C 41 Magazine by aie agenzia italiana di esportazione srl

Featuring: Lisetta Carmi, Solomostry, Peter Andrew Lusztyk and Derek Balis, Boogie, Nicolas Descottes, Andrea Basileo, Alessio Lucarini, Meindert Peirens, Giulia Boggio, Gualtiero Fisauli, Nils Leon Brauer, Mauro Vecchi, Maurizio Annese, CJ Clarke, Salvatore Esposito

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June 15, 2017

C 41 Magazine

QUARTERLY

9 772499 578001

ISSN: 2532-3237 70001

This is the fourth issue of C41 magazine, a printed edition of contemporary visual from all over the world. Because we like it way too much, we’ve decided to publish it three times a year. Could we call it our (slow) rebellion? Maybe. Rebellion has become more personal and intimate and way less social than ever before. That’s why we are using it to talk about visual and see what rebellion has become in our world through new eyes.

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We chose the work of Lisetta Carmi to represent rebellion through photography. It’s our cover story, but most of all, it’s a big part of the history of photography and one of the first expressions of freedom of thought in the early 1970’s. Lisetta chose to explore the world of transsexuals in Genoa, a taboo that continues to be underexplored today. But now, more than forty years later, is it possible we still have taboos and reasons to rebel?

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REBELLION, ISSUE 4 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; SS 2017

Luca Attilio Caizzi

Leone Balduzzi

CREATIVE DIRECTOR / PARTNER

MANAGING EDITOR / PARTNER

Chiara Caprio

Walter Junior Cassetta

EDITOR & SUPERVISOR AT LARGE

STRATEGIC PLANNER

Barbara Guieu

Enrico Magistro

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER

ART DIRECTOR

Federico Cavalieri

Francesca Pavoni

ASSOCIATE ART DIRECTOR

VIDEO EDITOR

Alessandro Bucci

CJ Clarke

CURATED BY EDITOR

CURATED BY GUEST

Alessandro De Agostini

Carlo Banfi

STAFF WRITER

JUNIOR ART DIRECTOR

COVER

EDITORIAL

Lisetta Carmi

Solomostry

PROOFREADER

Sara Custer

Emanuele Foletti

PRINTED BY

ONTILE Srl www.ontime.it

K48 www.k48.it

DESIGN

PUBLISHED BY

C 41 Studio www.c41studio.it

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DISTRIBUTION aie - agenzia italiana di esportazione

ISSN 2499-5789

CONTACT info@c41magazine.it www.c41magazine.it For daily inspiration follow us on Instagram @c41magazine Special Thanks OUR ONLINE READERS AND FRIENDS SINCE 2011 PRINTED IN ITALY NO PART OF THIS PUBLICATION MAY BE REPRODUCED, COPIED OR TRANSMITTED IN ANY SHAPE OR FORM WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION FROM C 41 MAGAZINE. PLEASE CONTACT US REGARDING ANY FEEDBACK 2017 COPYRIGHT C 41 MAGAZINE

LISETTA CARMI SOLOMOSTRY PETER ANDREW LUSZTYK AND DEREK BLAIS BOOGIE NICOLAS DESCOTTES ANDREA BASILEO ALESSIO LUCARINI MEINDERT PEIRENS GIULIA BOGGIO GUALTIERO FISAULI NILS LEON BRAUER MAURO VECCHI MAURIZIO ANNESE CJ CLARKE SALVATORE ESPOSITO 10

Lisetta Carmi

INTERVIEW

COVER STORY

SOLOMOSTRY

A cover story by Italian photographer Lisetta Carmi 36

An open conversation with a Solomostry

CONVERSATION

FROM WWW

Research

How do you portray a gun Nicolas Descottes 48

BOOGIE

INTERVIEW

HIGHLIGHTS

Peter Andrew Lusztyk and Derek Blais

GANGS

PERSONAL PROJECT

Meindert Peirens

102

NEW YORK, NEW YORK

VIDEO

Mauro Vecchi

Nils Leon Brauer

PERSONAL PROJECT

El Nudo & Bautismo ( ? )

148

INTERVIEW

Salvatore Esposito

SHQIPÃ&#x2039;RIA

Boxing is a shelter

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A cover story by Italian photographer Lisetta Carmi

Lisetta Carmi, class 1924, never worked to become a famous photographer. Her aim was different: to agitate, to rebel, to add details and the inaccurate, incomplete portrait of humanity that she saw displayed all around her, a portrait that had nothing to do with the ideas underpinning neo-realistic movements. A group of transvestites from Genoa, Italy, became the centre of her attention.

