Launch of issue no. 24 by Jimmie Durham at Thomas Dane Gallery, Naples, Jan 26, 2019, 6pm.
E IL TOPO is an artists’ magazine that began in Naples in 1992 and has evolved into an international community of artists and thinkers with a post-Situationist attitude. Until 1996 – the year in which E IL TOPO stopped publication – eleven issues were produced. The magazine resurfaced in 2012 (with issue no. 12, Rebirth) after 16 years of silence, relying on a new editorial staff.
The collaborative and contributive character of the project has made it the ideal vehicle to amplify the group’s actions: a clandestine approach, contrary to any editorial policy. In 2014 E IL TOPO published the Topist Manifesto in a Korean newspaper. Its ten programmatic points define a sulfurous aesthetic and transformed the group into a movement.
The last Topist action involves Jimmie Durham as the protagonist of a new transformation: E IL TOPO becomes E IL TORO. In this issue, on the trail of the poem To a Mouse by Robert Burns, the artist imagines an encounter between the two animals, the mouse and the bull, where the mouse represents the figure of the artist and the bull the nations of Europe (the fathers). At the Thomas Dane Gallery in Naples, the artists of E IL TOPO and Jimmie Durham will present this final issue with a performance. The texts, sounds, noises and changes of mood will as always be documented by a blind cameraman, a central role in the entire Topist aesthetic.
Performer: Armando della Vittoria, Guillaume Clermont, Théo & Mario Coppola, Gatto Silvestro, David Liver, Frédéric Liver, Giancarlo Norese, Steve Piccolo, Gak Sato, Claudio Salerno, Gabi Scardi.
giancarlo norese 