audiences of the day. It\u2019s not by chance&nbsp; that the Neapolitan Peppino Amato who grew up in Naples, as an actor, and who then became a&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">producer in Rome, was the one who helped Vittorio De Sica in his career and supported Roberto&nbsp; Rossellini for his films.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Neapolitan way to live, and maybe even to overact, forms a part of the inheritance of Italian&nbsp; cinema as it does for theatre and popular song, and it\u2019s a background that was deeply influential&nbsp; for Pasolini and his conception of realism. Specifically, in his \u201cComizi d\u2019Amore\u201d, which is one of&nbsp; the references for my work. It was a film in which Pasolini, travelling across Italy, through&nbsp; conversations with people of every social background, was asking about love, which he believed&nbsp; to be the most sensitive part of human being, and that which can give an understanding of social&nbsp; change at a level that was beyond the reach of all other means.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Comizi d\u2019Amore\u201d is a reading of history which relates to the work of the social historians like&nbsp; Braudel. It may appear at first to be dealing with quite another reality than that described by&nbsp; these historians but there are significant parallel meanings. And it aims at the kind of art without&nbsp; authorship &#8211; or of radically shifted authorship &#8211; towards which Grotowski struggled in his work and&nbsp; life. As we examined in an earlier part of our project.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Comizi d\u2019Amore\u201d is a film which looks at history as a lived present, listens to people whose voices&nbsp; and stories shape the meanings that develop within it, it does not rely on research through&nbsp; documentation, it is informed by those who speak in its conversation about love, and in its effect,&nbsp; it comes to describe a society and a world that we share, at once familiar and profoundly strange.&nbsp; It is not polished or sophisticated in its filming, but it touches on things that art, until today, rarely&nbsp; speaks to. And it asks of us as the audience a way of seeing, and an attention, that we don\u2019t have&nbsp; the habit of. It asks that we can conceive ourselves as being within the conversation of the film in&nbsp; our attention to it, becoming complicit through our recognition, the experience and relationships&nbsp; that we bring to it, and our shared sensibility. It asks us to be open to an unfamiliar language, an&nbsp; affective language, of sensibility and shared being. It is a precursor to our present understandings&nbsp; of the common place and of community but through the revolutionary perspective of an affective&nbsp; aesthetic: recognition, empathy and caring.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cComizi di Donne\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Taking place over several hours, Comizi di Donne is made from intimate accounts of life,&nbsp; fragments of other lives, other histories, stories of place, of families, of generations, of friendship,&nbsp; stories of hope and of fear. Two things happen in the long duration of the work, those speaking&nbsp; become, over time, both the protagonists and authors of their stories, strongly individual in their&nbsp; telling of their own lives, and, at the same time, and in the same action of telling, there is a&nbsp; correlation that tells of community and of the social world.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">How does this happen? It may perhaps be seen as being analogous to the weaving of a tapestry&nbsp; in which the threads of individual lives, when woven together, are seen to form an image through&nbsp; their interrelation with others, in some ways resembling society itself. But it is more than that, the&nbsp; effective power of each person, their fierce individuation, understood in correlation, both asserts&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">the singular volition of the person, and their particular experience, while bringing into being a&nbsp; community of shared experience. And this is not such an easy perception in Naples, which can so&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">often be seen as lacking the civic activism, the consciousness of shared purpose, or a notion of&nbsp; consequence beyond present need, that other cities, other societies, more clearly have. It is often&nbsp; difficult to imagine Naples as having a coherent society beyond family or allegiance to a football&nbsp; club. This is why attention to an overlooked present can be both the beginning of a vivid tapestry&nbsp; of voices and impressions, to be woven over time, and a manifesto, a premonition of a coming&nbsp; community.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This is not the Naples of too familiar stereotypes. Made from the everyday, the voices of the&nbsp; women of Comizi di Donne are not the voices of lives at the margin but bold and passionate&nbsp; voices that assert their presence, the presence of a world too long ignored.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Just as Pasolini does in \u201cComizi d\u2019Amore\u201d, I aim to cancel every possible form of conventional&nbsp; authorship and to make women within the sphere of Comizi di Donne protagonists and authors of&nbsp; history itself, of their own history and that of society, as they are actually in the world. In this it will&nbsp; be the present talking through the lives of women who fight daily between economic, social and&nbsp; cultural difficulties. Pasolini\u2019s fascination with Geoffrey Chaucer\u2019s \u201cCanterbury Tales\u201d and&nbsp; Boccaccio\u2019s \u201cDecameron\u201d concerned the telling of stories in which the social or economic&nbsp; circumstances of the protagonists do not determine the truth or effect, the narrative is carried not&nbsp; through heroic identification, or through hierarchical conventions, but through lived experience&nbsp; and by the accumulation of individual tales and fragments that are glimpsed of the everyday&nbsp; world. What matters in this reading is the capability to understand the world looking at the&nbsp; relations that inform it, and in attention to the ways in which people shape their own histories, and&nbsp; in this way our history and the world in which we also live. This is both a simple and a complex&nbsp; notion. We are all of us aware of how great events may shape our lives, pandemic or war, in ways&nbsp; over which we feel that we have little control, and even within the day to day of lives distant from&nbsp; war, and freed from immediate fear of contamination and infection, there can be, for many, a&nbsp; sense of only having a tenuous hold on how we can shape our lives as we may wish them to be.