Thursday 21st of November at 6.30pm

Join us for a bilingual English-Italian reading that brings together new voices in American, British, and Italian literature. This event will feature the current writers-in-residence at the Giancarlo DiTrapano Foundation for Literature and the Arts alongside special guest authors from Rome and Florence.

This unique literary evening is organized in collaboration with Spazio Supernova and Chiara Barzini. In a nod to PUPA — the current exhibition at Spazio Supernova by the artistic duo Grossi Maglioni (curated by Dorotheé Dupuis) — the readings will explore the theme “material and symbolic bodies.

Foundation Resident Readers:
Raegan Bird
Thomas Thatcher
Harriet Armstrong
Madeline Cash

Special guest readers:
Francesca Marciano
Tiziana Lo Porto
Elizabeth Geoghegan 
Will Schutt 
Athena Kokoronis
Sara Reggiani

WHEREUPON, TURMOIL 

ALLEN FRAME

Readings  from Sounds in the Distance

by David Wojnarowicz

with Allen Frame, Gabriele Giugni, and Jeanine Oleson 

Palermo Publishing announces book launches of its first monograph of photography, Whereupon, a selection of images by New York photographer Allen Frame, from the late 1970s to the early 1990s, in black and white and color. Whereupon expands the premise of Allen Frame’s recent book Fever (color photographs of 1981, Matte Editions, 2021) to show a broader time period with the same subject: his artist friends in their apartments and lofts and on the streets and beaches of New York. Also included are scenes from theater rehearsals from Turmoil in the Garden, a series of monologues from David Wojnarowicz’s Sounds in the Distance which Frame co-adapted and co-directed, with Kirsten Bates, in 1983 and 84 in New York and Berlin. 

Like photographers from his generation, such as Cindy Sherman, Nan Goldin, and Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Frame uses a highly cinematic style, but in his case, the framing and mise en scène have also been influenced by his experiences in theater. As Mark Alice Durant writes “His images are not decisive moments, they are not exactly portraits, or figure studies either. They exist interstitially. A quiet intimacy and muted staging share the proscenium, as friends, acquaintances, and strangers pause and proceed through the mostly nocturnal tableaux. Allen’s photographs are unique in their elegant understatement, they observe without judgment, are melancholy but not sentimental, smolder without clamor.”

Biography

Allen Frame’s first photography monograph, Detour (KEHRER), was published in 2001, followed by Fever (Matte Editions) in 2021. His book Innamorato (Meteoro Editions) was published in 2023. He won the Rome Prize in photography in 2017/18, and spent a year in Italy at the American Academy in Rome.  After residencies in St. Petersburg and Ekaterinburg, Russia, through CEC Artslink in 2019, he returned to Italy in 2021 as a Director’s Guest at Civitella Ranieiri in Umbria. Much of his recent work has been made in Italy. Last year he co-curated, with Antonio Sergio Bessa, an exhibition called Luxe, Calme, Volupté about New York in the 1980s with 75 artists, a satellite show at Candice Madey Gallery coinciding with the exhibition Darrel Ellis: Regeneration, presented at the Bronx Museum.  Darrel Ellis is featured both in Whereupon and in Fever. Other notable artists depicted in the two books include Peter Hujar, Bill Rice, Cady Noland, Robert Gober, Siobhan Liddell, Frank Moore, and Nan Goldin.  Frame is an Adjunct Professor of Photography at Pratt Institute (MFA) and also teaches at the School of Visual Arts, the International Center of Photography in New York, and for Strudelmedia. He grew up in Mississippi and graduated from Harvard. His work is represented by Gitterman Gallery.

Presents

“The Noise is the Message” by Andrea Inglese

for the publisher [dia•foria (Viareggio) & dreamBOOK editore (Pisa), 2023 with a preface by Chiara Portesine

In conversation with the author will be Ugo Fracassa & Simona Menicocci

In the concentration bubble of today’s poetry, the author is the message. In the noise of history, the message is the other. Inglese’s book is an inexhaustible cosmogony of communication, a clumsily Homeric dictionary of conflicting definitions. The message is short, the message is western, the message is pornographic; the message is “not a message of death” but “the message as usual can speak of death.” Irony carves out categories from within, making them empty pumpkins. THE NOISE IS THE MESSAGE to celebrate some anthropocenic Halloween, an apocalypse-party with survivors dressed as words, masks of syllables covering their bodies.

