Dick Higgins. Intermedia e altri scritti teorici

Published by Abscondita. In collaboration with Fondazione Bonotto

The result of extensive research among the materials preserved in the Bonotto Collection, the volume, edited by Patrizio Peterlini, collects, in chronological order, many of the texts that Dick Higgins dedicated to the concept of Intermedia or related to it.
They testify to a theoretical production that engaged the author from the mid-sixties to 1998, the year of his death, which we can very roughly divide into two phases.

The first goes from the text Intermedia of 1965 to Against Movements of 1967 in which Higgins develops the analysis of some aesthetic phenomena contemporary to him, looking for common elements and promoting the concept of Intermedia as a useful term for describing such phenomena.
In this first phase Higgins lays the conceptual foundations for all his subsequent theoretical development.

The second phase takes shape starting from the text Structural Researches, also from 1967, in which Higgins uses the tools proposed previously to read and understand what he defines as a "change of mentality".
This is the mature Higgins who combines aesthetic and sociological reading in an attempt to build a more general system of structural reading.

The collection is completed by two texts that are more focused on the history and poetics of Fluxus: Some reflections on the context of Fluxus, from 1978, and Fluxus and Intermedia, a text from the conference held by Higgins at the “Rencontre Internationale sur l’Art Action”, held in Quebec from 20 to 25 October 1998.
The latter is particularly important, in which the American artist presents his version of the history of Fluxus and once again specifies the concept of Intermedia.
This is his last testimony.
Higgins gave his intervention, followed by a performance, on October 25th and died during the night.

The texts have been published in several books, edited both by the author himself and by third parties, in several languages ​​and are preserved in the library of the Bonotto Foundation (organized in its Fluxus section by Higgins himself during his numerous stays in Italy). With rare exceptions, they are presented here in Italian translation for the first time.

On the cover, the famous Intermedia chart created by Dick Higgins in 1995, in Molvena at Bonotto's house, exactly thirty years after the first formulation of the concept of Intermedia by the American author.

Published by Abscondita
In collaboration with Fondazione Bonotto

ISBN 979-12-5472-204-6