&nbsp; Nonetheless within the possibility of our lives there is a negotiation of the day to day that not only&nbsp; sustains us but which comes to form, in its commonplace of relation, work, shared effort, and&nbsp; persistence, the basis of community and of society in large. In this is the deep history of the&nbsp; \u201clongue dur\u00e9e\u201d, the for long unacknowledged present that underpins the world. And its&nbsp; meanings matter to us now.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In gossip, in conversation, in the day to day of relation, there is an unattended present, a world&nbsp; that can often be overlooked, as something too familiar, too mundane, that is in the background&nbsp; but which is of little significance. But in attention to the ways, we are together and to the ways we&nbsp; tell our world, and our relationships, to each other, we may discover a world that is familiar and&nbsp; moving also in its difference, affecting in this tension between a place we know, a place we&nbsp; inhabit and recognize, and the dissonances, the half noticed things, and strangeness at the&nbsp; margin of our own lives. It doesn\u2019t make the evening news, and may appear to be just another&nbsp; part of the \u201cstatic\u201d in the air, like texting, or the constant online of a phone we carry, it is the&nbsp; unconsidered stuff of other unacknowledged lives. But in hearing these stories juxtaposed, just as&nbsp; they are in life, there emerges the trace of a society that exists alongside the official, \u201clegitimate\u201d,&nbsp; the established, world. Just as Braudel\u2019s deep history existed unacknowledged alongside the&nbsp; story of kings and queens, power and wealth, alongside it but underpinning everything. Its&nbsp; aspiration and its betrayal were equally evident in the first Neapolitan Republic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Because the most unacknowledged voices within this long history have been those of women in&nbsp; their everyday, which is the commonplace that we share with them, the world which I have written&nbsp; about here. Comizi Di Donne, in brief testimonies and in its conversation, happens now in our&nbsp; time, as immediate living history &#8211; the history that is shaping each of us &#8211; and as present: in its&nbsp; hope, its subdued rage, its assertion of life, and even in the curious melancholy that it sometimes&nbsp; evokes. And in this, even in its contradictions, there is the frame of the missed cultural female&nbsp; revolution, its obstacles, of course, but also its possibility.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This is the material of the new Neapolitan republic, a republic that may finally speak for all of its&nbsp; citizens, equally.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If we believe, as many of us do, that inside the recognition of what is the peculiarity and strength&nbsp; of the female identity, like care and relationality, as Lucia Mastrodomenico used to say, (and these&nbsp; are neither elemental characteristics nor simply culturally determined attributes. At a time when&nbsp; even having a womb is seen as a relativism there nevertheless can be imagined to be a female&nbsp; principle that informs our humanity) there can be found a way through this struggling&nbsp; contemporary time. We need a reading of history which allows this understanding, and looks to&nbsp; what must be done to free the potential of it in our present. And a new sensibility, a&nbsp; thoughtfulness about the present that continues beneath the surface of great events, of political&nbsp; dramas, pandemic, and of war.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And this comes to the most difficult part.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Corresponding to these meanings is a way of looking at art that works, that acts, differently. There&nbsp; are forms of art that ask us for a familiar reading, and forms of art that ask of us rather different&nbsp; kinds of attention. Attention in which we are conscious of being a part of a conversation. The&nbsp; artist Craigie Horsfield, whose thought has helped to inform this project from its beginning,&nbsp; describes an affective attention, a way of seeing and of listening that opens to caring. An&nbsp; attention that relates to what the feminist theorist Bracha Ettinger has called \u201cwithnes&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">s\u2019, a withnessing, an attention, in which we too are protagonists, we too are engaged and are&nbsp; complicit. An attention without separation or distance. The look of the film is conventional but&nbsp; what is happening and what it asks of us is different in this way.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And about duration. I have written earlier in the project about long form work in relation to Marco&nbsp; Messina\u2019s four hours soundwork. I have described the changed relation to reading and&nbsp; experiencing art that it creates. But still for many the idea that there should be the choice to stay&nbsp; watching throughout the duration of the film or to simply only watch a part, or return day after&nbsp; day to watch in sections, can feel uncomfortable, a kind of false or knowing disruption in the way&nbsp; that some books are published with loose leaves so that the reader might rearrange the story.