Opiemme - new ways of presenting poetry - street poetry

A journey trought painting and poetry

"A journey trought painting and poetry" is inspired by what was the initial driving force of my research: bringing poetry closer to people. Started in 2013 with a series of public poetic paintings, studied in a site-specific way, and with attention to local poets and classics, the project created a symbolic path of street poetry that crosses, from North to South, the Bel Paese.

The project became the manifesto of my research, finding other opportunities to leave "poetic posters" in the streets. The stages, as well as Italy, have touched Argentina, Uruguay, Haiti, Poland, Croatia and Thailand.

VORTEX, since 2014

"Go out and paint the stairs" Van Gogh “The sky is a plastered wall waiting to be painted with primordial signs, stray words that fall like scales from a black (or white) circle, that can be a new moon or a dawning sun. Or a black hole. In the beginning there was the word.” Giuseppe Sermonti, member of The Osaka Group of Dynamic Structuralism.

A series of works inspired by a Giuseppe Sermonti's book, "The alphabet descends from the stars ... on the origins of writing", and dedicated to the universe and to the observation of that tine part of sky and stars we see from Earth.

CARTHA - MAP

"The return to the use of maps, at a time when we are used to see ourselves as avatars on our GPS, leads us to a recovery of the memory of places. The very gesture of opening and folding the maps takes us back to a slower and more careful use, more than doing the same thing with the geolocation of our smartphone screens. “Staring at the maps , I see shapes and memories – Opiemme said – I like to read them. Orientating myself without devices… “.

Thus, flying letters arise from the morphology of places, leading across words which then become forms, awaking emotions, filtering memories and experiences. “My drawings swim in them. And they take on values that are unknown. Just as the words of a poem can have different meanings, depending on the emotions and experiences of who reads them.“ Text by Karin Gavassa

PUBLIC ART, PERFORMANCES AND INSTALLATIONS

#OPIEMMEPOESIA

After working for years with texts by other authors (driven by the thought that if I had done it only on my texts would be similar to a marketing operation, and not a real desire to spread poetry), in 2017 I begun a project focused on my writing.

Activities that, after the first editorial approaches and publications, I prefered to keep in the drawer, and that now finds its place. Short sentences, very short, we cannot even define them as short compositions. I find them more like chirps in the net. From this a symbolic use of the ashtag. #opiemmepoesia

BLACK CALLIGRAMS

SENZA BANDIERE - NO FLAGS, SINCE 2011

Senza Bandiere è "una riflessione sull’eticità di alcuni comportamenti che, in assenza della loro messa in discussione, possono lasciar spazio nel quotidiano a legittimazioni implicite. E' una riflessione, attuale, sull’assenza dei valori propri di una democrazia. Divieti di rinuncia, una tavola del Risiko e cartelli autostradali adattati denunciano la mancanza di futuro per i giovani. Un lusso rubato dalla gerontocrazia politica. " Claudio Cravero, Artribune, 2011Senza Bandiere è "una riflessione sull’eticità di alcuni comportamenti che, in assenza della loro messa in discussione, possono lasciar spazio nel quotidiano a legittimazioni implicite. E' una riflessione, attuale, sull’assenza dei valori propri di una democrazia. Divieti di rinuncia, una tavola del Risiko e cartelli autostradali adattati denunciano la mancanza di futuro per i giovani. Un lusso rubato dalla gerontocrazia politica. " Claudio Cravero, Artribune, 2011 Without Flags is "a reflection on the ethics of certain behaviors that, in the absence of their questioning, can leave space in the everyday to implicit legitimizations. It is a reflection, current, on the absence of the proper values of a democracy. renunciation, a table by the Risiko and adapted highway signs denounce the lack of a future for young people, a luxury stolen from political gerontocracy." Claudio Cravero, Artribune, 2011

NEW WAYS OF PRESENTING POETRY, SINCE '98

At the end of the nineties I moved my first steps, bringing poetry in the streets and in public places to meet eyes to be read. Reinventing the communication of poetry, find new ways of presenting poetry.

ASK THE DUST, ASK THE PEOPLE, HAITI, 2014

One of the children during a workshop in the Camillian mission in Croix-de-Bouquetes, Haiti, 2014 "There will be confusions, and there will be hunger; there will be loneliness with only my tears like wet consoling little birds, tumbling to sweeten my dry lips." John Fante In February / March 2014 I was in Haiti, with Gianluca Orrù di Tekla (equipped with camera, microphone and cameras), in the capital Port Au Prince, hit in 2010 by a magnitude 7 earthquake and a cholera epidemic, with over 200 thousand dead. For some years I have been giving my support to the charity auction "Speech for Haiti, born after the earthquake, for the Camillian Fathers of Turin, and I wanted to see the reality of this country, and the activities I had supported. For three weeks we were hosted in the "Foyer Saint Camille" in Croix de Bouquets of the Camillian Fathers, where there are a hospital, a church, a seminary, the lodgings of the fathers and the Foyer Bethleem: a small structure that welcomes disabled and abandoned children from parents. The area was enclosed by walls with military barbed wire and guarded by armed guards. Thus the Haitians cohabit with the "white man".

Next shows