She had met them at a new yearâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s party. The new year was 1965, right in the middle of the decade in which rebellions were contagious, each encouraging the next. Was it mere curiosity for a taboo topic? Was it a strategic choice, aimed at turning

WORDS BY ALESSANDRO BUCCI

heads towards her work? Was it genuine interest for an underrepresented community, aiming to open the debate on the foundations of heteronormative world views? And above all, how can any of these questions matter, more than 50 years since these images were taken? What this project is representing is not fact that the times were changing â&#x20AC;&#x201C; transsexuality is not something that emerges in the 60s, and the reaction of the public does not allow me to speak about change â&#x20AC;&#x201C; but they rather signal the need for an inclusive historicism and the beginning of the area of endisms. In this case, they are the manifestation of the tangible beginning of the end of history itself.

COVER STORY

Far from identifying a catastrophic turn of events, the end of history highlights the progressive rebellion against dominant narratives produced by groups with privileged angles on reality and preserved by the natural conservatism of existence. The end of history represents the necessary postmodern turn of events in which unidirectional narratives begin to be fractured, revealing the contradictions inherent to them, and the erasure, the exclusion, and the denial that they fed upon. The end of history thus originates from the position that history itself contains the reasons for that end of take place, the energy for this explosion to happen. From the fragmentality of reality emerges the truth that history itself is the agent of its own end, and that history itself is the origin of the displacement felt by gay, lesbian, transsexual, black, oriental, Jewish, Muslim groups and their intersections. Nowadays Lisetta lives in the silent, sub-bleached

COVER STORY

hilltop village of Cisternino, in the heel of the Italian boot. Rebellions, today, are not what they used to be in the 60s, she explains. This is why, taken in 196?, Lisettaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work is more than an exercise in portraiture. It is rather an anecdote of subversion and rebellion, of a restless quest for the determination and freedom that was earlier denied. The function of these images is precisely to challenge the past and its implications on the present and thus signal the beginning of the end of history. </>

Dear Luca, Thank you so much for your letter. I’m glad you have good memories of the Bole Baba centre in Cisternino. It is indeed a very special place, established by Babagi in this sacred land of Puglia.

WE BELIEVE THAT REBELLION IS THE NATURAL ANSWER TO A COMPULSION THAT ISN'T CONSIDERED RIGHT. HOW DID YOU LIVE THE CENSORSHIP THAT YOUR BOOK SUFFERED? It is true, the book was censored and rejected from the bookshops; a friend of mine, Barbara Alberti, saved them from the pulping mill, using them to furnish her house in Rome (beds, tables, armchairs, etc.) and spreading about two thousand copies among the enlightened intellectuals.

I further thank you for your interest in my book about the Genoese transvestites, published in such a time when this topic was a total taboo.

TODAY WE THINK WE ARE AVANT-GARDE AND READY FOR EVERYTHING. DOYOU THINK THAT THE CONSIDERATION OF A TRANSEXUAL AND HIS CLIENT HAS CHANGED COMPARED TO YOUR WORLD OF THE "PRETTIES"? I have always worked hard to deeply understand what I was portraying; that is the tool that made me grow. I gazed at the world with love and inclusion, but also with detachment. That might be the reason why I could get access to such peculiar realities (rejected and judged by most people), that today are getting the attention of many, although superficially.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TODAY TO BE A WOMAN? AND YESTERDAY? I don’t like the world as it is today. Luckily enough I’m 93 years old now; I live by myself in Cisternino, among silence and solitude. I love kids. They are “the only true teachers”, as my friend and poet Guglielmo Scabini says.

Lisetta Carmi (born in Genova, the 15th of February 1924) is an Italian photographer. She was born in Genova, from a middle-class Jewish family. In 1960 she left her piano career to embrace photography as both a tool to create political pressure and a way to follow a deep path of personal growth, throughout the eyes of other people. After the ﬁrst experience at the teather Duse, she made several works documenting reality and addressing social issues among these the reportage about Genoese dock workers and phototales.