This evening of readings and screenings wants to explore the challenges of transforming, adapting and modifying text in relation to other media such as films, music and podcasts. Adapting text often involves making specific choices to give the work another experiential quality. Narrative, story-telling, seriality and other experimental adaptive solutions emerge from this creative moment.

Together with writers, directors and musicians we will discuss how their work adapts to different media. We will experience their work through readings and screenings and discuss the necessary negotiations that were used to transform the textual element into something else.

The form and function of textual adaptation is constantly evolving; the interconnectedness of media will direct the discussion towards thinking about adaption as product and process.

Participants include writers Katie Kitamura (AAR Fellow 2023), Claudia Durastanti (Italian Fellow 2015) and Chiara Barzini; director William 0lroyd and Alexandra de la Mora; composers Baldwin Giang (Rome Prize Fellow 2023-2024) and Kate Soper (Rome Prize Fellow 2024).

Spazio Supernova is a site-specific three year art experiment, exhibition and cultural space located in Piazza Santa Maria in Trastevere. It will burn brightly for three years and then will explode and disappear hopefully leaving behind something new.

SCHEDULE

WORDS FOR FILMS

Introduction Maria Puri Purini

Reading by Chiara Barzini

Sequence of Dante y Soledad directed by Alexandra de la Mora

Sequence of Eileen directed by William Oldrovd

Transforming text into screen discussing the adaptation of The Marriage of the Red Fish by Guadalupe Nettel into Dante u Soledad and the adaptation of Ottessa Moshfegh’s book Bileen with directors William Oldroyd and Alexandra de la Mora, moderated by Chiara Barzini Break

WORDS TO LISTEN

Reading by Claudia Durastanti

Listening of the new pop song by Baldwin Giang with words by Katie Kitamura

Katie Kitamura and Baldwin Giang – conversation moderated by Claudia Durastanti

The Guardian

Supernova together with the Libreria di Trastevere invites you to the presentation of Ron Rash’s new book “The Guardian”, published by La Nuova Frontiera, Friday May 17th at 7:00 PM.

Set in a small town in the Appalachians, The Guardian is a breathtaking love story and a touching examination of the actions we take in the name of duty, family, honor, and love.

Plot

We are in 1951 in Blowing Rock, North Carolina, a small closed community that does not accept diversity. Blackburn Gant, whose existence has been irreparably marked since childhood by polio, seems doomed to spend a life among the dead as the sole guardian of the small cemetery. The work suits his introverted personality, and the inexplicable incidents that occur occasionally among gravestones and tombs scare him less than contact with the living. But when his best and only friend, Jacob Hampton, is called to arms and sent to fight overseas, he entrusts him with his young pregnant wife, Naomi.

Sixteen-year-old Naomi Clarke is also an outcast in Blowing Rock. Poor and without education, she works seasonally in the city’s most elegant hotel until she meets Jacob. The two fall desperately in love and marry, causing scandal in the community and facing opposition from Jacob’s wealthy parents.

Isolated and rejected by everyone and scared of Jacob’s possible non-return, Blackburn and Naomi support each other until a terrible deception will definitively derail their lives. But no secret can be kept forever.

Exciting and intense, The Guardian is an emotional novel about the bonds of friendship, the contradictions of family, and what it truly means to love.

Biography

Ron Rash is the author of the novel Serena, a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and a New York Times bestseller, as well as the critically acclaimed novels The Risen, Above the Waterfall, Shadow Land, One Foot in Paradise, Saints at the River, and The World Made Straight; five collections of poems; and seven collections of stories, including Burning Bright, winner of the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award 2010, Nothing Gold Can Stay, a New York Times bestseller, and Chemistry and Other Stories, a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award 2007.

Three times awarded the O. Henry Prize and winner of the Grand Prix de Litérature Policière 2014, he teaches at Western Carolina University.

We invite you to the presentation of Nicolás Jaar’s new book: Islands on March 18th.

