art | slowforward

Marco Giovenale (differx) lives and works in Rome, where he has been working for ten years as an antiquarian bookseller –among other activities. He is also an editor and translator, and teaches Literature of the second half of the 20th century @ the Centro di poesia e scritture contemporanee he co-founded in 2018-19. He is a contributor of lit mags like “l’immaginazione”, and websites like Segnonline, SCRIPTjr, Sibila, Antinomie, OperaViva, Repository Magazine.

His complete biobibliography can be found at https://slowforward.net/bio/. In English: https://slowforward.wordpress.com/2014/01/01/mgs-bibliography/.

His activity includes prose pieces, poems, photography, asemic writing (“drawritings”; “asemic sibyls”; “installances”, i.e. secretly performed installations; “langrids”, i.e. language grids), abstract works, drawings, conceptual pieces and series and chapbooks and e-books, installations (online too), low-res videos, “music”/audio experiments and webworks of several kinds.

He established the collab blog http://asemicnet.blogspot.com, in 2011. His first works as a visual artist date from the 90s, and are all in the path of some figurative expressionist mood. He made two solo exhibitions in Rome, in Libreria Anomalia (1996) and in Teatro dei Contrari (1997), then for a period of almost ten years he has been working exclusively with ink & paper –without getting in touch with any gallery, nor exposing his work online.

Then in 2005 he started making photographs and digital works, soon getting back to all the techniques he used, but with totally different intentions and moods –& new tools. All his new visual works and activities offline and online date back to the year 2005. Some works are in private museums and collections, like the Sackner Archive now in the Iowa University, the Ontological Museum (Pagosa Springs, Colorado), the Bonotto Foundation, the Bongiani Ophen Art Museum (Room 10, see http://www.collezionebongianiartmuseum.it/sala.php?id=55), and the collections of Giuseppe Garrera, Sergio Oriente, Tony Trehy, Michele Zaffarano, Alberto D’Amico, William Xerra, Andrea Semerano (and La camera verde), Quimby Melton, Andrea Raos, Fabrizio M. Rossi and many others.

He’s founder and editor of the site of experimental literature and art http://gammm.org (2006). His artbooks are Sibille asemantiche (La camera verde, 2008), Asemic Sibyls (Red Fox Press, 2013), Asemic Encyclopaedia (IkonaLíber, 2019), Glitchasemics (Post-Asemic Press, 2020); and, under the name of differx, these four e-chaps published by Vugg Books: aweapon (2008), Severe red (2010), unrelated | undepicted | (diptychs) (2010), septemware (2011).

Asemic sibyls and visual works are also in sites like Nazione indiana, Sleepingfish, satt.org, Fieralingue, Otoliths, Tip of the knife (issue 7), The Bleed (issue 0.2), Experiment-o (issue 4), Rem (issue 2), Moria and in the Anthology Spidertangle edited by Miekal And (Xexoxial Editions, 2009). Other asemic works are in the chapbook published in Dan Waber’s series “This Is Visual Poetry”, in September 2011: thisisvisualpoetry.com/?p=1019 (now offline). A series of sibyls has been published by La camera verde in Nov., 2013: Syn Sybilles. Asemic sibyls are in The Last Vispo Anthology (1998-2008), edited by C.Hill and N.Vassilakis, Fantagraphics books, 2012; and in An Anthology of Asemic Handwriting (Uitgeverij, 2013, Punctum Books), edited by T.Gaze e M.Jacobson (online too: here = here; quick download here).

In 2023 he published a long essay in Italian about asemic writing: ASEMICS. Senso senza significato (IkonaLíber).

In 2010 he created the the idea & practice called installance.

In 2011 he took part in the Bury Text Festival (Manchester), see https://textartarchive.com/guest-bloggers/, http://otherroom.org/2011/05/22/marco-giovenale-some-texts, and the book of the event: https://slowforward.net/2019/04/21/bury-text-festival-mg-2011/. In 2013 he also took part in the asemic collab novel, A Kick in the Eye (ed. by Tim Gaze, see http://abstractcomics.blogspot.com/2013/10/a-kick-in-eye.html). The sibyl 161329 is in the vispo anthology The New Concrete. Visual Poetry in the 21st Century (Victoria Bean and Chris McCabe, eds; Hayward Publishing, 2015).

In Jan-Aug 2020 he took part in the collective exhibition Scrivere disegnando. Quand la langue cherche son autre (Centre d’art contemporain, Geneva, https://centre.ch/en/exhibitions/scrivere-disegnando/), with several installances plus one artwork; hence the catalog Writing by Drawing. When Language Seeks his Other (Skira, 2020: http://www.skira.net/en/books/scrivere-disegnando#).

