Semantic cut/up as creator of social space: the «A/traverso» magazine and the bolognese geourbanistics in the early Eighties

Abstract

By analyzing the "summer" issue of «A/traverso» of 1981, we'll try to reconstruct the libertarian and socializing environment of Bologna after 1977. In this new artistic articulation will be fundamental to verify the influence that new digital technologies brought to artistic heritage over the decade. Therefore, we can see that inside the Bolognese autonomy magazine there were texts by William Burroughs, who has always been interested, through the cut-up technique - also digital - in the possibilities of linguistic experimentation, and texts by the videomaker Gabrinsky’s collective, which, through collages of apparently disconnected images, restored a social value to the Bolognese city planning. Ultimately, to confirm these intentions, it will be necessary to consider Renato de Maria's 1991 film Il trasloco, a medium-length film that shows the last days of "Bifo" in his home in Bologna in Marsili street, who, using an institutional system no longer destroyed, represented the end of the "socializing" experiences era of Bologna in ‘77.

Keywords

• «a/traverso»
• cut/up
• language
• urban space
• social space
• bifo
• burroughs
• eighties