Beneath the ocean lies another ocean, dormant, and the islands narrated by Nicolas Jaar are the dreams that emerge from its buried depths, told with a musical language that is simultaneously deeply visual.

Images crystallized in the impossible time of fables, revelations, hallucinations, myth; worlds where nothing is ever what it seems, and everything unfolds in an underground plot resonating with meaning, like a dream one struggles to remember: wells murmur in the language of God, ecstasy nestles between the planks of a wooden floor, skin becomes the paper to entrust one’s messages to, and from the amplifiers – the most precious weapon against the atrocities of oppressors – simulated shots and resistance songs resound.

A successful musician and producer turned debut author, Nicolás Jaar creates a shifting mosaic where images flow and return like loops, overlap like samples, reverberate like echoes in a minimal and prismatic plot whose fragments vanish and reemerge transfigured. Thus, the fairy tale gives way to revelation; historical account to poetry; prayer to theatrical piece.

Exploring these islands means diving into an abyss of symbols that seem inexhaustible, elusive fragments of meaning that leave a deep mark in our memory, like the reflections of Recimo’s magic mirrors, whose tranquil distortions infect minds with a mysterious calm resembling a spell or a curse.

Nicolás Jaar (1990) is considered by international critics as one of the most important electronic music producers. Born in New York and raised in Chile, he gained international fame in 2011 with his debut album Space Is Only Noise. He has since released five more albums under his name, including Sirens (2016) and Cenizas (2020). He founded the experimental music label Other People, featuring artists such as Lydia Lunch and Pierre Bastien. He is the composer of the soundtracks for Jacques Audiard’s Dheepan (Palme d’Or winner in 2015) and Déa Kulumbegashvili’s Beginning (2019). In recent years, Nicolás has focused primarily on teaching, conducting sound editing courses and listening workshops for emerging and novice musicians at various institutions and events, including the Museo de la Memoria (Santiago, Chile), AdBK (Munich, Germany), free.wav (Attappadi, India), Festival 4×4 (Chiapas, Mexico), and Dar Jacir and Alrowwad (Bethlehem, Palestine).

We invite you to the presentation Brian Evenson’s new book: “The Last Days.”

After the amputation of his hand, Kline, an undercover agent, lives a solitary existence, spending his time in his apartment, resistant to any kind of contact. One day, however, the phone rings. “It’s fortune knocking,” say two strangers, offering an interesting job opportunity. Kline wants nothing to do with it, but his interlocutors are not really asking. He is reluctantly taken to the headquarters of the Mutilation Brotherhood and enters the alternate world constructed by this cult, fanatically loyal to its principles. Kline must investigate a murder that occurred within the Brotherhood, but every apparent truth is a fragment of a larger, incomprehensible work, much like his truncated arm that ends in a phantom hand, nonexistent yet vividly alive for him. As he tries to navigate a maze of lies, threats, and deceit, Kline discovers that his own survival will depend on an act of pure will and emancipation.

In his admired afterword, Peter Straub considers Brian Evenson an extreme writer. “The Last Days” is an intense and disturbing novel that fearlessly looks into the abyss of the human heart.

Biography:

Brian Evenson (Ames, Iowa, 1966) is a writer, translator, critic, and university professor. His works have earned him numerous awards, including the O. Henry Award for short fiction, three Shirley Jackson Awards, and the International Horror Guild Award. According to George Saunders, “there is no more intense, prolific, and apocalyptic fiction writer in America.”

The Family

On the 29th of February Sara Mesa will present her new book The Family.

Sara depicts a clear x-ray of a family with its latent wounds, fragilities, contradictions, and weaknesses.

Biography

Born in Madrid in 1976, Sara Mesa is an award-winning Spanish author of short stories and novels. She has published “Cuatro por cuatro,” a finalist for the Herralde Prize, “Cicatrice” (Bompiani, 2017), awarded the El Ojo Crítico de Narrativa prize, and recognized among the books of the year by El País, El Mundo, ABC, El Español. Her works also include “Un incendio invisible,” “Cara de pan,” the collection of stories “Mala letra,” and the novella “Silencio administrativo.”

Her latest novel, “Un amore,” was a finalist for the Strega European Prize and has been translated into numerous languages.

We invite you to the literary event on February 15th at 6:30 PM.