A gunless tea, collection of 23 prose fragments, was published for the 2007 Dusi/e-chap project (http://www.dusie.org/issueseven.html). Poems and critical pieces have been published in “Aufgabe”, #7, 2008, guest edited by J. Scappettone for Litmus Press. The prose text CDK was published in 2009 as a chapbook & free e-book by Tir aux pigeons, thanks to D. Kunz. The chapbook anachromisms has been published in 2014 by Ahsahta Editions, as the winner of the Ahsatha Chapbook Prize. In 2015 Gauss PDF published white while (http://www.gauss-pdf.com/post/98317758615/gpdf131-marco-giovenale-white-while). An interview with the mag 3AM (thanks to S. Fowler) can be read @ http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/maintenant-65-marco-giovenale.

l i n k s

Website: https://slowforward.net

Asemic stuff & other posts: https://differx.tumblr.com

Segno online: https://segnonline.it/author/marco/

SCRIPTjr: https://scriptjr.nl/author/marcogiovenale

Platformplee: https://www.platformplee.nl/

Sibila: http://sibila.com.br/author/marco-giovenale

Antinomie: https://antinomie.it/index.php/tag/marco-giovenale/

OperaViva: https://operavivamagazine.org/schede/marco-giovenale/

Books: https://slowforward.net/libri/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/differx_it/ e https://www.instagram.com/marco.giovenale

Twitter: https://twitter.com/marcogiovenale

YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxcfw6-mn0IReDOjmfui-Fw

Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/differx/

Spreaker: https://www.spreaker.com/user/12079015

Facebook links
differx: https://www.facebook.com/differx/
slowforward @ fb: https://www.facebook.com/slowforwarddifferx/

groups & pages @ fb
[ ricerca ] : https://www.facebook.com/groups/ricerca.2019/
gammm group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/gammm/
Writing Against Itself: https://www.facebook.com/groups/writing.against.itself/
società per azioni: https://www.facebook.com/groups/societa.per.azioni/
Costa, Villa, Bene: https://www.facebook.com/groups/costa.villa.bene/
GAMMM: https://www.facebook.com/gammm.org/

Aswrig = ASemic WRIting Gallery: https://www.facebook.com/aswrig/
Woeird, A concrete poetry & verbo-visual gallery: https://www.facebook.com/woeird/
Asemic Encyclopaedia: https://www.facebook.com/giovenale.enciclopediaasemica.ikonaliber/
flarf.it: https://www.facebook.com/flarfitalia/

collab pages @ fb
Asemic Writing: The New Postliterate: https://www.facebook.com/groups/76178850228/
compostxt: https://www.facebook.com/compostxt/

l i s t o f e x h i b i t i o n s

1996_ Rome (Italy), Libreria Anomalia: a series of neo-expressionist works on paper [solo exhib.]

1997_ Rome (Italy), Teatro dei Contrari: Carboncini e ricodifiche [solo exhib.]

2007_ Nice (France), Garage 103 Gallery, UberTrashung [collective]

2008_ Rome (Italy), La camera verde: Sibille asemantiche [solo exhib.]

2009_ Fort Worth (Texas, USA), Fort Worth Community Arts Center, Fluxhibition #2 [collective]

2009_ Rome (Italy), Atto senza attori, performance with asemic stuff by M.G. & photographic actions by Pietro D’Agostino, c.s. Rialtosantambrogio, 5 Mar [performance]

2009_ Piacenza (Italy), Laboratorio delle arti: Asemic sibyls (“sibille asemantiche || contraddette in versi e in prosa”), 10 May [solo exhib.]

2009_ Modena (Italy), asemic sibyls (onto a screen), on the occasion of the Delfini Literary Prize, 23 May [projection]

2009_ Rome (Italy), La camera verde, Jeu d’oeuf. Pour violer les solutions régulières il faudrait bien naître, 31 Oct [collective]

2010_ Viterbo (Italy), Piane di Bronzo [collective]

2011_ Bury (Manchester, UK), Text Festival 2011, Apr [collective]

2011_ Moscow, Zverev Center, May 12th – Jun 12th, Alphabet of art [collective]

2011_ Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney (Australia), The SECREt eXCHANGE [collective]

2011-12_ National Museum of Contemporary Art in Seoul (Korea), The SECREt eXCHANGE [collective]

2011_ Philadelphia, International House, Sept 1st – Oct 15th, Alphabet of art [collective]

2011_ Kessel-lo (Belgium), Klebnikov Carnaval, 2-4 Sept, 2011 [collective]

2011_ Milan (Italy), Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera, 6-17 Oct, 2011, da>verso, transizioni arte-poesia [collective]

2012_ Lviv (Ukraine), Tymutopiyapres Gallery, Oct 6th, Glyphs (and) encyclopaedia [solo exhib.]

