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Marco Giovenale è inciampato nell’essere più di mezzo secolo fa, poi a fine anni Ottanta e poco oltre ha sondato alcuni percorsi politico-culturali di estrema sinistra; dopo, per quasi dieci anni (i Novanta), si è opportunamente tenuto lontano dall’ambiente romano della poesia; poesia che gli spiaceva perché llorona o sottoboschiva (o entrambe). Dopo il servizio civile si è laureato assai fuori corso in Letteratura italiana moderna e contemporanea (cattedra di Walter Pedullà), con una tesi su Roberto Roversi. Ha vissuto brevemente a Firenze, saltuariamente a Bologna: torna assai volentieri in queste due città (e in una terza) tutte le volte che può.
In dialogo con Nanni Balestrini, ha curato l’edizione 2005 di RomaPoesia. È stato tra i fondatori – e tutt’ora è redattore – di gammm.org (2006). È redattore e collaboratore di spazi web e cartacei italiani e anglofoni. Lavora come curatore indipendente, lettore per case editrici e singoli autori; è (stato?) traduttore dall’inglese. Ha diligentemente svolto per dieci anni il mestiere di libraio, ogni tanto ci ricasca; mentre in tempi più remoti (i Novanta di cui sopra) ha lavorato in un centro di assistenza per rifugiati politici.
Tiene corsi di storia della poesia di secondo Novecento e delle scritture contemporanee, come docente indipendente (tre anni presso l’Upter, anche, sempre a Roma). Svolge attività per il Centro di poesia e scritture contemporanee che nel 2018-19 ha contribuito a fondare. Dal 2013 cura la collana SYN – scritture di ricerca per le edizioni IkonaLíber.
Il suo ‘primo’ libro di versi, Curvature, a due mani con la fotografa Francesca Vitale, è uscito nel 2002 per La camera verde, con prefazione di Giuliano Mesa. Dopo ha scritto ancora parecchie poesie o cose simili (l’elenco dei libri si cattura facilmente in rete).
In prosa: Numeri primi (Arcipelago, 2006), Quasi tutti (Polìmata, 2010; edizione definitiva: Miraggi, 2018), Lie lie (La camera verde, 2010), Il paziente crede di essere (Gorilla Sapiens, 2016), Le carte della casa (Edizioni volatili, 2020). In lingua inglese: a gunless tea (Dusie, 2007), CDK (T.A.P., 2009), Anachromisms (Ahsahta Press, 2014); e il ‘found text’ White While (Gauss PDF, 2014).
Il suo sito principale è slowforward.net. Escogitazioni grafiche varie in differx.tumblr.com.
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Marco Giovenale (differx) lives and works in Rome, where he has been working for ten years as an antiquarian bookseller ––among other activities. He is also an editor and translator, and teaches Literature of the second half of the 20th century @ the Centro di poesia e scritture contemporanee he co-founded in 2018-19. He is a contributor of lit mags like “l’immaginazione”, and websites like Segnonline, SCRIPTjr, Sibila, Antinomie, OperaViva.
His complete biobibliography can be found at https://slowforward.net/bio/. In English: https://slowforward.wordpress.com/2014/01/01/mgs-bibliography/.
His activity includes prose pieces, poems, photography, asemic writing (“drawritings”; “asemic sibyls”; “installances”, i.e. secretly performed installations; “langrids”, i.e. language grids), abstract works, drawings, conceptual pieces and series and chapbooks and e-books, installations (online too), low-res videos, “music”/audio experiments and webworks of several kinds.
He established the collab blog http://asemicnet.blogspot.com, in 2011. His first works as a visual artist date from the 90s, and are all in the path of some figurative expressionist mood. He made two solo exhibitions in Rome, in Libreria Anomalia (1996) and in Teatro dei Contrari (1997), then for a period of almost ten years he has been working exclusively with ink & paper –without getting in touch with any gallery, nor exposing his work online.
Then in 2005 he started making photographs and digital works, soon getting back to all the techniques he used, but with totally different intentions and moods –& new tools. All his new visual works and activities offline and online date back to the year 2005. Some works are in private museums and collections, like the Sackner Archive now in the Iowa University, the Ontological Museum (Pagosa Springs, Colorado), the Bongiani Ophen Art Museum (Room 10, see http://www.collezionebongianiartmuseum.it/sala.php?id=55), and the collections of Giuseppe Garrera, Sergio Oriente, Michele Zaffarano, Alberto D’Amico, William Xerra, Andrea Semerano, Quimby Melton, Andrea Raos, Fabrizio M. Rossi and many others.