I wish you a lot of success with your magazine, and I kindly send you my greetings, in truth, simplicity, and love. Lisetta Carmi

Between 1958 and 1967 she traveled many times in Israel. In the early ‘70s she also traveled in Afghanistan and in India. In 1972 she authors ‘Travestiti’, with the publishing house Essedi in Rome, publication that ended up in provoking huge scandal. Her East travels spiked when she met the Master Babaji, resulting in the second turning point of her life. In 1979 she established the ashram Bhole Baba, In Cisternino, Puglia, devoting her life to spread the teachings of her master. In 1993 Patrizia Pentassuglia presented as her graduation paper ‘A life pursuing the truth’, the first biography of Lisetta Cami. In 2013 the journalist Giovanna Calvenzi published the second official biography, named ‘The five lives of Lisetta Carmi’

WORDS BY CHIARA CAPRIO

Who, or what, are the Monsters?

Monsters are entities that, from time to time, take possession of us, mutating our innerselves. They lead us to feel emotions we cannot control, driving us to act blindly, as Monsters do; unable to reason, but always following that unknown drive that grows inside us all.

SOLOMOSTRY

The way you look changes, unveiling signs you were hiding. You feel strong, unstoppable, and shielded by these entities that will not let you make choices driven by fear because youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re fearless now. And the only thing left to do is to look those Monsters in the eye, and listen to what they have to tell you.

Is it reasonable to give a definition of the Monsters? And how did you ultimately define them?

I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t believe it is useful to give a precise definition, because everybody has their own Monsters. The only way to fully understand them is to face them, just as I did.

You started as a street artist, doing graffiti, and then you got your work into a gallery. What does this jump mean to you?

Actually, I started doing graffiti because that was my passion. I graduated with a degree in Graphic Design & Art Direction, and after that I was working as a graphic designer and most recently as a silkscreen printer. But in my spare time I’ve always kept on painting and developing my ideas. Now that my works are in a gallery, I’ll eventually have more time to give to my Monsters, which is nothing more than my imagination. I cannot stop, the Monsters won’t let that happen. So I truly hope that the world around me is not going to stop our arrival.

How did you develop your line, your style? SPIN OFF

The line is the key element of my exploration. In graffiti, the line you draw with the marker is the very base of a tag, which is in turn the very base of a piece of graffiti. If you make a good tag, you’ll for sure end up with a good piece of graffiti. At the same time, since here the line is the only element to unify the whole thing, it must hit you, it must be non-negotiable, powerful. People have to see you from far, far away. To make all of this happen, I’m always in search of new materials to help me fulfill that goal.

Who has inspired you? What works or artists do you like the most?

INTERVIEW

I take inspiration from the world of graffiti, and from all its variants. They are always very compelling to me. Then there is electro music, techno music, hardcore music, and all their forms, that Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve been swimming in for many years. And furthermore, there are the people I surround myself with and the situations that I experience thanks to what I do. Lately, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve been looking a lot at Nelio, Jeroen Erosie, Ekta, Pablo Tomek and many others. But if we talk about masters, Picasso is one of my favourites.

Do you get inspiration just from street art? Is it about the style, or does it include the content as well?

No, I believe it would be just one-way inspiration, and coming only from the style. Because if anything catches my attention, one day it will definitely inspire me somehow. It could be something physical, or a behaviour, or an actual person. Depending on the type of thing that caught my eye, it will inspire my style, construction, content or life.

How do you see street art today? Do you think it is still a way to rebel? Has it ever been?

SOLOMOSTRY

I never experienced it as a form of rebellion, but as something I needed. I do not even know if the term â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;street artâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; is suitable to properly describe my path. On the other hand, the viewer has often rebelled against my paintings. For instance in the Dominican Republic, where Voodoo and tribal traditions are deeply rooted, I was blamed for painting El Diablo. In Milan, a group of people teamed up to erase one of my artworks from a wall which was taken down by the city simply because they did not like it. 36

And in Milan at the Don Gallery, I was blamed for the bright colors I used, since (they said) I was wrecking the visual atmosphere of the neighborhood. I think everybody perceives what they see differently, and therefore there are people that think street art is just illegal appropriation of public spaces and so is a form of rebellion and trouble. Rebellion or not, we keep on invading.

Life itself, which lets me give birth to other Monsters.

What are you working on right now?

WORDS BY CHIARA CAPRIO

You said that selling your Monsters is just a way to pursue a purpose. What purpose?