&nbsp; But, of course, throughout the twentieth century, and since, long form film works have existed,&nbsp; from Abel Gance to Andy Warhol, and each invited a different attention. And it has continued&nbsp; with artists as diverse as Aleksandr Sokurov, Christian Marclay and Craigie Horsfield. In fact, even&nbsp; with these precedents the film may appear too long for many of us because we have the habit of&nbsp; watching short videos through social media, or because we have become familiar with video in art&nbsp; which is most often structured in loops of just a few minutes so that the fickle attention of the&nbsp; viewer might not wander to other distractions. There is quite widely reported a kind of panic&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">about shortened spans of attention that new media supposedly encourage. But set against that&nbsp; there is evidence of a different dynamic in the popularity of multi episode series on streaming&nbsp; services, in which narratives develop over very much greater length than ever they did in even the&nbsp; most elaborate of Hollywood epics, and \u201cbinge watching\u201d that during the pandemic could&nbsp; consume whole days for many marooned in isolation. The duration of Comizi Di Donne looks first&nbsp; of all to none of these antecedents. I would describe it in another way, a way that corresponds&nbsp; with what I have returned to again and again in writing this, Comizi di Donne is meant to be a&nbsp; date with a group of women, and an experience of closeness and empathy: it\u2019s possible to watch&nbsp; it for all its length or just a part of it because what matters is the will to meet, and to give time to a&nbsp; different awareness of the hidden history of women, which is familiar but also not ours, in the&nbsp; recognition of other lives. There is also an effect that may just be a very personal reflection, the&nbsp; cumulative impression, over time, is one of melancholy, a touching sadness. It doesn\u2019t come from&nbsp; these often vivid lives but from the feeling of our own stories still held between seemingly&nbsp; irreconcilable forces.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What does any of this mean beyond description, critique, and exhortation? Its substance and its&nbsp; true thesis is in the voices of the women in the film who have made it from their own lives. And&nbsp; whoever sees it, and is open to it, will bring their own recognitions and understandings to it. This&nbsp; is its lived consequence, as a continuing conversation.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cComizi di Donne\u201d shows us a deep history and the choice for a revolutionary path which asks&nbsp; first of all an action of awareness: female awareness of their own condition, of our own condition,&nbsp; and a collective awareness of what is necessary to change to free a real shift in a social&nbsp; revolutionary change. It is why, as rough and as provisional as Comizi di Donne is, it is a manifesto&nbsp; born from the present.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-right wp-block-paragraph\">Maria Teresa Annarumma&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Comizi di Donne has been generously supported by Opera Pia Purgatorio ad Arco onlus Thank you to the collaboration with:\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cAssociazione Amici di Carlo Fulvio Velardi\u201d onlus&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cAssociazione Madrigale per Lucia\u201d onlus&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cAssociazione sportiva \u201cChampion Center la Scampia che Vince\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Special thanks to:&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Cinzia Mastrodomenico for the support and her dear friendship&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Caterina Cibelli for her generous help&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Thank you to Michele Federico for his passion in editing<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"151\" src=\"https:\/\/www.purgatorioadarco.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/comizi-di-donne-total-Copia-16-1024x151.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-4584\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.purgatorioadarco.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/comizi-di-donne-total-Copia-16-1024x151.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.purgatorioadarco.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/comizi-di-donne-total-Copia-16-300x44.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.purgatorioadarco.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/comizi-di-donne-total-Copia-16-768x113.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.purgatorioadarco.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/comizi-di-donne-total-Copia-16-1536x226.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/www.purgatorioadarco.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/comizi-di-donne-total-Copia-16-2048x302.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Video installation &#8211; curated by Maria Teresa AnnarummaOpening 30th of June 2022 h.19.00 Complesso Museale Santa Maria delle Anime del Purgatorio ad Arco-Naples&nbsp; Via dei Tribunali 39&nbsp; During the pandemic thousands of women lost their jobs (in Italy, 98% of the people fired as a&nbsp; result of the pandemic have been women and it has [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":4771,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","ocean_front_end_style_editor":"no","ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"0","ocean_second_sidebar":"0","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"0","ocean_custom_header_template":"0","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"0","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"0","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"0","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"off","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-activities","entry","has-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purgatorioadarco.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purgatorioadarco.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purgatorioadarco.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purgatorioadarco.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purgatorioadarco.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4731"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.purgatorioadarco.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4731\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4808,"href":"https:\/\/www.purgatorioadarco.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4731\/revisions\/4808"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purgatorioadarco.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purgatorioadarco.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purgatorioadarco.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purgatorioadarco.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","t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