CALL FOR PAPERS FOR INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
“Il continente involontario / O Continente Involuntário/ The involuntary continent: Emilio Villa e il Brasile“
11-13 November 2024 at Instituto de Estudos Avançados da Universidade de São Paulo.
Deadline for abstracts: 30 June 2024. Sumbit to info@centrostudiemiliovilla.com.
An incessant experimentation runs through Emilio Villa’s (Affori, Milano, 1914 – Rieti, 2003) entire oeuvre, which constitutes an essential point of reference for contemporary culture. Such experimentation surfaces in the most diverse types of texts (poetry, essays, installations, performances, translations), where a multiplicity of languages are often deployed simultaneously.
Crucial to Villa’s career is his collaboration on a number of pioneering cultural projects originating from the Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP), founded in 1947 by the critic and gallerist Pietro Maria Bardi with the patronage of Assis Chateaubriand, the owner of newspapers and radio stations as well as the first Brazilian television network.
For two years Villa was MASP’s main collaborator in Italy, leading a team of architects, archeologists, and art historians in devising the theoretical foundation for a series of didactic exhibitions for the museum: he provided the overarching structure, classified the images that would be used, wrote the labels, and chose the materials for the display cases.
Villa, working from Rome, was Bardi’s principal interlocutor in designing the first exhibition on the history of art, as well as the subsequent ones: “History of Abstract Ideas in Art, from Prehistory to Mondrian,” “Prehistory and Primitive Peoples,” as well as others that were never made accessible to the public.
In 1952 Villa finally made the journey to Brazil in order to continue his collaboration with the museum. During his stay, he befriended Flávio Motta, a young artist and art historian, as well as Italian artists Roberto Sambonet and Gastone Novelli, with whom he would collaborate throughout his life.
Despite his return to Italy at the end of 1952, his association with Bardi continued until at least 1966; over the years the two planned and discussed several new exhibitions, radio shows, and other initiatives among which the most remarkable was an event titled “Let Us Sonorize the Forest”: Villa pitched Bardi an international festival of avant-garde poetry, meant to travel around the world, that would deploy “loud speakers mounted on trees, playing the forest, skyscrapers, enlivening the smoke, even juke-boxes strapped to telegraph poles, in the harbors, on the streets, inside shops and cafés, to finally create new sound panoramas of various cities.”
This conference emerges from the activity of the recently founded Emilio Villa International Research Center – which brings together scholars and artists active in Europe, USA, Brazil, and Japan –, and aims to draw attention to Villa’s highly significant initiatives, born between Italy and Brazil, and their relevance for the artistic and literary culture of the following decades.
This event is organized with the support of the Universidade de São Paulo, the Universidade Federal de Rio de Janeiro, the Italian Cultural Institute of São Paulo, and will take place at the Instituto de Estudos Avançados da Universidade de São Paulo, on 11, 12, 13 November 2024. Interested scholars interested may send an abstract of their proposed paper (max. 300 words) along with a short bio-bibliographical note (which includes their academic affiliation) by June 30, 2024 to info@centrostudiemiliovilla.com.
Possible topics include:
- Villa and the international avant-garde movements
- Villa and “primordial” cultures
- Exchanges and influences between Brazilian culture and Villa’s oeuvre
- Villa’s writings: poetry, images, sounds, music, and noise
- Ecocritical readings of Villa’s work
- Villa and the digital arts: possible convergences and conflicts
For additional information on the Emilio Villa International Research Center please click here.