I always try to sharpen my (suggested: skills) offensive techniques, and I am always looking for new Initiates to mark (suggested: projects to start). </>

C 41 - Milan

WORDS BY CHIARA CAPRIO

How do you portray a gun A conversation with Peter Andrew Lusztyk and Derek Blais

Most regular people have never stared at the barrel of a gun and usually - if you’re looking at the gun from that exact angle - it’s probably right before you’re gonna get shot. We took inspiration from Robert Longo’s drawings about guns. But his works were not that detailed. Of course, there is not lack of details because of lack of skill in his project or anything like that, we are saying that his drawings were taken from one image only because at that time it was all you could do and that’s why they are not as detailed as our pictures. We took 20 photos for each gun, deconstructed and re-constructed them digitally. INTERVIEW

We thought, so, if we have to shoot guns, what would be the level of details we want to reach? Because we had never seen that before, gun have always been perfect - like these images of perfection - which is crazy: they are machines that have this implication with death and they have to function. Our reaction to those photographs was that we were quite astonished when we first saw them, because they had so much details and in that details we saw all the imperfections. We saw all the scratches the guns had on, you could see the imperfections of these objects that we thought they were so perfectly machined.

One of the first time we had a show for the guns, it was very interesting to walk around and see what people were saying: the guns created this sort of debate where there were people standing around them who were pro guns and people who were very much against and they had this debate where both sides were seeing points of the opposing sides.

PETER ANDREW LUSZTYK AND DEREK BLAIS

It is a very divisive issue, especially in America, where you tend to split between people who love guns and people who have an allergic reaction, anything that has to do with guns is bad. We donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t think there is any other object that we could have photographed that would have had that kind of reaction: everyone has an opinion one way or the other. We think part of the reason why the project has taken off so much is because of the topic.

We think one of the biggest power of art in general is that it creates conversation. We never wanted to overanalyse it. We were very happy with the product at the very beginning, with the photos we had.

GUN SERIES

When we had the first four or five guns we put them on walls and we said ‘let’s see what happens’. It wasn’t a planned effort; the way the project started was an experiment. We didn’t think that they would have been used by Le Monde or The Telegraph for articles talking about gun violence or other magazines to talk about issues from a pro-gun perspective. It just brought out this full spectrum of reactions to the images and we are actually surprised by that. </>

HOW DO YOU PORTRAY A GUN

PERSONAL PROJECT

INTERVIEW BY ALEX DE AGOSTINI C 41 Magazine - Milan

BOOGIE - GANGS

Why is darkness often more inviting than light?

I don’t think it is ... good shots are everywhere, all around us, you just have to see them. Shots of dark situations are maybe more shocking, that’s why people remember them.

How can you go inside the darker side of human existence and come out clean? Do you?

From my personal experience, while I’m shooting I usually don’t feel anything, no emotions. It’s what I do, I shoot, no feelings. But it all gets to you later. Depression can be pretty heavy. It takes time to clear your head.

INTERVIEW

Letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s say it is easy to photograph people with guns, but what is it like to capture those people who are pointing those guns at you?

It depends on your mental state. I was fine with it. You get addicted to those situations easily - guns, violence. It feels like being in a movie; no one else can experience it and here you are in the middle of madness.

PERSONAL PROJECT

You grew up in a country torn apart by war then you moved to New York City. Yet, you still long for the darkest situations. Why?

INTERVIEW

I don’t. But I don’t run away from them either. </>

Born and raised in Belgrade, Serbia, Boogie began photographing rebellion and unrest during the civil war that ravaged his country during the 1990s. Growing up in a war-torn country defined Boogie’s style and attraction to the darker side of human existence. He moved to New York City in 1998. He has published six monographs, IT’S ALL GOOD (powerHouse Books, 2006), BOOGIE (powerHouse Books, 2007), SAO PAULO (Upper Playground, 2008), ISTANBUL (Upper Playground, 2008), BELGRADE BELONGS TO ME (powerHouse Books, 2009) and A WAH DO DEM (DRAGO, 2016). His recent solo exhibitions include Paris, New York, Tokyo, Milan, Istanbul and Los Angeles. Boogie lives in Brooklyn and all over the world.

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used during the fascist regime.

PERSONAL PROJECT

Meindert Peirens New York, New York

C 41 Magazine - London

Few cities toy with the imagination as the Big Apple does. A concrete jungle on an island universe, reigned over by the mightiest mountains man can stack. It’s nowhere and everywhere. Perennial and volatile. From the smallest hole-in-the-wall to the tallest skyscraper, from that tiny patch of grass heroically pushing through the pavement cracks to those sprawling fields and trees as if walled in to urge their spread to stop - we live here... New York, New York... Say twice, look twice, as The New Black did, literally. Look twice, shoot twice, and discover unique encounters of worlds within worlds that weren’t there before. It’s the tried and true technique of analogue double exposure that guarantees a wholly unparalleled experience, challenging the artist as well as the final audience. No matter the intentions you approach it with, the nature of the beast does not allow it to be subdued. The results are brutally honest in their attempts, but its beauty’s always there. New York, New York... The city that never sleeps, goes the old Sinatra song. Wake up, and see it in a new light. </>

MEINDERT PEIRENS MEINDERT PEIRENS

NEW YORK, NEW YORK

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Giulia Boggio <title> ON LOVING </title>

ON LOVING is an ongoing project about body, acceptance and fears, on the meaning of having a body, on seizing the details that we despise and then glue them back together and be unapologetically whole.

