Study Room Book Launch for Syxty Sorriso & Altre Storie

Curated by Flora Pitrolo

Syxty Sorriso & Altre Storie is the archive book of the 1978-1982 works of performance artist Antonio Syxty, active in Milan in connection with the basement theatre Out Off. From his 1977-1978 experimental actions WM, o Alcuni Tentativi di Salare il Sale e di Tirare un Muro Con i Capelli (‘WM, or Some Attempts to Salt Salt and to Pull a Wall Using Hair’), through the 1979-1980 Kennedy performance cycle, to the ‘fashion works’ of 1981-1982, Syxty’s Live Art falsified the codes of television, fashion and tourism to produce some of the most irreverent work of the Italian scene known as ‘New Spectacularity’.

The book presents a non-chronological, non-philological version of Syxty’s archive, in which scripts, drawings, sketches, photographs and textual fragments are assembled following visual, performative and narrative leads rather than documentary reliability: that is, the performance archive, fake letters and imaginary performances are indistinguishable from the real, allowing Syxty’s falsifications to continue to perform their trick through time and space. Alongside these materials, the book contains interviews with the period’s theatre and performance critics, ‘letters’ from Syxty’s collaborators, and critical interventions by Flora Pitrolo, Joe Kelleher and Alessandro Mendini.

The evening will include projections and an open conversation with Antonio Syxty and Flora Pitrolo.

Drinks will be served and books will be sold.

Antonio Syxty is a theatre director and visual artist based in Milan, Italy. His most recent works include the exhibitions Money Transfer (2012), A Work Of Art Is A Confession (2014), and most recently Amazon Papers (2016).

Flora Pitrolo works in London as an artist, scholar and journalist. Recent work includes the performance Calling Y “Z” with The International Western (2016) and the article “So Fake it Feels Real: Antonio Syxty’s Fashion Works in 1980s Milan” (forthcoming in About Performance).

Syxty Sorriso & Altre Storie is  published by Yard Press, an independent publishing house based in Rome, focused on experimental publications and underground cultures. 

Available for purchase on Unbound