He’s founder and editor of the site of experimental literature and art http://gammm.org (2006). His artbooks are Sibille asemantiche (La camera verde, 2008), Asemic Sibyls (Red Fox Press, 2013), Asemic Encyclopaedia (IkonaLíber, 2019), Glitchasemics (Post-Asemic Press, 2020); and, under the name of differx, these four e-chaps published by Vugg Books: aweapon (2008), Severe red (2010), unrelated | undepicted | (diptychs) (2010), septemware (2011).
Asemic sibyls and visual works are also in sites like Nazione indiana, Sleepingfish, satt.org, Fieralingue, Otoliths, Tip of the knife (issue 7), The Bleed (issue 0.2), Experiment-o (issue 4), Rem (issue 2), Moria and in the Anthology Spidertangle edited by Miekal And (Xexoxial Editions, 2009). Other asemic works are in the chapbook published in Dan Waber’s series “This Is Visual Poetry”, in September 2011: thisisvisualpoetry.com/?p=1019 (now offline). A series of sibyls has been published by La camera verde in Nov., 2013: Syn Sybilles. Asemic sibyls are in The Last Vispo Anthology (1998-2008), edited by C.Hill and N.Vassilakis, Fantagraphics books, 2012; and in An Anthology of Asemic Handwriting (Uitgeverij, 2013), edited by T.Gaze e M.Jacobson.
In 2010 he created the the idea & practice called installance.
In 2011 he took part in the Bury Text Festival (Manchester), see https://textartarchive.com/guest-bloggers/, http://otherroom.org/2011/05/22/marco-giovenale-some-texts, and the book of the event: https://slowforward.net/2019/04/21/bury-text-festival-mg-2011/. In 2013 he also took part in the asemic collab novel, A Kick in the Eye (ed. by Tim Gaze, see http://abstractcomics.blogspot.com/2013/10/a-kick-in-eye.html). The sibyl 161329 is in the vispo anthology The New Concrete. Visual Poetry in the 21st Century (Victoria Bean and Chris McCabe, eds; Hayward Publishing, 2015).
In Jan-Aug 2020 he took part in the collective exhibition Scrivere disegnando. Quand la langue cherche son autre (Centre d’art contemporain, Geneva, https://centre.ch/en/exhibitions/scrivere-disegnando/), with several installances plus one artwork; hence the catalog Writing by Drawing. When Language Seeks his Other (Skira, 2020: http://www.skira.net/en/books/scrivere-disegnando#).
A gunless tea, collection of 23 prose fragments, was published for the 2007 Dusi/e-chap project (http://www.dusie.org/issueseven.html), promoted by Susana Gardner. Poems and critical pieces have been published in “Aufgabe”, #7, 2008, guest edited by Jennifer Scappettone for Litmus Press. The prose text CDK was published in 2009 as a chapbook & free e-book by Tir aux pigeons, thanks to Drew Kunz. The chapbook anachromisms has been published in 2014 by Ahsahta Editions, as the winner of the Ahsatha Chapbook Prize. In 2015 Gauss PDF published white while (http://www.gauss-pdf.com/post/98317758615/gpdf131-marco-giovenale-white-while). An interview with the mag 3AM (thanks to S. Fowler) can be read @ http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/maintenant-65-marco-giovenale.