PERSONAL PROJECT

Gualtiero Fisauli <title> NIGHTLIFE </title>

With a strong passion for electronic music, since 2007 Gualtiero has been documenting nightlife around the world. Ten years ago he moved to London where he mainly captured the gay-queer scene. This ongoing project eventually took him into the most famous nightclubs in London, New York and Ibiza. Here is a selection of photos from the Ibiza and London series.

PERSONAL PROJECT

for the United State of Americaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Parachutist.

Nils Leon Brauer <title> SHQIPĂ&#x2039;RIA </title>

Nils Leon Brauer is a photographer from Northern Germany, living and working in Berlin. Back in 2014, he was traveling through Albania for one month. Instead of using public transportation, he decided to hitchhike all the way. He met friendly and welcoming locals, who sometimes offered to have dinner together and let him stay for a night or two. He was fascinated by their hospitaliy: every person had interesting stories to tell. In portraying these characters, who live in forgotten and hidden areas left behind due to the fall of communism in the 90â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s, he wanted to visualize their lives.

PERSONAL PROJECT

per i crociati.

WORDS BY FRANCESCA PAVONI

PICTURES BY GIACOMO BRUNO

Who is Mauro Vecchi?

I imagine any director gets close to the movie world thanks to a film that somehow left a mark on them. For me, everything started when I was six years old. One night, while my mum was in the room nearby chatting with her friends, I was watching the TV alone (at that time there was no parental control). While I was channel surfing, I stopped on a very strange movie that somehow attracted me.

INTERVIEW

I couldn’t understand which genre it fit in. It wasn’t a horror movie, but occasionally it was both disturbing and ironic. I really made an impression on me. Unfortunately, or luckily, I only saw the last half hour and I didn’t catch its title. At the time it didn’t bother me but over the following days, I got obsessed with finding out. I started to ask my school mates if anyone else had seen it. Unfortunately, there were too few clues and nobody was able to help me. It took me four years to find out the title, when one night I saw it on the TV again. It was The Meaning of Life by Monty Python. At that age, I obviously didn’t have the mind to understand that movie (nor many others), but I think my curiosity about cinema started then. Apart from the Monty Python story, I grew up devouring American movies from the 80’s – Carpenter, Hill, Coppola, Cronenberg. Movies at that time were full of dark claustrophobic atmospheres: manholes in the streets constantly smoking, cities full of dark and narrow alleys, and stories that reflected a quite negative vision of the world. Thinking about it, I believe I transferred, more or less 106

instinctively, a lot of that atmosphere and acoustics into this project, especially in El Nudo. Over the years and during my studies at Dams, I developed a strong attraction towards youthful dramas by falling in love with the works that portrayed a sort of adolescent awkwardness from Los Olvidados by Buñuel to La Vie de Jésus by Bruno Dumont. At the same time and for the same reasons, I started to get interested in the photography of Larry Clark, Nan Goldin, Wolfgang Tillmans, Ed Templeton and most recently Tobias Zielony. What most fascinated me was their vision of that age through a filter of various subcultures, and their strict relationship with the subject.

I don’t know, maybe I was fascinated by adolescence because of that feeling of immortality and impunity that one has when we’re no longer children but not yet adults. That widespread energy that constantly threatens to be a bond of rebellion and violence, often “free and destructive” like [criminologist] Albert Cohen theorised about gangs. In part it was like that for me too, in the similar experiences I personally lived. Almost each one of us has something unresolved from adolescence and would like to go back and find closure. In the movie world, I really appreciate those authors that offer a personal portrait of adolescence from which emerges that aspect of insolubility like Céline Sciamma, Roberto Minervini, Dumont, but also Lukas Moodysson and Andrea Arnold.

WORDS BY FRANCESCA PAVONI

MAURO VECCHI

From there, my desire to direct stories that take on those themes was born.

How was this project about the Armada Latina gang born? And why? How did you approach it?

