Ultras Youth is now part of Mufoco collection.

A portfolio of 14 fine art prints by Fineart Lab Napoli has been delivered to the museum.

The Museum of Contemporary Photography had previously presented the group exhibition titled Who doesn’t jump up! Football, Culture. Identity, curated by Matteo Balduzzi, which is a reflection treating the game of football as an expression of both individual and group identity. An articulated exhibition project getting underway with the start of the European Football Championship and featuring Ultras Youth : Movimenti, densità, stratagemmi, posizioni: an installation  made of ink-jet prints and vinyl printing (about 40 photographs), two iPad showcasing digital pictures, stickers, one original ultras banner, one stencil, two videos, one audio footage and various ultras objects over two walls, two tables and the stained glass window at Museo Fotografia Contemporanea first floor. This site specific production  was  based on a translation of ultras supporters cultures into some documentary points of view: movements, density, archives, ploys, positions. And, of course inherently, youth. With the support of Fondazione Nuovi Mecenati.

Ultras Youth is part fo my documentary based photography works and I usually archive them under the label Argumenta (from Latin arguere, to prove), opening a wide range of ideas related to the uncertainty of depiction: archive as score, re-writing, readable/unreadable, fragments, representation as a temporary act, representation as a translation.

Ultras Youth Manifesto

1. Since the willing to depict a phenomenon is just not enough, Ultras Youth is primarily a research based photography collection. The research project is led by historian Sébastien Louis, whose presence defines a stable investigation field, never under the pressure of personal or intimate needs to depict a phenomenon. The alliance of scientific research and aesthetic practices design a wider project whose goal is the understanding of a culture.
2. Ultras Youth is a challenging work in terms of photography positions and in terms of ecology of images: which would be the right image able to investigate topics without putting a colonial and naif gaze ?
3. Ultras Youth offers the opportunity to build up a small as well as a modest and temporary cartography, on the edge of classic iconography, of a youth movement constantly expanding from the Mediterranean area and mutating according to the countries and cities in which it establishes its roots.
4. Ultras movement does not need any kind of monument, being itself a constant producer of monuments. But it might sometimes require the presence of photography as a tool to keep track of events and actions, in order to minimise the emotional waste due to ephemeral performances. 
5. My main interest focuses on operations : aesthetic, ethic and political operations.
6. Assuming that a movement finds its vis existendi in the effort released to be part of the movement itself, to observe the breaking points of orthodoxy is a leading criteria. I am mainly attracted by the ways in which Ultras go out of designed spaces (the curva and its masculine density is, by definition, Ultras primary space), when they put themselves in danger in regard to they own ideology, when they fall into contradiction during the identity definition process.
7. Since the curva is the space assigned for ultras groups staged shows (usually defined by classic terms choreography and scenography), how can we define Ultras’ performativity? 
8. Notes for a taxonomy of Ultras movement: movimenti, migrazioni, stratagemmi, posizioni, archivi. Michel de Certeau arts de faire: to walk, to collect, to show, to hide, to believe.

A public paper based artwork in Streetcart, a group show curated by O’vascio Room Gallery. From July 27th 2022 until natural destruction.

The site specific installation is based on an urban ruin in the city of Somma Vesuviana, in Campania, in the Vesuvio area: an old telephone booth pedestal. The work is an essay on the remains of a wired based past in our public space, in a society of connectivity. It has been built with loose papers, remaining from a past printmaking residency as well as ruins of essay prints from aquatint, which is itself a precess based on acid corruption of zinc plates.

The installation catalogue: Questa è una rovina. Fateci caso.

Prophecies and pronouncements in Sibyl Sessions by  Kulturscio’k live art collective at Museo della Moda di Napoli.

Open dress rehearsals Thu Jun 30th, Fri July 1st, Sun July 3rd 2022

The third chapter is a series of anxiolytic prophecies coming form my work Submit!, analysing the marketing literature aiming to intercept a huge reservoir of potential buyers: artists. They all want to emerge and they are ready to pay for any possibility to be seen by millions. A massive copywrited literature, sent by newsletters, constantly counts the time left before calls for proposal expire. A pressure on time shaped by countdowns and reductions for early birds. That is translated by a compulsive behavior for artists, filling forms, answering to calls, writing cover letters. Artists turns in chain workers as well as they are part of a market in which they can buy their possible marketing tools.

Promoted and produced by Vesuvio Adventures

CORTE VICO II SAN MICHELE 

Pdf document introducing the exhibition

Dialoghi, rigenerazione, comunità, 

pietre, sfregamenti, catastrofi e archivi.

Site specific installation of Ius Soli. Campania Felix delenda est. Chapter 1: waiting, passing, redempting.

The courtyard as a dialogue space. 

The courtyard  as a documentary piece. 

The courtyard as a fibre. 

The courtyard as architecture pavilion.

I started working on a possible archive for a depiction of Vesuvio’s Red Zone in 2018, and over the years, while producing installations and exhibitions, I came across so many artists building up, in their own peculiar way, a relationship with Vesuvio’s aesthetics. Those encounters, sometimes literally walks and hikes, those conversations, have been producing modifications in my archive, on a conceptual and physical level. A re-shaping reminding me Vesuvio’s central structure, seeming to be there from the beginning of times, surrounded by this series of changes, sometimes radical, we usually call eruptions. So, the CORTE VICO II SAN MICHELE – a real private courtyard in Ottaviano’ historical center –  offers me a space to process both my archive and my Vesuvio encounters. And especially the constant meeting and dialogue whit the association Vesuvio Adventures itself, based on conversations, projects, walks and mountain’s (that’s how we call the Somma–Vesuvius volcanic complex) views.

Giovanni Ambrosio

15 aprile 2022  20:30

Live performance 

Julia Liedel 

The insecurity of the way of being

16 aprile 2022  16:00

Innesti, interruzioni, intrecci

Camminata nel centro 

storico di Ottaviano 

con Progetto Fiori

Corte al Vico II San Michele 

(piazza San Michele),

 Ottaviano (Na). 

15 aprile dalle 19:30. 

16 aprile dalle 14:00 alle 22:30

A selection of Ultras Youth with @sebastienlouiswriter is now on show at Museum of Mediterranean and Near Eastern Antiquities of Stockholm @medelhavsmuseet in a brilliantly curated exhibition on #football and #politics, among brilliant installations by researchers and image makers.

Starting from the collection We need no education (North Africa and Asia), the installation tells about strategies and ploys of ultras groupes to stay afloat in their societies: I can’t breathe, I do want to breathe, I try to breathe, how do I breathe? Ultras groups as a destituent power?

It is clear enough that ultras are not a classic political subject, no category seems to be appropriate to define their way to stay afloat in their societies. They are not feminist, not right wing, not left wing, not extra parliament, they are not anarchist, they are not libertarian, they are not progressive, but certainly one cannot say they are reactionary. They are just ultras. And no one can deny their ability to get into the public scene.

The installation is based on light boxes and framed pictures, with videos and original objects.

Press :

Medelhavsmuseet visar intressant utställning om fotbollskultu