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Vol. 002 n. 002
AGAINST BOREDOM: DELIRIOUS IS BEAUTIFUL
IN COLLABORATION WITH THE PRIMO MORONI ARCHIVE
April 2024
For the Edition 001 Against boredom: delirious is beautiful XEROXED collaborated with the Primo Moroni Archive located in Milan, an incredibly fertile environment where the coexistence of leftist countercultural archival materials and contemporary underground publications continuously generates new inputs, conversations, debates, and reflections.
Through the creation of this edition, the goal was to trigger, as a virus(1), a mechanism of spreading and mutating of the Primo Moroni’s material, which has been the generating root of new editorial contents that re-read the archive.
With the attentive help of the archive volounteers, XEROXED delved into the Primo Moroni Archive and extracted materials that have been reinterpreted, reworked, and reimagined by eleven contributors. The overarching theme that unifies the material is Against boredom: delirious is beautiful.
With this title, XEROXED tried to mirror the contents of the selected archival material (fanzinography), which covers a time span that goes from 1971 to 1977, an incredible fertile period for Italian counterculture. The materials were extracted from publications such as Puzz, Cannibale, and Oask, which addressed important political issues through many different media. Comics, illustrations, poetry, and creative writing exploded onto the mimeographed pages with a colorful and playful attitude. The common thread that goes through the selected publications is the idea that divergent strategies of thought like irony, dementiality and cheekiness can be tools of destructive creation and transformative power, to create new ways of being together and New Culture.
With the same cheekiness, in XEROXED Edition 001 the archive is not approached as a fortress of memory, but as a creative space, and as pool for creation and reflection. For XEROXED, the real potential of the archive unfolds when it is used as a space where to cultivate new thoughts and perspectives, and where to question and debate history.
In this new understanding of the archive, instead of being left intact and untouched, the material becomes an input for the creation of contemporary perspectives on it. To take away the most eradicated layer of dust, it was time to use the archive as the trigger for the creation of new universes of meaning.
The eleven contributors re-read the archive through diverse languages, approaches, and media. The contents span from poetry, free translation, sound design, illustration, and comics, providing new interpretations and insights into the archival material.
The contents were published on a wearable publication, which is the tangible result of this mutation, and serves as a platform where the editorial contributions are gathered and juxtaposed. It is the space where like-minded individuals come together and share their contemporary interpretation of the archival material.
The reason why XEROXED makes use of the wearable publication as its primary publishing medium, is because it allows the published content to reach a wider and more diverse audience. Wearable publications are mostly meant to be worn and shown in public spaces, which creates a shared experience of the content, where the garment becomes a conversation starter, a way to connect and engage with others. By wearing a wearable publication, the wearer is not only consuming the published content but also contributing to its dissemination and interpretation. A wearable publication is therefore a form of social practice(2) a shared experience, as it thrives on the constant engagement and co-production of meaning between the wearer and the readers.
Through their interaction on the printed fabric, new narratives are created, transforming the wearable publication in a platform to foster connections among like-minded individuals. The wearable publication is therefore not the ultimate goal but rather the means to facilitate a new antagonistic communication.
It is important to highlight that the Primo Moroni Archive has never accessed any form of external financing, as it is not ideologically and financially tied to any public or private Institution. The archive bases its existence on the voluntary and supportive contribution of those who take care of it, alternating, according to the moments and needs, the free work and the self-financing initiative. That, of course, has a big impact on the archive management, but it denotes a type of commitment that goes beyond money, it is motivated by passion, love, and a personal drive toward certain, openly radical ideologies.
The XEROXED Edition 001 was born out of the urgency of enhancing and re-activating the Primo Moroni archival materials, and giving value to the immaterial work that keeps the archive alive and proliferating.
For this reason, the XEROXED Edition 001 also functions as a tool to raise funds to help the archive continue growing and spreading counterculture. The money raised from the distribution of this edition will be used to cover the costs of production materials, and the remaining proceeds will be donated entirely to the Primo Moroni Archive.
XEROXED strongly believes that is our collective responsibility to protect such spaces, as they store precious bits of Italian culture.
XEROXED EDITION 001 FANZINOGRAPHY
XEROXED EDITION 001 CONTRIBUTIONS
(1) Pad.ma., Ten Theses on the Archive. https://pad.ma/documents/OH [accessed 5/12/2023]
(2) Shukaitis, S., Figiel, J, (2019). Publishing to Find Comrades: Constructions of Temporality and Solidarity in Autonomous Print Cultures, Lateral (8) 2.