2013_ Albinea (Reggio Emilia, Italy), Biblioteca Pablo Neruda, EX.IT exhibits, videoslide & more, 12-14 Apr [collective]

2013_ Kessel-lo (Belgium), Klebnikov Carnaval, 30 Aug. – 1 Sept, 2013 [collective]

2013_ Mount Barker (Adelaide Hills, Australia), Signs and Symbols, Oct [collective]

2013_ Paris (France), Les editions de la Camera verde, Galerie Laure Roynette, 16 Nov, 2013 [collective]

2014_ Reggio Emilia (Italy), Loopmovies, Fondazione Museo O. Sarzi, 2-15 May, 2014 (Reggio Emilia) [collective]

2014_ Minneapolis (USA), exhibit at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts, Feb-Jul [collective]

2014_Oulu (Finland), exhibit at Sarjakuvagalleria, A kick in the eye, Dec. 9th, 2014 – Jan 20th [collective]

2015_ Rome (Italy), three asemic pieces included in Francesca Grilli’s performance at American Academy, Jan 29th, 2015

2015_ Isle of Malta, Asemic exhibition at The Spiral, Apr-May [collective]

2015_ Rome (Italy), Una vetrina, one week exhibit: one text from Oggettistica, Oct [solo exhib.]

2015_ Bury (Manchester, UK), Total Recall (for Tony Trehy), vispo exhibition at the Bury Art Museum (Bury, Manchester), Sept-Oct [collective]

2016_ Rome (Italy), Una vetrina, one week exhibit: one text from Il paziente crede di essere, 27 Sept – 4 Oct [solo exhib.]

2016_ Rome (Italy), Studio Campo Boario, little market + exhibit of artists’ multiples, 2-4 Dec [collective]

2016_ Rome (Italy), MAXXI Museum, Una vetrina: a retrospective as a multi-screen series of loops, Dec [collective]

2017_ Minnesota, Offline and in the gallery, asemic exhibit at Minnesota Center for Book Arts, Mar-May [collective]

2017_ Barcelona (Spain), Asemic Tech, asemic exhibit at Punt Multimedia, Feb 28th, 2017 [collective]

2017_ Madrid (Spain), reading + projection of texts (from Strettoie) and glitched asemics, Festival Poetas, @ Matadero, 28 May [projection]

2017_ Farini (Italy), A poem in the exhibit “Visibile Traccia” (in Farini, near Piacenza), by William Xerra, from Jun 25th [collective]

2018_ Rome (Italy), some asemic works in CONCRETA – Festapoesia, Hungarian Academy, 21 Apr – 5 May [collective]

2018-19_ L’Aquila (Italy), asemic works in Scrivere Liberi. Scritture sperimentali e di ricerca dagli anni Sessanta ad oggi, MU.SP.A.C., 14 Dec 2018 – 11 Jan 2019 [collective]

2019_ Rome (Italy), Enciclopedia asemica, Studio Campo Boario, 27 Feb – 7 Mar 2019 [solo exhib.]

2019_ Florence (Italy), Partes extra partes, Frittelli Arte Contemporanea, 17 Mag 2019 [collective]

2019_ Spoleto (Italy), Enciclopedia asemica, Studio OFArch, 30 Jun 2019 [solo exhib.]

2019_ Palermo (Italy), Avvistamenti #2. Scritture asemantiche, Museo Sociale Danisinni, 12-13 Oct [collective]

2019_ Modena (Italy), verbo-visual works sent to the event Le quaranta lettere dell’alfabeto @ Laboratorio di poesia di Modena, 7 Nov [collective]

2019_ Palermo (Italy), Scritture asemiche. Libri d’artista dalla collezione dell’Accademia di belle arti di Palermo, Acc. di belle arti, 15 Dec 2019 – 5 Jan 2020 [collective]

2020_ Geneva (Switzerland), Scrivere disegnando. Quand la langue cherche son autre, Centro Arte Contemporanea, Jan-Aug 2020 [collective]

2020_ Mogliano Veneto (Italy), Asemic Arts Expo, Centro Brolo, Jun 2020 [collective]

2020_ Rome (Italy), ll paradiso e le sue rappresentazioni, Studio Campo Boario, from Oct 28th [collective]