ARMADA LATINA

Just over three years ago I started to write the script for a feature film about young gangs. At the beginning the script was quite blurry and needed to be contextualised and updated in order to become a real product. I then started researching the phenomenon of the pandillas in Italy. It seemed like a world that was both interesting and unexplored.

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Walking through the streets and the parks of the suburbs of Milan, I got in touch with some of these guys to gather their stories. Later, I was like the the social services and associations that followed their cases. I also went to visit the juvenile detention centre and the police station. It was a really long and intense survey that took me about a year. I found that the stories of these boys, many of whom are second generation immigrants, had many common characteristics. First of all, they came to Milan from South America to reunite with their parents and on their arrival, their expectations were totally unmet. Milan was much tougher and unwelcoming than they expected; then there was the difficulty of learning a new language and the solitude in which they found themselves since they were left alone most of the day while their parents were at work. This experience sharpened their sense of rejection from society that eventually led them to see integration as an impossible thing. Pushed by a desperate need for inclusion and by an urgency to find their own identity, they saw the gang as a solution to all these problems and a form of rebellion towards those who let them down. The gangs were a new â&#x20AC;&#x153;familyâ&#x20AC;? to substitute their real

VIDEO

one, with a series of rituals, signs, symbols and rules that would give them a new purpose to their lives. It goes without saying that all of this was wonderful material for a movie.

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You are now going to produce the first chapter of the saga, Bautismo. What are we going to see?

BAUTISMO

As soon as we finished the screenplay for the movie, which wasn’t quick, I felt the need to do a short film, a proof-of-concept, that helped to understand the kind of world and the diegetic style of the movie that we had in mind. Together with Luca Speranzoni, the other screenwriter, we decided to focus the story on the act of initiation of the main character. This initiation, or “baptism” (that’s where the title comes from), represented a particularly dramatic and violent moment that indicates the entrance of a new member into a gang, indelibly marking his life. From then on he must submit to the rules and the orders of the gang. In Bautismo, Roman is a young immigrant from El Salvador who just arrived in Italy and found himself metaphorically imprisoned in the streets and buildings of Milan, so different from his home country. He sees the “baptism” into the Armada Latina as the only way to get out of his solitude and his problems. The episode happens five years earlier than the story shown in the movie and it represents its prologue. K48 liked the idea so much that they decided to co-produce it with me and Polveriera as an associate producer. After that, with the help of Giacomo Bruno (the photographer of the shots of the boys who will also take the scene photos), we started to organise the castings, using the social networks and the friendships we had developed over the years.

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Every actor in Bautismo is an amateur and most of them have a complicated past tied to these gangs. Some of them backed off when they knew what the film was about. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m not exaggerating when I say that for some of these actors, taking part in this project represents a sort of redemption for them and maybe at the same time a salvation.

Talking about El Nudo, how are you going to introduce the story? Why did you think this was the right start?

EL NUDO

El Nudo began as an experiment. On one hand it allowed us to start the gears moving that prepared us to shoot Bautismo. Because of that element of preparation, it all felt much more complex than a normal short film, seen with a number of non-professional actors. On the other hand, I wanted to create a teaser that showed the cinematographic potential of that world. I use the term experiment because with Luca, we decided to write just a draft of the story, not a real screenplay, in order to get the actors to improvise. It was really complex, but it was something we wanted - to try them out and see their potential. The story of El Nudo introduces us to the Armada Latina, a gang that was just formed in Milan and that is quickly gaining influence in the pandillas of the city. Everything takes place in one long night. After a violent fight with a rival gang, some leaders of the Armada hide in an occupied apartment that they usually use as a meeting place. The police are looking for them. They are locked in this claustrophobic place, surrounded by the police officers that haunt the streets nearby, and are perpetually wai-

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ting for their friends that are still missing. The night never seems to end.

EL NUDO

It’s the story of their bond, the knot (the tattoo from which the film takes its title), which is not always as brotherly and sincere as the rules of the gang would want. El Nudo is a sort of spin-off inside the Bautismo project. First because Roman, the protagonist of Bautismo, isn’t present in El Nudo since he’s not affiliated with the gang yet. But it’s going to happen in those days, that’s why Bautismo and El Nudo are recurring at the same time.

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And El Nudo moves away from that intimate and focused on a single character story that you see in Bautismo. It outlines more generally the main members of the gang that we’ll see in Bautismo. The idea to create a straight continuity between the short films and the film wasn’t planned; it was born by chance. Without even realising it, we were creating something more than a simple story. As you suggested, it could indeed become a saga.

