II Magazine

What happens when two seemingly opposite mediums - one ephemeral , body-dependent, collective, fluid, the other reproducible , archival, immutable - meet?

What tension does a performance show that cannot be recognized within texts or documents and vice versa?

How do you get a performance - even partially - into the form of a book?

II Magazine brings together theoretical and academic research with various artistic and editorial practices on printed pages, to present its reader with an object capable of revealing different verbal and non-verbal meanings .

Each contribution (unpublished or adaptation of a previous work) is presented in the form and medium chosen by the artist/researcher/author.

In the spring of 2021 a group of young artists and curators gave life to Initiatives of II , twelve days of performances that took place in Rome from 8 to 19 May, spread across the city's public space.

Their intent, together with the group of artists who participated in the project, was to regain possession of the streets and demonstrate a presence, something they felt was missing. Expressing the desire to create short circuits between the various disciplines, to hybridize heterogeneous practices, spontaneously bringing together a series of artists linked in different ways to each other and to the city of Rome .

The project was born from the experience of the homonymous Initiative of II in 1977 - when the Beat '72, an independent avant-garde theater in Rome directed by Simone Carella, Ulisse Benedetti, Franco Cordelli and Giuseppe Bartolucci, began a 10-day season of performances throughout the city, in what was a very complex period of social unrest.

While in 2021 Initiatives di II investigated the relationship between performance art and public space, in 2022 we decided to explore the possible correlations between these performances and publishing , again through the work of a community of artists, researchers, authors and curators.

II Magazine is the result of this exploration, an artist-led publication that aims to promote transdisciplinary research, in an attempt to challenge dyadic thinking and enable a schizophrenic exploration of liminal spaces.