RESIDENCY 80121 CELEBRATES FUORI!!!

18.12.2021 \ from 5PM to 9PM
Residency 80121 \ Via Giuseppe Martucci 48, 80121 Naples
info@res.80121.com

In the spring of 1971, the Italian Revolutionary Homosexual United Front FUORI! was founded in Turin.

FUORI! did not act only for homosexual rights, but ‘in every field in which a majority, or an alleged majority, dictates behavioral standards that, shielded by moralistic or ethical reasons, or reasons of order, simply subtend a desire for the centralization of power’ (1).

In that moment, a season of struggles was inaugurated, of which FUORI!, also with its eponymous press organ, was a protagonist.

Mario Mieli, author of ‘Elements of Homosexual Criticism’, a text considered the basis of gender studies in Italy, participated in the organization of the group in Milan, joining the editorial staff of FUORI! from its second issue. 
In Naples, the philosopher and playwright Enzo Moscato was the figure of reference. Soon, all over Italy, FUORI! groups were founded, all connected to each other. At the same time, there were close links with foreign groups, such as the Gay Liberation Front or the Front Homosexuel d’Action Révolutionnaire. From the pages of the magazine, a constellation emerges, marking the points of encounter and passage of a new generation of activism, revolutionary and proud, but also joyful. Different signatures, different visions, and different identities intersect on the pages of FUORI!, finally reclaiming and repossessing language, subverting its use and unleashing a liberating creativity, under the motto ‘Revolution is JOY.’(2)

Exactly fifty years after the birth of the movement, FUORI! is back in circulation, and it becomes FUORI!!! a mammoth and explosive volume, edited by Carlo Antonelli and Francesco Urbano Ragazzi. Published by Nero Editions, with the scientific collaboration of Fondazione Sandro Penna and the support of Levi’s, FUORI!!! collects the photostatic reproductions of the original pages of the first thirteen issues of the magazine, from number 0, published in ’71 and distributed in clandestine meeting places and parks, to number 13, entirely realized by the female subjectivities belonging to the Front.
All of this is accompanied by a critical introduction by Carlo Antonelli and Francesco Urbano Ragazzi, a real ‘declaration of love’, and by an interview with Angelo Pezzana, founder of FUORI! The almanac is a celebration of an anniversary, of fifty years in fact, but above all of the “heroism of a small group of people who made themselves sound bigger than they were through unabashed use of language (…) an attempt to run before walking, but it didn’t trip. It leaped.”(3)

On December 18th, on the occasion of the Art Days in Campania and Naples, Residency 80121 will host the curators Carlo Antonelli and Francesco Urbano Ragazzi for the presentation of FUORI!!! and for an encounter with a transgenerational community around the topics of the first thirteen issues of the Fronte Unitario Omosessuale Rivoluzionario Italiano. The event will begin with a choral reading of excerpts from the book.

Participants are: Francesco Urbano Ragazzi, Dario Biancullo, Claudia Gangemi, Effe Minelli, Ciro Riccio, Arnisa Zeqo

Residency 80121 is a platform for research and experimentation through the constitution of temporary collectives, with the aim of investigating ways of inhabiting a place, domestic or of origin, alternative to the dominant system. Founded in 2017 by the artist Raffaela Naldi Rossano (Naples, 1990), with the coordination of Mariagisella Giustino, the platform follows two guidelines: the artistic practice of Naldi Rossano, which is developed in a project of transformation of her maternal grandmother’s house – the apartment in via Martucci 48, headquarters of the association – and the opening to multidisciplinary community practices of living, in the stratified context of a city like Naples.

On the occasion of Art Days in Naples, the first gestures of care and transformation of the ceilings of the space that the founding artist has carried out, as part of her restoration project through artistic interventions that will make the house habitable, will be visible. In addition, there will be some sculptural elements related to the process of renovation of the terrace and railings designed by the artist.
With its stratifications of energies accumulated during various historical periods on the walls, floors, and ceilings, Residency 80121 wants to be a home for new families, not nuclear or by blood, but linked by imaginative alliances and kinship that here become plausible.

Carlo Antonelli, 56 years old, is a producer, anthropologist and cultural inventor (musical, editorial, cinematographic and events related to innovation in every field).

Francesco Urbano Ragazzi is a curatorial duo trained in ontology, queer and media studies, whose main interest is in the narratives that underpin the age of connectivity. The team is the artistic director of LIAF 2022, the 17th Art Biennale of the Lofoten Islands in Norway.Among the duo’s signature projects is Io Tu Lui Lei, the first Italian institutional exhibition dedicated to the cultural legacy of LGBTQ+ movements (Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, Venice, 2012).

NERO is an international publishing house devoted to contemporary art, criticism and culture. Founded in Rome in 2004, it publishes artist’s books, catalogs, editions and essays.

1.    Collettivo FUORI!: L’occasione – FUORI! Giugno ’72, no. 1, pag. 2 


2.    FUORI! Dicembre ’71, no. 0, pag. 3


3.    Carlo Antonelli, Francesco Urbano Ragazzi: FUORIIIIIIII!!!!!!! – FUORI!!!, NERO Editions, Roma, 2021


4.    Chronology attached to the 1970 Nemesiache Manifesto