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How will this project continue? What are your plans for the future?

The ultimate goal would be to produce both a film and a series. My hope is that it could become something similar, in terms of operation, to the This is England series. </>

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When the Sport Becomes a Weapon for Integration WORDS BY BEATRICE ZANI

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In the city of Milan, behind the walls of the reception centers, in the parks of via Aldini or inside the gardens of Paolo-Pini, are hidden new spaces of solidarity and resistance. Within these spaces, solidarity, brotherhood and individual needs come together to produce new forms of sui generis resistances. The protagonists? Young migrants and refugees, seeking for recognition and rights. The mean? Football, surmounting the simple sportive practice, becoming an instrument of fight and integration

It is at the crossroad between the individual migratory careers of young migrants and refugees and a collective passion for the sport, football, that the team of Black Panther sees the day. A football team where individual and collective competences are translated into new forms of solidarity and where the sport becomes a mean to public recognition. It is a team able to show the power of the weapons of the weak and the capacity to develop a multiplicity of social and moral as well as individual and collective resources to fight against the practices of stigmatization and exclusion of the figure of the migrant characterizing our societies.

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Urban Resistances:

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Football fields, often invisible or hidden, where the matches are played, represent a strong and explicit seek for the right to the city and the necessity of new forms of hospitality. Within these resistant spaces, the barriers of inequality are destroyed by the penalities and the offsides; the walls of racism and social contempt are demolished by the share of the locker rooms and playing fields with Italian players.

PICTURES BY MAURIZIO ANNESE

URBAN RESISTANCES

In the city of Milan, where we assist more and more to a polarization of conflicts and to an exasperation of public prejudices towards the actors of migrations, the Black Panther embody new practices of appropriation of the urban space and of the public sphere, contributing to the production of creative strategies of fight against social exclusion.

The right to the city, to public recognition and to hospitality appear through a sportive practice largely diffused among the Italian people, where social links alternative to the diffused fear and intolerance emerge. The ball turns into a weapon to demonstrate to the apparatus of contempt and suspicion the capacity to produce new forms of solidarity and integration. On the football fields, the color of the skin or the nationality are thus neutralized, thanks to the egalitarian power of sport. Sportâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s rules and regulations are the same for each player, regardless of his origin or the possession of the documents. The commitment to the game and the sense of solidarity spread by the sport contribute to the emergence of new practices of integration, uniting â&#x20AC;&#x201C;instead of dividing- the players and the supporters, independently from their origin or nationality. </>

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WORDS BY ALESSANDRO BUCCI

Mapping the roots of Brexit, Magic Party Place was ten years in the making and looks at the white working class community where I grew up, the town of Basildon in Essex. A new town built after the Second World War it is a manufactured community, with social statistics that are close to the national average. I walked Basildon’s streets, my journeys mapping the contours of my own past, reacquainting myself with that which I had forgotten or never bothered to perceive. I poked my head into shops, social clubs and private parties and sensed the mood.

CURATED BY

Stasis. Time moves slower. Imperceptibly, change creeps. Thoughts reconfigure and radical ideas become accepted but so slowly that everyone thinks they were always there to begin with. Mutability is to be feared. Change, whenever it is noticed, is usually “for the worst”, “what we had back then” was, somehow, better. Our morals were defined, our community stronger. The great failure of the political class then, over the past quarter century, is not to address the concerns

“for the worst”

(real or perceived) of a great majority of English people, which has led to an ever growing chasm between politics and the working class.

Brexit was the ultimate expression of this discontent. For the political class, the leave vote is to be feared; it is the collective rebellion, the people have spoken but what they are saying cannot be acknowledged: ‘we don’t need you.’ Such thoughts can only be derided and pushed to the margins.

WORDS BY CJ CLARKE

My drama, if it could yet take place, would happen in the Time of the Rebellion. The Rebellion begins as an urban promenade. Against traffic regulations and during working hours. The streets belong to the pedestrians â&#x20AC;Ś My place, if my drama ever took place, would be at both sides of the front, between the fronts, over them. Heiner MĂ&#x153;ller

