Produced on the occasion of the eponymous exhibition at FM Centre for Contemporary Art, Milan, from 4 April–26 May, 2019. The Unexpected Subject. 1978 Art and Feminism in Italy recounts the Seventies as a key phase in the history of Italian art of the 20th century, during which the spread of feminist thinking stimulates a new critical awareness that encourages many female artists, curators and art historians to rethink their role in society, life and art.

With works by Tomaso Binga, Irma Blank, Hanne Darboven, Agnes Denes, Chiara Diamantini, Amelia Etlinger, Maria Ferrero Gussago, Simone Forti, Sanja Iveković, Joan Jonas, Ketty La Rocca, Katalin Ladik, Maria Lai, Marisa Merz, Carol Rama, Mira Schendel, Carolee Schneemann, Eleanor Schott, Mariuccia Secol, Mary Ellen Solt, Biljana Tomić amongst others.

Reprint of Simone Forti’s 1978 publication Angel. Originally produced as a document of a 1976 performance at Fine Arts Building, which included readings and the hologram Angel. With photos by Babette Mangolte.

”Iʼve gathered so many books (….), all about the family. This is all washing over me like a waterfall. I canʼt figure out the genealogy, the chronology flows like currents that wind around each other at different rates. (…). And now Iʼm recognizing that Iʼm part of this tribe, this family of writers writing about our tribe.”

These sentences can be found in Simone Fortiʼs new publication, The Bear in the Mirror—a wonderful collection of stories, prose-poems, drawings, photos, letters, notes and memories.

Simone Forti dives into the (his)stories of her family and of the woollen mills they once owned, trying to put all the myths and fragments of information into some kind of perspective.

Edited by Roos Gortzak and Quinn Latimer. Designed by Nerijus Rimkus.

An Account of an Ongoing Personal Discourse and Its Manifestations in Dance.

Tracing a period in her life from the 1969 Woodstock Festival through the following years living on the land, this singular dance artist’s direct and poetic writings bring a turbulent transitional era to life. Arriving in New York in the early 60’s from California, she brought with her a series of pieces that proved to be a serious influence on the development of “post modern” dance in years to come. Her “dance-constructions” were based on a concern with bodies in action, the movement not being stylized or presented for its visual line but rather as a physical fact. Combining drawings, “dance reports” (short descriptions of events whose movement made a deep impression on the author’s memory), and documentary materials such as scores, descriptions, letters to colleagues, and photographic records of performances, Forti’s eye toward creating idioms for exploring natural forms and behaviors is evident throughout.

*This is the reprint by Contact Editions and not the original 1st edition by Novia Scotia College of Art and Design from 1974.

Produced on the occasion of Onion Walk and News Animation (Rehearsal), 24 January–17 February, 2018 at ReadingRoom, Melbourne.

Simone Forti is a dancer, artist, writer based in Los Angeles. She came of age artistically in the 1960s, a time of rich dialog between poets, musicians, dancers and visual artists. Her early Dance Constructions were influential to the reinventing of dance in New York that happened in the 60s and 70s. Forti has collaborated extensively with musicians Peter Van Riper and Charlemagne Palestine, basing her dancing on studies of animals’ movements and on the dynamics of circling.

Designed by Robert Milne.

Reading / Feeling centers around the notion of affect, a term that delineates a field where the personal and the political meet through sensory movements between bodies. Affect, as a pre-emotional experience, constitutes the social and economic relationships that make up the fabric of society. Reading / Feeling considers the meaning of affect in theory and artistic practice, with a selection of texts by theoreticians, artists and curators that were read in If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution’s reading groups in Amsterdam, Toronto and Sheffield for the past two years, as part of the programme Edition IV—Affect (2010–2012). It also includes three new essays, short statements by reading group members, and artist pages.