Closing – Nanni Balestrini: Art As Political Action – One Thousand And One Voices

By Center for Italian Modern Art

Jun 22  |  Culture

This exhibition, curated by Marco Scotini, is dedicated to Italian artist and writer Nanni Balestrini (1935-2019). The exhibition focuses on two crucial decades in the career of the Neoavanguardia artist, the 1960s and the 1970s. It begins ideally in 1963, the year in which the Gruppo 63 literary movement was founded in Palermo with Balestrini among its founders. It then concludes in 1980, the year of the release of Blackout, a short poem conceived in the aftermath of the New York City blackout of 1977.

Planned as an “action for voice” to be performed by Demetrio Stratos in May 1979, the work was never performed due to the premature death of the Greek vocal experimenter and to Balestrini’s indictment in the 1979 investigations surrounding Autonomia Operaia.