Giovanni Fontana - Epigenetic Poetry

September 11, 2020: CIPM Marseille, in the context of Paralles du Sud | Manifesta 13 Marseille

The project Giovanni Fontana. Epigenetic Poetry, born from the collaboration between Fondazione Bonotto, CIPM Centre International de Poésie Marseille and Alphabetville, with the initial support of Julien Blaine, is part of Parallèles du Sud program of Manifesta 13 Marseille, and presents a series of new works, of large format, developed specifically by the artist for this event.



A project, curated by Patrizio Peterlini, which organizes the space into a large sound and visual installation which, thanks to the use of new technologies, tends to expand the concept of intermedia that supports it.

Giovanni Fontana is one of the major protagonists of Sound Poetry at an international level and his works, which assemble electronic devices for the projection of video and the diffusion of audio, make concrete the multi-dimensionality of the artist's works which, in addition to their value on the visual plane, they have a textual relief and they also act as real scores.

Giovanni Fontana, in his Testo come organo vivente, defines this unity in these terms: “The poem is organized in the sound space. What is in nuce in the score is realized in material vibrations that involve all our senses. Perception is not only auditory, it is also optical and haptic. But the poetic text, like a living organism, retains its identity in the sphere of transformations. And it is regenerated from within with an autopoietic process, prompted by the voice and substantially redefined by the network of relations with the space-time environment. The level of organization of the interacting elements is decisive for the quality of the work, understood as a real system to be read in an intermedia key, in the sense that each of the interacting elements makes no sense if considered in itself. Everything is a function of the whole. In the dynamics of transformations (from the static nature of the page to the space-time dimension of the intermedia poem) the autopoietic process guarantees identity in diversity."



Thanks to the collaboration of CIPM and Alphabetville, two important institutions for the production and diffusion of contemporary Marseille poetry, and its inclusion in the context of Manifesta 13 Marseille, the project aims to connect the historical scene of original sound poetry with the contemporary one.



The project is supported by the Italian Council 7th Edition 2019) program to promote Italian contemporary art in the world by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism.



Alphabetville, a production and dissemination center specializing in new digital languages, will support and disseminate the project through its channels and its collaboration with Radio Grenouille.



During the first opening days, from 11 to 13 September 2020, Giovanni Fontana will perform live in the exhibition space. Access will be limited and by reservation.
"The performance involves organizing and harmonizing the sound flow inherent in the textual structure through the use of the voice (main instrument, generator of significance). In action, the voice supports the text, but it can also temporarily abandon it, to dissolve it in space, to break it down into clots of phonemes, into fragments of the body, into flying particulas, into temporal germs, into pure vibrations capable of coagulating around a concept, to an idea, to a poetic gesture, to a sort of glorious body, which becomes the body of poetry. All this without ever losing sight of the project, without ever losing control of the performing situation, which is essentially a rewriting in terms of space and time, sound and more, which deals with the meters, the bars, the durations, the breaks, breaks." (Giovanni Fontana, La Voce)
.

Other parallel events such as workshops and live performances are being structured and will be communicated later.

For the occasion, a trilingual catalog (FR, EN and IT) will be published with texts by: Michaël Batalla, Julien Blaine, Giovanni Fontana, Barbara Meazzi, Patrizio Peterlini, Marianne Simon-Oikawa, Gilles Suzanne and Colette Tron.
________

Title:
GIOVANNI FONTANA. Epigenetic Poetry

Exhibition venue:
CIPM Marseille
2 Rue de la Charité
13002 Marseille

Opening date:
September 11, 2020

Opening times:
September 11 – December 20, 2020
Tuesday-Saturday 11:30-18:00

Curated by:
Patrizio Peterlini

Production:
Fondazione Bonotto (Vicenza), CIPM (Marseille), Alphabetville (Marseille)


Project supported by the Italian Council (7th Edition 2019) program to promote Italian contemporary art in the world by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism.

Project part Parallèles du Sud Program of Manifesta 13 Marseille.
manifesta13.org/fr/projects/giovanni-fontana-epigenetic-poetry/