2021_ Brescia (Italy), Fondazione Berardelli: La poesia visiva come arte plurisensoriale. 2: l’olfatto (6 dic 2021 – 22 gen 2022) [collective] https://slowforward.net/2021/11/25/poesia-visiva-arte-plurisensoriale-2-olfatto-brescia-fondazione-berardelli/

2021_ Online: First International Colloquium of Visual Poetry: Research and Creation (8-12 nov, 2021) [collective] https://www.jornadadepoesiavisual.com/mostravirtual?lightbox=dataItem-kv8g03sc

2022_ Lviv (Ukraine), Stop this War (from June 1st) [collective]
https://tymutopiyapres.blogspot.com/2022/06/stop-this-war.html

2022_ Fasano (BR, Italy), Womb. Opere dall’archivio Utsanga (2-13 June, 2022), Museo della casa alla Fasanese [collective] https://bit.ly/3BbnxHr e https://t.ly/T_Qi

2023_ Belo Horizonte (Brasil), Escribas. Mostra internacional de escrita assèmica, Centro Cultural da UFMG (March, 2023) [collective] https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10229590271211309&set=p.10229590271211309, https://t.ly/oJ2P

2023_ Blumenau (Brasil), ), Escribas. Mostra internacional de escrita assèmica, Universidade Regional de Blumenau (May, 2023) [collective] https://slowforward.net/2023/05/11/15-30-maggio-2023-escribas-international-exhibition-of-asemic-writing-blumenau-brasile

2023_ Palermo, A qualcuno piace asemic, Museo del disegno (Oct, 2023) [collective]: https://slowforward.net/2023/10/06/palermo-7-ottobre-scrittura-asemica-al-museo-del-disegno-a-cura-di-nicolo-dalessandro-ed-enzo-patti/

Critics and curators dealing with differx’ works & writing about them:

Xavier Serrano, Giovanni Andrea Semerano, Cecil Touchon, Nanni Balestrini, William and Rosalba Xerra, Tony Trehy, Alexander Ocheretyansky, Terry Reid, Dirk Vekemans, Margherita Labbe, Lubomyr Tymkiv, Michael Jacobson, Reijo Valta, Philip Davenport, Giuseppe Garrera, Erica Cristadoro, Laura Pugno, Sebastiano Triulzi, Alessandra Greco, Roberto Cagnoli, Alberto D’Amico, Andrea Tomasini, Enzo Patti, Francesco Aprile, Andrea Bellini, Sarah Lombardi, Ricky Brett, Michael Betancourt, Kenneth Goldsmith, Mark Amerika, Jim Andrews.

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Old pages:

All my visual works, photos, vispos and drawings and asemic drawritings here or in Immag, Differx, Xdiffer, wee image, Surrism/Notitle, Nothing and insight, Poetry Kessel-lo, Flux Usa, Fluxlist Europe, Vispostock, Vispoets, arteMOLTOpovera and Endoglosse are on sale, if you want me to print them. Wherever you live in the world if you are interested in them, write to mg_img [at] yahoo [dot] it

Tutte le mie opere visive, fotografie, le poesie verbovisive e i disegni qui o in Immag, Differx, Xdiffer, wee image, Surrism/Notitle, Nothing and insight, Poetry Kessel-lo, Flux Usa, Fluxlist Europe, Vispostock, Vispoets, arteMOLTOpovera e Endoglosse sono in vendita, se desiderate che ne faccia una stampa. Chiunque sia interessato può scrivere a mg_img [at] yahoo [dot] it

The idea + stuff + practice of INSTALLANCE is here.

See vispos, asemics and other stuff also here [= http://www.flickr.com/photos/textimagepoetry/sets/72157601338728223/, thanks to Jim Leftwich] and here [my flickr page] + video experiments + sound experiments [soundcloud page].

See some asemic sibyls in Nazione indiana (Nov. 2008) and in Sleepingfish (Jan. 2009), … and from time to time please take a look at Michael Jacobson’s blog, Jim Leftwich’s textimagepoem, and Satu Kaikkonen’s foffof. Others are (and will be) in Vispoets. Others in the Russian magazine Chernovik, paper issue #24 + site (see also 2 vispo in issue #22). Other sibyls in satt.org, and in issue #2 of TRNSFR magazine (Jan/Feb, 2010).

