II Magazine
What happens when two seemingly opposite mediums – one ephemeral , body-dependent, collective, fluid, the other reproducible , archivable, immutable – meet?
What tension does a performance exhibit that cannot be recognized within texts or documents and vice versa?
How do you get a performance – even partially – in the form of a book?
II Magazine brings together on printed pages theoretical and academic research with various artistic and editorial practices, to present its reader with an object capable of revealing various verbal and non-verbal meanings .
Each contribution (unpublished or adapted from a previous work) is presented in the form and medium chosen by the artist/researcher/author.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 created Iniziative di II , twelve days of performances that took place in Rome from 8 to 19 May, spread across the city's public spaces.
Their aim, along with the group of artists who participated in the project, was to reclaim the streets and demonstrate a presence, something they felt was missing. They expressed their desire to create bridges between various disciplines, to hybridize heterogeneous practices, spontaneously bringing together a series of artists with diverse ties to each other and to the city of Rome .
The project was born from the experience of the eponymous Iniziative di II in 1977 – when Beat '72, an independent avant-garde theatre 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 Iniziative 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 , always through the work of a collective 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.