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CURATED BY

Much has been said about the authorship of curatorial work. The concept of the curator-as-author is a theoretical configuration of the figure of the author deriving from the re-functioning of the relations of artistic production. It is used to credit the value of creative thinking and artistic enunciation on the grounds of the critical framing of images and artefacts for exhibitions and editorials. The curator-as-author “quotes” artists’ work, extracting it from the context in which it was conceived in order to shape a new narrative. Sometimes the outcome has generated wonderful collaborations between artists and curators; other times it has fed bitter feuds. The following pages will explore the opposite concept: the idea of the artist as curator of his current work. This idea speaks of another shift, one already presented by Walter Benjamin at the beginning of the last century when he argued that artists’ typical roles were redefining themselves as a consequence of their labour becoming dependent on a world of exhibitions and magazines. The contemporary curator is less and less an academic and an historian, and more and more a reporter, an anthropologist, a sociologist, a transitory figure whose exhibitions and publications rarely seek to be chronological explorations. We’ve asked CJ Clarke to take this role, to become curator and editor of his own work, and present it through the next pages in the way he prefers. The result is a reflection of the fear for mutability among a specific British demographic, in the circumstance of their leave vote in last year’s referendum to leave the EU. This is perhaps a counterproductive rebellion, but as somebody once said, time will tell. CJ Clarke is another of the rebels that are featured in this issue. His film Mother and Daughter, his Save the Children advert “It shouldn’t have happened here”, his crowd sourced activist initiative The Rape in India Project have all seen him using photography to shed light on societal segregation and to denounce unfairness and injustice. The images presented in the next pages are part of his project Magic Party Palace, which is available in a photo book format, published by Kehrer Verlag. 140

WORDS BY ALESSANDRO BUCCI

His work has been nominated for multiple awards and has been exhibited in galleries and festivals in France, Germany, Lebanon, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK and the US.

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PICTURES BY SALVATORE ESPOSITO

Why did you decide to work on a project about Giugliano?

I have always been interested in stories about teens from the streets. I was at my mechanic when I saw this ad about boxing matches that were taking place in council houses in Giugliano. I didn’t know the place, but it is very close to Scampia, so I thought it was worth a visit. And it was great. I saw a boxing ring in the courtyards of these council houses. It was like being in the south side of Chicago. I saw many matches. The idols of the community won and they were celebrated like Rocky Balboa. At the end of evening, I approached their coach, maestro Pizzo Salvatore, and asked for his permission to take pictures of his guys.

How do these boxers rebel?

Some of them are just guys from poor areas that find a way to open up through boxing. Others have more complicated issues and experiences from their past. But you have to be really keen about boxing if you want to practise it. It’s a huge sacrifice; you cannot eat loads of stuff, you have to train properly every day, you cannot go to bed too late or drink alcohol. It’s really tough for teens. But I think that for all of them the boxing gym is a sort of shelter, a place where they can get out their frustrations, a place where they can forget that they are just a guy from a very infamous area in Naples’ or that they have problems in their family. There was a guy, for example, who used to hang out with drug dealers and boxing to him was a way to rebel against his negative personal life, his way to find salvation. I got the impression that they felt really free at the gym. It was very healthy. I always associate rebellion to freedom because I am a big rebel.

How did you approach your work with them? I had a great relationship with them, because I spent months living with them inside and outside the gym. I shared their problems, their victories and their worries about the future.

Why do you choose to produce your reportages in black and white? It’s just my language. Everybody has his or her own language and black and white is mine. I grew up looking at the amazing work of Magnum Photos and I was fascinated by their use of black and white. To me, they are like children’s bedtime stories. The project I was mainly influenced by was Bruce Davidson’s Brooklyn Gang. It’s 58 years old and still, every time I look at it, my love grows and I find it more relevant than ever for its contents and shapes. Another crazy love I have is for Eugene Richards. I don’t think anybody is able to cover social issues with the same passion and knowledge. His use of black and white goes beyond time. Black and white photographs are like a full stop. You have to stop there before you go on, first you have to digest what you just saw. To take photographs in black and white you have to think in black and white, while colours make you think about aesthetics and tones. I am too instinctive to focus on that. I want the idea, the contents, the thoughts. 154

MEINDERT PEIRENS

Is this your rebellion or do you have another way of rebelling?

No, I don’t consider it my rebellion, but rather my cultural background when it comes to photography. My mum always said I was tough. I have changed my own rebellion many times, but photography was a real revolution for me. It brought discipline and passion to my life. Photography made me feel closer to my real self and I don’t want photography to be far from me. I don’t choose stories because they are trendy. I choose them because I like them, because they are the stories I need and want to tell. The only goal is to be independent. Today, my own rebellion is to look at myself in the mirror and tell to myself “you avoided slavery”, but also to see my five year old daughter, Alice, taking pride in being autonomous and fierce. </>