Vispos have appeared in fmachinery (Sept., 2009 and Jan., 2010), edited by Daniel F. Bradley. Other stuff is @ mailusart. Or in Otoliths (issues: #20, #26, #29, #30), Tip of the knife, Experiment-o (issue 4), The Bleed (issue 0.2), Bright Stupid Confetti, Extreme Writing. An interview about asemic writing and 8 asemic poems are in 3AM Magazine, The Maintenant Series #65, June 15th, 2011 [ed. by Steven Fowler]. Another interview on asemics + 3 asemic texts: in REM, issue 2, Dec. 2011 [ed. by Orchid Tierney]. Some “Pocket panels” for a future “asemic theatre” are here.

You can buy some asemic sibyls @ https://www.facebook.com/pages/Future-Script-Gallery/168021229902844

The mag “l’immaginazione” (Sept.-Oct., 2009) has one sibilla asemantica as cover of its issue #249. You can find also three new pieces (two are asemic ones) in Fieralingue, December, 2009.

Taking part to The Last Vispo Anthology (edited by Crag Hill and Nico Vassilakis, 2010-12), MG also took part in the exhibits (or ‘previews’) related to the book. The first two were in Smolensk, Russia, and Budapest, Hungary, in April, 2010: see http://scorecard.typepad.com/crag_hills_poetry_score/2010/04/selections-from-the-last-vispo-anthology-on-exhibit-in-smolensk-russia-budapest-hungary.html.

In 2011 he takes part in the Bury Text Festival (Apr). Then, works by him are exposed in the Alphabet of art exhibition in Moscow (Zverev Center, May 12th – June 12th) and Philadelphia (International House, Sept. 1st – Oct. 15th, 2011). Some asemic pieces take part in the Klebnikov Carnaval at Kessel-lo (Belgium), 2-4 Sept., 2011, while new works participate in the collective exhibition da>verso, transizioni arte-poesia, Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera, Milan (Italy), 6-17 Oct., 2011. In October 2012 a series of asemic glyphs are exposed in a solo exhibit in Lviv (Ukraina): http://tymutopiyapres.blogspot.it/2012/10/blog-post.html. In Winter 2014 the mag «Lana Turner» hosts 15 vispo and 7 asemic pieces.

Some asemic sibyls are in the collection Bongiani, at the Bongiani Ophen Art Museum (Salerno): http://www.collezionebongianiartmuseum.it/sala.php?id=55.

One asemic sibyl is in An Anthology of Asemic Handwriting (T.Gaze anb M.Jacobson eds., Uitgeverij, 2013). While the sibyl 161329 (from 2006) is in the vispo anthology The New Concrete. Visual Poetry in the 21st Century (Victoria Bean and Chris McCabe, eds; Hayward Publishing, 2015).

He guest edited a section of asemic writing in AlteredScale4: http://alteredscale.com/contents-alteredscale-com-issue-4/.

* * *

A series called ARTE MOLTO POVERA [extremely poor art] has born in 2008. Low-res pics recording it are @ http://www.flickr.com/photos/textimagepoetry/4901898055/ (thanx to J.Leftwich). Posts about it here (.en) and here (.it). A dedicated webpage is http://artemoltopovera.blogspot.com.

More stuff here and there @ Slowforward & on the net. Browse & search via Google…

Thanks to Jim Leftwich for hosting images and concrete/visual poems in his http://jimleftwichtextimagepoem.blogspot.com/: the stuff is also archived in the Library site of the Ohio State University. Pdf files with series of works can be downloaded here: http://library.osu.edu/sites/rarebooks/finding/TextImagePoemArchive.php

The pdf files including also works by me are the following ones:

http://library.osu.edu/sites/rarebooks/avantwriting/TIP/TIP_%2008_05_2007%20-%2008_12_2007.pdf

http://library.osu.edu/sites/rarebooks/avantwriting/TIP/TIP_%2008_12_2007%20-%2008_19_2007.pdf

http://library.osu.edu/sites/rarebooks/avantwriting/TIP/TIP_%2008_19_2007%20-%2008_26_2007.pdf

http://library.osu.edu/sites/rarebooks/avantwriting/TIP/TIP_%2008_26_2007%20-%2009_02_2007.pdf

http://library.osu.edu/sites/rarebooks/avantwriting/TIP/TIP_%2011_04_2007%20-%2011_11_2007.pdf

Artbooks: Sibille asemantiche (La camera verde, 2008), This Is Visual Poetry / by Marco Giovenale (2011), Asemic Sibyls (Red Fox Press, 2013), Syn sybilles (La camera verde, 2013).; and, under the name Differx: aweapon (ebook: Vugg Books, 2008), Severe red (2009, ebook: Vugg Books, 2010), unrelated | undepicted | (diptychs) (ebook: Vugg Books, 2010), septemware (ebook: Vugg Books, 2011).