A story from Circolo della rosa

Transcription

1 Alex Martinis Roe A story from Circolo della rosa Opening on Friday, 21 February at Archive Kabinett, Alex Martinis Roe will show her new film A story from Circolo della Rosa, and a sculpture in the Archive Kabinett window, both of which continue her work on feminist genealogies. The film is narrated by the artist s voice and is addressed to a close colleague in the form of a letter, telling a story about two women. The film weaves together fragments from her recent oral history research with members of the Milan Women s Bookstore Collective and her experiences of their collective activities, as well as her exploration of related spaces, archives and texts. The film traces the story of two experimental historians who began working together on feminist pedagogical experiments in the late 1980s and explores the nature of their relationship, which can be described as one of affidamento (entrustment). Affidamento is a social-symbolic practice exercised and theorized by the Milan Women s Bookstore Collective and is a reciprocal relationship of entrustment between two adult women. By referring to one another, each gives the other authority in her spheres of political practice by acknowledging her desires, competences and differences. This practice of acknowledgement involves a commitment to one another, a commitment to each other s sexual difference, and is the fabric with which the collective is formed. Martinis Roe explores the lived history of this practice as a way to narrate her own political relationships, and as a way to imagine feminist futures located in networks and affiliations across different times and places. 1

2 A story from Circolo della rosa On the occasion of A Story of Circolo della rosa Alex Martinis Roe selected a series of books from both her personal library and The Milan Women s Bookstore Collective. The collection takes the form of an open access reference library at Archive Kabinett inviting users for individual or collective reading, serving as site for sharing resources and ways of thinking. Excerpts from this collection will also be made available on GRRAAAAARG. 2

3 Alex Martinis Roe Laura Minguzzi and Marirì Martinengo in conversation with Alex Martinis Roe AMR: We began our discussions at the Milan Women s Bookstore s club, Circolo della rosa, because I came in search of stories of affidamento [entrustment] within the collective that theorized it. Can you briefly explain what you understand a relationship of affidamento to be, and how it relates to the structure of your collective? LM: The relationship of affidamento relies on the will to win and disparities between women. This means giving priority to the relationship with a woman, a shift of symbolic reference that one has in order to be in the world, to realise a project and guide their choices in life and work, to signify difference and to valorise the mother tongue. It's about building a symbolic order based on the genealogy between women, which refers to the mother. The Milan Women s Bookstore Collective, where affidamento has been theorized as a political practice, is a female society that forecasts a different way of understanding the relationships between men and women and social and economic relations. In my experience, the affidamento to Marirì Martinengo was the primary force that gave me the strength to realise my dream to move to Milan, where I could teach more freely and carry out projects that I had thought about for many years. AMR: What do you see as being the challenges in making histories of affidamento? 3

4 Laura Minguzzi and Marirì Martinengo LM: The challenge for me is to record memory, resignifying and making history starting from the experiences and relationships that have created what we call female strength. For example, in DonnaWomanFemme magazine, where we published the writings of our storia vivente [living history], following the example of Marirì, I was able to tell my own story, especially one about a tragic event in my life, which conditioned my relationships and my choices. It was a gamble that gave me back a sense of liberation and justice, and consequently a greater consciousness of my presence in public. AMR: One of the books you worked on together is called Cambia il mondo cambia la storia. La differenza sessuale nella ricerca storica e nell insegnamento [Change the world, change history: Sexual difference in historical research and teaching], which is a compilation of papers from a conference of the same title held at Casa della cultura di Milano in Can you summarize the practices discussed in it to give a sense of your work together? LM: The conference was organized by Marirì Martinengo and The Community of Pedagogical Practice and Reflection and Historical Research (the current Community of Living History), of which I am a member. The conference is to be considered as an important step on the community s evolutionary path. The meeting was preceded by a series of conversations, called the Tè storia pasticcini [Tea History Pastries], which took place in the Circolo della rosa. Our intention was to see what the crucial points of history were, to analyze and to clarify them, and to then discuss them in a public debate. The conference was the culmination of our work in the Community up until that point, and at the same time a point to bounce off, toward new destinations. A conference on history, on the way of doing it, and the mode of teaching it, and at the same time a conference on our political practice, founded on the cut of difference and on female freedom. History is the most political of subjects that 4

5 in conversation with Alex Martinis Roe we teach in schools. Essential points: the importance of context (places where women are always present); subjective narration as disruptive force; the invention in the field of historiography in the sense of invenire (to put oneself into research and to find), not in the sense of disregarding sources; the need for conflict in order to avoid surrendering to war or the quiet life AMR: Can you describe your more recent practice of storia vivente and how it affects both the writing and the writer? LM: In 2006 Marirì Martinengo enacted a radical change in our working group. After her statement, "There is a living history nestled in each of us," she proposed to the women of the Community to call our nascent practice storia vivente, i.e., the self-investigation we undertake is the drive for a way of writing history on behalf of women, the unveiling of the subject that makes history is the main document to draw from. This change was anticipated by the publication in 2005 of a history book about her grandmother, La voce del silenzio. Memoria e storia di Maria Massone, donna sottratta [The voice of silence: Memory and history of Maria Massone, a woman "taken away"]. The necessity of giving words and visibility to a hidden history of women, silenced and erased from the family for years, has made the symbolic meaning of subjective narration clear. From the value of the word of a woman who becomes a historical document, a symbolic can be born, a point of view of interpretation which gives a different reading of a particular historical period and of an environment, which in her case was bourgeois. In my case, however, telling the story of my mother, from a peasant context, gave an interpretation of Italian history in the sixties, of which there is no trace of in official history. The true history is one that expresses love, not just the data sources traditionally considered historic, and that love is expressed by narrating history which results from the implacable dialogue between the female historian and the relation (with a person, with an issue, with a question, with a desire) which are at the origin of her vocation as a historian. 5

6 Many thanks to: Valerio del Baglivo, Luca Bergamaschi, Paolo Caffoni, Chiara Deidda, Chiara Figone, Simone Frangi, Alicia Frankovich, Fiona Geuß, Nicola Guy, Mihovil Markulin, Marirì Martinengo, Laura Minguzzi, Giulio Verago, Renata Sarfati, Traudel Sattler, Melanie Sehgal, Archive Kabinett, Libreria delle donne di Milano and Viafarini, Milan.

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8 Printed on the ocassion of A story from Circolo della rosa Alex Martinis Roe (video 08.18) Organised by Fiona Geuß Archive Kabinett Made possible with support by Graduiertenschule, Universität der Künste Berlin