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l i n k s
Website: https://slowforward.net
Asemic stuff & other posts: https://differx.tumblr.com
Segno online: https://segnonline.it/author/marco/
SCRIPTjr: https://scriptjr.nl/author/marcogiovenale
Platformplee: https://www.platformplee.nl/
Sibila: http://sibila.com.br/author/marco-giovenale
Antinomie: https://antinomie.it/index.php/tag/marco-giovenale/
OperaViva: https://operavivamagazine.org/schede/marco-giovenale/
Books: https://slowforward.net/libri/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/differx_it/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/marcogiovenale
YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxcfw6-mn0IReDOjmfui-Fw
Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/differx/
Spreaker: https://www.spreaker.com/user/12079015
Facebook links
differx: https://www.facebook.com/differx/
slowforward @ fb: https://www.facebook.com/slowforwarddifferx/
groups & pages @ fb
[ ricerca ] : https://www.facebook.com/groups/ricerca.2019/
gammm group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/gammm/
Writing Against Itself: https://www.facebook.com/groups/writing.against.itself/
società per azioni: https://www.facebook.com/groups/societa.per.azioni/
Costa, Villa, Bene: https://www.facebook.com/groups/costa.villa.bene/
GAMMM: https://www.facebook.com/gammm.org/
Aswrig = ASemic WRIting Gallery: https://www.facebook.com/aswrig/
Woeird, A concrete poetry & verbo-visual gallery: https://www.facebook.com/woeird/
Asemic Encyclopaedia: https://www.facebook.com/giovenale.enciclopediaasemica.ikonaliber/
flarf.it: https://www.facebook.com/flarfitalia/
Studio Campo Boario: https://www.facebook.com/groups/362914423721438/
Timglaset: https://www.facebook.com/groups/timglaset/
Centro di poesia e scritture contemporanee: https://www.facebook.com/poesiaescritture/
Gruppo del centro di poesia e scritture contemporanee: https://www.facebook.com/groups/gruppo.centro.poesia.scritture/
Teatroinscatola: https://www.facebook.com/TeatroinscatolaRoma/
Platformplee: https://www.facebook.com/platformplee/
Gruppo di Platformplee: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1749021601806054
collab pages @ fb
Asemic Writing: The New Postliterate: https://www.facebook.com/groups/76178850228/
compostxt: https://www.facebook.com/compostxt/
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l i s t o f e x h i b i t i o n s
1996_ Rome (Italy), Libreria Anomalia: a series of neo-expressionist works on paper [solo exhib.]
1997_ Rome (Italy), Teatro dei Contrari: Carboncini e ricodifiche [solo exhib.]
2007_ Nice (France), Garage 103 Gallery, UberTrashung [collective]
2008_ Rome (Italy), La camera verde: Sibille asemantiche [solo exhib.]
2009_ Fort Worth (Texas, USA), Fort Worth Community Arts Center, Fluxhibition #2 [collective]
2009_ Rome (Italy), Atto senza attori, performance with asemic stuff by M.G. & photographic actions by Pietro D’Agostino, c.s. Rialtosantambrogio, 5 Mar [performance]
2009_ Piacenza (Italy), Laboratorio delle arti: Asemic sibyls (“sibille asemantiche || contraddette in versi e in prosa”), 10 May [solo exhib.]
2009_ Modena (Italy), asemic sibyls (onto a screen), on the occasion of the Delfini Literary Prize, 23 May [projection]
2009_ Rome (Italy), La camera verde, Jeu d’oeuf. Pour violer les solutions régulières il faudrait bien naître, 31 Oct [collective]
2010_ Viterbo (Italy), Piane di Bronzo [collective]
2011_ Bury (Manchester, UK), Text Festival 2011, Apr [collective]
2011_ Moscow, Zverev Center, May 12th – Jun 12th, Alphabet of art [collective]
2011_ Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney (Australia), The SECREt eXCHANGE [collective]
2011-12_ National Museum of Contemporary Art in Seoul (Korea), The SECREt eXCHANGE [collective]
2011_ Philadelphia, International House, Sept 1st – Oct 15th, Alphabet of art [collective]
2011_ Kessel-lo (Belgium), Klebnikov Carnaval, 2-4 Sept, 2011 [collective]
2011_ Milan (Italy), Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera, 6-17 Oct, 2011, da>verso, transizioni arte-poesia [collective]
2012_ Lviv (Ukraine), Tymutopiyapres Gallery, Oct 6th, Glyphs (and) encyclopaedia [solo exhib.]
