Inspired by the homonymous experience that took place in Rome in 1977 – when the legendary Beat ‘72, the independent Roman avant-garde theatre led by Simone Carella, Ulisse Benedetti, Franco Cordelli, and Giuseppe Bartolucci, initiated a season of 10 days of happenings throughout the city – in 2021 a group of artists, curators, and designers founded Iniziative di II.

The collective wanted to explore the relationship between performativity and the public space through a series of public performances that occurred between the 8th and the 16th of May, involving a number of prominent artists from the Roman scene.

In 2022 Iniziative di II was presented in the form of a magazine, exploring possible correlations between two apparently antithetical terms: performance and publishing.

Wishing to expand the relationship between archive/documentation and ephemeral forms of expression and knowledge transmission, a series of artists and researchers were asked to develop an editorial piece that was not the mere documentation of their performative work, but rather one of its integral parts. The result is an artists’ magazine that combines academic research with various artistic and editorial practices, to present its reader with an object that can disclose different verbal and non-verbal meanings.

Extending the research path started with Issue #0, II Magazine Issue #1 will keep questioning the contradictions existing within publishing, and its relationship to lesser visible or permanent forms of expression.

In the age of the algorithm, everything that is shared is subjected to reduction, classification, and potentially infinite reproduction. Through the work of a group of artists, researchers, and authors, we will present the readers with different stories, reflecting on the underlying reasons that eventually led (or didn’t lead) to their publication and on different publishing mechanisms. Which ways of publishing can we imagine that exceed traditionally accepted and decoded forms of communication? Can we share information and knowledges, while at the same time generating an opaque space that can protect the material that is made public?