E IL TOPO. History of an artists’ magazine with an unusual editorial strategy
Book Launch
With Guillaume Clermont, Gabriele Di Matteo, David Liver, Frédéric Liver, Steve Piccolo, Gak Sato, Franco Silvestro, Ernesto Raimondi, Filippo Zoli
#Agora
The anthological publication of the artist magazine E IL TOPO will be launched on Wednesday 21 June at MACRO with an action by the Topist collective.
E IL TOPO. History of an artists’ magazine with an unusual editorial strategy is the publication in two volumes made possible thanks to the support of the General Directorate for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture as part of the Italian Council programme (2022), edited by Gabriele Di Matteo and Franco Silvestro, published by a+mbookstore. The publishing project E IL TOPO reconstructs the evolution and achievements of the artists’ magazine of the same title, produced from 1992 to 1996, and then from 2012 to the present. It is composed of a boxed set containing two volumes, as well as eight artists’ posters. The first volume is the anastatic reprint of all 33 issues of the magazine, in the original size. The second volume reconstructs the conceptual matrix that has given rise to this unique example of independent and collaborative publishing, with essays by Anna Cuomo, Françoise Lonardoni, and Giorgio Verzotti.
E IL TOPO in presenting the published anthology, will evoke the ten points of the Topista manifesto published in Seoul in 2014 in an advertisement newspaper. The action will be coordinated by Steve Piccolo, Gak Sato, Gabriele Di Matteo, Franco Silvestro, David Liver, Frédéric Liver, Marinette Dozaville, Guillaume Clermont, Crescenzo Zito, Filippo Zoli and Ernesto Raimondi.
The event will take place in the auditorium.
Free entrance until capacity is reached.
The magazine E IL TOPO was founded by Gabriele Di Matteo and Franco Silvestro together with Armando della Vittoria, Piero Gatto and Vedovamazzei, in Naples in 1992, but its editorial team has always been international, transgenerational and anti-hierarchical. Over the years, the group has been composed of about 20 individuals, in a fluid configuration that has brought together different artists and authors, in many cases for work on specific projects and exchanges: Stefano Arienti, Massimo Bartolini, Vanessa Beecroft, Maurizio Cattelan, Mark Dion, Jimmie Durham, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, John Lurie, Eva Marisaldi, Miltos Manetas, Amedeo Martegani, Cesare Viel, Luca Vitone, among others. The unusual editorial strategy resides, for the most part, in the intrinsic power of discontinuity of meaning, but also of play, irony and détournement.
E IL TOPO is still an international “movement” today, transmitting a libertarian attitude whose modus operandi tolerates no preset roles, but is always open to multidisciplinary and multi-authorial contributions. The presence of E IL TOPO is contextual, it adapts and manifests itself in multiple forms, where the only constant is the magazine of the same name, invariably printed with black ink on gray recycled paper.
The project was made possible thanks to the support of the General Directorate for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities as part of the Italian Council programme (2022), supported by Viaindustriae, co-funded by Fondazione Donnaregina per le arti contemporanee/MADRE museum, Naples, with the sponsor COMIX, Naples.
Interactive presentations have been scheduled at: Magazzino Italian Art, museum, Cold Spring, New York, USA; Madre Museum Naples, Italy; FRAC Occitanie Montpellier, France; MACRO, Rome, Italy; THY LAB, social enterprise, Hong Kong; FRAC Artothèque Nouvelle-Aquitaine, Regional Contemporary Art Fund, Limoges, France.