2013_ Albinea (Reggio Emilia, Italy), Biblioteca Pablo Neruda, EX.IT exhibits, videoslide & more, 12-14 Apr [collective]
2013_ Kessel-lo (Belgium), Klebnikov Carnaval, 30 Aug. – 1 Sept, 2013 [collective]
2013_ Mount Barker (Adelaide Hills, Australia), Signs and Symbols, Oct [collective]
2013_ Paris (France), Les editions de la Camera verde, Galerie Laure Roynette, 16 Nov, 2013 [collective]
2014_ Reggio Emilia (Italy), Loopmovies, Fondazione Museo O. Sarzi, 2-15 May, 2014 (Reggio Emilia) [collective]
2014_ Minneapolis (USA), exhibit at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts, Feb-Jul [collective]
2014_Oulu (Finland), exhibit at Sarjakuvagalleria, A kick in the eye, Dec. 9th, 2014 – Jan 20th [collective]
2015_ Rome (Italy), three asemic pieces included in Francesca Grilli’s performance at American Academy, Jan 29th, 2015
2015_ Isle of Malta, Asemic exhibition at The Spiral, Apr-May [collective]
2015_ Rome (Italy), Una vetrina, one week exhibit: one text from Oggettistica, Oct [solo exhib.]
2015_ Bury (Manchester, UK), Total Recall (for Tony Trehy), vispo exhibition at the Bury Art Museum (Bury, Manchester), Sept-Oct [collective]
2016_ Rome (Italy), Una vetrina, one week exhibit: one text from Il paziente crede di essere, 27 Sept – 4 Oct [solo exhib.]
2016_ Rome (Italy), Studio Campo Boario, little market + exhibit of artists’ multiples, 2-4 Dec [collective]
2016_ Rome (Italy), MAXXI Museum, Una vetrina: a retrospective as a multi-screen series of loops, Dec [collective]
2017_ Minnesota, Offline and in the gallery, asemic exhibit at Minnesota Center for Book Arts, Mar-May [collective]
2017_ Barcelona (Spain), Asemic Tech, asemic exhibit at Punt Multimedia, Feb 28th, 2017 [collective]
2017_ Madrid (Spain), reading + projection of texts (from Strettoie) and glitched asemics, Festival Poetas, @ Matadero, 28 May [projection]
2017_ Farini (Italy), A poem in the exhibit “Visibile Traccia” (in Farini, near Piacenza), by William Xerra, from Jun 25th [collective]
2018_ Rome (Italy), some asemic works in CONCRETA – Festapoesia, Hungarian Academy, 21 Apr – 5 May [collective]
2018-19_ L’Aquila (Italy), asemic works in Scrivere Liberi. Scritture sperimentali e di ricerca dagli anni Sessanta ad oggi, MU.SP.A.C., 14 Dec 2018 – 11 Jan 2019 [collective]
2019_ Rome (Italy), Enciclopedia asemica, Studio Campo Boario, 27 Feb – 7 Mar 2019 [solo exhib.]
2019_ Florence (Italy), Partes extra partes, Frittelli Arte Contemporanea, 17 Mag 2019 [collective]
2019_ Spoleto (Italy), Enciclopedia asemica, Studio OFArch, 30 Jun 2019 [solo exhib.]
2019_ Palermo (Italy), Avvistamenti #2. Scritture asemantiche, Museo Sociale Danisinni, 12-13 Oct [collective]
2019_ Modena (Italy), verbo-visual works sent to the event Le quaranta lettere dell’alfabeto @ Laboratorio di poesia di Modena, 7 Nov [collective]
2019_ Palermo (Italy), Scritture asemiche. Libri d’artista dalla collezione dell’Accademia di belle arti di Palermo, Acc. di belle arti, 15 Dec 2019 – 5 Jan 2020 [collective]
2020_ Geneva (Switzerland), Scrivere disegnando. Quand la langue cherche son autre, Centro Arte Contemporanea, Jan-Aug 2020 [collective]
2020_ Mogliano Veneto (Italy), Asemic Arts Expo, Centro Brolo, Jun 2020 [collective]
2020_ Rome (Italy), ll paradiso e le sue rappresentazioni, Studio Campo Boario, from Oct 28th [collective]
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Xavier Serrano, Giovanni Andrea Semerano, Cecil Touchon, Nanni Balestrini, William and Rosalba Xerra, Tony Trehy, Alexander Ocheretyansky, Terry Reid, Dirk Vekemans, Margherita Labbe, Lubomyr Tymkiv, Michael Jacobson, Reijo Valta, Philip Davenport, Giuseppe Garrera, Erica Cristadoro, Laura Pugno, Sebastiano Triulzi, Alessandra Greco, Roberto Cagnoli, Alberto D’Amico, Andrea Tomasini, Enzo Patti, Francesco Aprile, Andrea Bellini, Sarah Lombardi, Ricky Brett.