Beyond Futurism: F.T. Marinetti, Writer

• Teatro of the Italian Academy (11/12) and Italian Cultural Institute (11/13)
• 1161 Amsterdam Avenue (11/12) and 686 Park Avenue (11/13)
• Thursday, November 12 - Friday, November 13, 1:00pm

Thanks to its irreverence and its lack of interest in puristic distinctions, including its capacity to find redeeming value in banality, Futurism will survive the process of “touristicization” and fetishization that characterizes a good part of the current approach to this avant-garde movement. But the victim of this process has paradoxically been its founder, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, who has been even too successful in confusing metonymically the movement as a whole and his own oeuvre. The time has come to begin to redress such a confusion, concentrating on the still imperfectly known writings of Marinetti – one of the most remarkable post-symbolist poets and narrators in twentieth-century Italian, and European, literature.

The centennial anniversary of the foundation of the Italian avant-garde movement, which was famously inaugurated by Marinetti in the French paper “Le Figaro” in 1909, is an auspicious occasion for a renaissance of futurist studies, contemplating the figure of Marinetti as a writer. This two-day symposium will bring together a variety of international critical perspectives. Our admittedly ambitious aim is to begin a general process of redefinition and rediscovery of the Italian Novecento on an international scale, going beyond defeatist clichés.

Participants include Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Günter Berghaus, Alberto Bertoni, Beatrice Buscaroli, Leonardo Clerici, Matteo D’Ambrosio, Simone Magherini, Millicent Marcus, Giuseppe Mazzotta, Marjorie Perloff, Ricciarda Ricorda, Claudia Salaris, Cinzia Sartini-Blum, Paola Sica, Luca Somigli, Barbara Spackman, Gino Tellini, Paolo Valesio, Gianni Eugenio Viola, and special readings by Gian Maria Annovi, Renato Miracco, Davide Rondoni, and Graziella Sidoli.

Presented by Columbia University. Organized by the Department of Italian at Columbia University. Co-sponsored by  the Italian Poetry Review, the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America at Columbia, Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio in Bologna, Centro di Studi “Aldo Palazzeschi” (Università degli Studi di Firenze), the Italian Cultural Institute in New York, Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò (NYU), Crossroads Cultural Center, and Performa.

FREE; RSVP to pc2159@columbia.edu

Nov 12, 9:30 – 6, Teatro of the Italian Academy
Nov 13, 9:30 – 12:30, Italian Cultural Institute in New York

For for more information: www.beyondfuturism.com