Libertarians: the submerged voices of women in literature

This event stems from the desire of the publishing house Rina to share the work of rediscovering and recovering the figures and texts of Italian women writers, sparking a cultural debate that, in a transversal manner, can involve publishing realities, magazines, female and male writers, university professors. The goal is to reflect together and delve into the research activities engaged by publishing and academia to bring to light a true “submerged galaxy” of female authors.

The discussion will feature Michela Dentamaro, editor of Rina, Andrea Crisantis De Ascentiis, editor of Ago, Paolo Guazzo, editor of Cliquot, Professor of Italian Literature Laura Fortini from Roma Tre, Professor of Italian Literature and Gender Studies Annalisa Perrotta from Sapienza, Professor of Modern and Contemporary Literature Monica Storini from Sapienza, Manuela Altruda, editor of Letterate Magazine, Loreta Minutilli, editor of Il Rifugio dell’Ircocervo, Alice Girotto, from the collective Le Ortique. The discussion will be moderated by the writers’ collective Montag.

Following the discussion, there will be readings from the pages of these submerged writers by writers Emanuela Anechoum, Giulia Caminito, Claudia Durastanti, Ilaria Gaspari, Paola Moretti, and Anna Voltaggio, as well as writers Luciano Funetta, Giorgio Ghiotti, Valerio Millefoglie, and Carlo Sperduti.

We invite you on February 1st at 7 pm to The Mute: a circle of feminist self-awareness. Colettivo Montag engages in dialogue with Le Sentinelle.

“Women will form self-awareness groups and say, ‘Finally, a bit of free therapy’”. Le Sentinelle will tell you what it means to engage in a self-awareness group in 2023, peeking into the spiritual, cultural, and political experiences of feminists in the 1970s. In this event, we will take you inside a self-awareness session, weaving together stories and unraveling, starting from the practice of reading, narratives with each other.

Le Sentinelle is a feminist self-awareness group born in Rome in 2023. They meet twice a month, read feminist theory and practice texts together, and then discuss them for hours, intertwining their personal lives with the voices they discover in books. Meeting after meeting, they try to build a space for reflection, sharing, and, above all, mutual care: if one is in the dark, the other acts as a sentinel for her step; she lights a fire for her.”

Montag has been working for three years on simultaneous writing, a composition technique based on the real-time sharing of an editable file, upon which the three authors act simultaneously. Simultaneous writing means giving up the jealousy of words, the private ownership of the text, and control over its evolutions. Each writer can change anything the others have done without needing permission. In this performance, Montag will expose his writing process, which will be projected onto the walls of Supernova, and anyone can see it as it unfolds. By the end of the evening, a complete story will be ready, born before your eyes, to explore what it means to write together and let go. The music of Bruno Belardi, Denise Di Maria, and Vittorio Gatti will accompany and, in turn, inspire the writing, with the same spirit of improvisation and free creation. Simultaneous writing is an open dream.

To read the result of the simultaneous performance click the link down below:

During the first literary evening at the Supernova space, the Montag collective presented Marvin magazine with its latest issue, in dialogue with Martina Piromani and Flavio Natale. Following this, there were readings of some of the stories.

Marvin is a literary project born from an occasional editorial team that periodically creates an illustrated story magazine. The stories are selected through a call consisting of three elements: a character, a place, and a phrase. For the seventh issue, fate chose a speleologist, a love hotel, and a small death. Once the stories are chosen, authors come together to bring life to a collaborative editing workshop coordinated by the editorial team.

Montag is a literary collective active between Rome and Turin. It was born during the pandemic with the idea of writing a novel with six hands, utilizing simultaneous remote writing that leverages digital platforms and draws inspiration from jazz improvisation. Montag’s stories have appeared in ‘Marvin,’ ‘retabloid,’ ‘Neutopia,’ ‘Quaerere,’ ‘Salmace,’ and ‘poetarum Silva.’ For ‘Marvin,’ they have also published an essay on collective writing, and for ‘L’indiscreto,’ they curated the first Italian translation of the Dark Mountain Project manifesto. They wrote the Libretto for Amber Mold, a musical composition by Luca Guidarini. Montag is represented by ‘Oblique Studio.’