https://andreagaliazzo.com Andrea Galiazzo Tue, 14 Oct 2025 12:00:01 +0000 https://andreagaliazzo.com en https://andreagaliazzo.com/Home-Image-Scroll Tue, 28 Jul 2020 09:34:56 +0000 Andrea Galiazzo https://andreagaliazzo.com/Home-Image-Scroll https://andreagaliazzo.com/Texts Wed, 30 Jun 2021 00:03:32 +0000 Andrea Galiazzo https://andreagaliazzo.com/Texts New Normal, 2025 Wassily’s Monologue, 2025Pax Europaea, 2025 Anne Boyer Rip-Off, 2025 Decalogue for Personal Use, 2024 On Note-Writing, 2024 Twelve Months, 2024 An Episode of Violence, 2021 Eyes, 2020 Those I May See Again, 2020 Acknowledgements, 2020 In Broad Daylight We Posed, 2020 Leda and the Swan, 2019 Bivacco, 2019 The Great Pedagogical Project, 2019 Being Sick as Free Time as Work, 2019 These days before starting the day, 2019 The Book of References, 2019 The Box, 2018 Apology Note, 2018 Vocational Disobedience, 2018 In Praise of Redundancy, 2018 Shoes and Cigarettes, 2018 My Uncle, 2018 A very incomplete list of needs, 2017 Call Me, 2016 Five Words, 2016 Barbarian, 2015 Replacing Pessoa, 2012 Grigio Belgio!, 2011 https://andreagaliazzo.com/New-Normal-1 Tue, 14 Oct 2025 12:00:01 +0000 Andrea Galiazzo https://andreagaliazzo.com/New-Normal-1 New Normal, 2025 Sadists treating humans as subhumans must not be the new normal. Racists calling antiracists ‘antisemites’ must not be the new normal. Dropping 100000 tons of bombs on an open-air prison must not be the new normal. Forcibly displacing 1,9 million people must not be the new normal. Besieging an entire population must not be the new normal. Total blockade must not be the new normal. Policies of starvation must not be the new normal. Ethnic cleansing must not be the new normal. Forced displacement, expropriation and replacement must not be the new normal. Dehumanisation must not be the new normal. Genocide must not be the new normal. Indiscriminate bombing must not be the new normal. Targeting civilians must not be the new normal. Targeting women and children must not be the new normal. Launching air strikes towards schools must not be the new normal. Targeting hospitals and other healthcare infrastructures must not be the new normal. Targeting rescue teams and emergency services must not be the new normal. Targeting ambulances must not be the new normal. Targeting journalists must not be the new normal. Targeting humanitarian organisations must not be the new normal. Bombing families in their shelters must not be the new normal. Burning people alive must not be the new normal. Beheading children must not be the new normal. Bombing warehouses with food, medical equipment and medicines must not be the new normal. Limb amputations without anaesthesia must not be the new normal. Using water as a weapon of war must not be the new normal. Using starvation as a weapon of war must not be the new normal. Deliberately destroying civil infrastructure must not be the new normal. Extrajudicial killings must not be the new normal. Jailing people without due process must not be the new normal. Torture and sexual abuse on captives must not be the new normal. Armed forces collaborating in acts of settler-colonial violence must not be the new normal. Shoot-to-kill orders must not be the new normal. Snipers aiming for headshots must not be the new normal. Attacking first-aid providers in their clearly-marked ambulances, tying their hands and feet, shooting them at point blank range, burying them in an unmarked mass grave together with the ambulances must not be the new normal. Shooting a six-years old child with 355 bullets Violating international law must not be the new normal. Undermining international law organs must not be the new normal. Delegitimising humanitarian organisation must not be the new normal. Complicity in war crimes must not be the normal. No accountability for complicity in war crimes must not be the normal. Supplying weapons to perpetrators of war crimes must not be the new normal. Business with genocide instigators must not be the new normal. No diplomatic sanctions for political or strategic reasons must not be the new normal. No economic sanctions for political or strategic reasons must not be the new normal. Disregarding advisory opinions and rulings delivered by the International Court of Justice must not be the new normal. Not complying with arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court must not be the new normal. Violent repression of peaceful protests must not be the new normal. Raiding peaceful activists’ homes must not be the new normal. Abducting and deporting students must not be the new normal. Banning foreign languages during demonstrations must not be the new normal. Governments illegally overruling the court must not be the new normal. Political double standards considering some lives worthier than others must not be the new normal. Mainstream media’s double standards must not be the new normal. No global outrage must not be the new normal. Having to acknowledge that the late pope Francis was more progressive (sic) than most leaders must not be the new normal. Being obliged to address such ethical, political, humanitarian, environmental, and moral catastrophe in a very literal way must not be the new normal. See also: - New Normal, 2025- Wassily Chair Replicas Society, 2025 https://andreagaliazzo.com/Wassily-s-Monologue Tue, 14 Oct 2025 11:15:22 +0000 Andrea Galiazzo https://andreagaliazzo.com/Wassily-s-Monologue Wassily’s Monologue, 2025 Hi, we met before. You can call me Wassily, although my original name was ‘Model B3 Chair’. This year, I am turning 100. I was designed by Marcel Breuer from 1925 to 1926, when he headed the cabinet-making department at the Bauhaus. Here, the students were encouraged to explore the opportunities offered by rapidly developing industrial processes and materials, in an attempt to rethink craftsmanship and to democratise access to well-designed objects. While the functionalist vocabulary has become part of the modern and contemporary design and architecture canon, we are now more wary of the repercussions of unrestrained industrial development, aren’t we? The overproduction of cheap furniture that has flooded the market in the last decades, significantly often imitating the minimalist aesthetic of the Bauhaus, has contributed to the current environmental crisis but also to the loss of small businesses, jobs, skills, knowledge, and craftsmanship. Even the idea of integrating art and society seems perversely accomplished today. In the current phase of late capitalism, you are expected to be flexible, travel everywhere, and always be available. The bleeding of personal and professional life into each other becomes another occasion for exploitation. Yes, you also engage in self-exploitation when you submit to the demands of a cultural industry that turns care, reproductive work, and other life circumstances into a burden to be carried on your shoulders. Not to mention that your field is characterised by a certain elitism, by an often misplaced faith in its ability to bring forth change in society, as well as by a propensity to surrender to the dynamics of the current economic model. It is true, the hegemony of capitalism has pervaded all aspects of life; leisure is co-opted by market-driven infrastructures, life enjoyment partakes in the experience economy, and digital platforms monetise the time we spend feeding them with content. Moreover, this model is constitutively unable to provide solutions to the crises it produces. Still, you find yourself pondering the question of unproductive time, while at the same time getting frustrated for not using your time productively. I know, it does sound insane, but just remember this: despite all the irresolvable paradoxes, contradictions, and limitations, doing nothing is the worst thing to do. More broadly, I see that most countries in the global north are now being affected by a resurgence of reactionary policies and propaganda in a socio-economic context that, with all due differences, presents similarities with Interwar Germany. Indeed, we are again living in a relatively open, democratic society where many experience worsening economic circumstances. Add to that an international scenario of geopolitical turmoil and overwhelmingly rapid technological developments. The uncertainty and fear thus generated fuel ultranationalist, authoritarian forces, paving the way for their establishment within democratic regimes. How to address the practical and ethical implications of the production of cultural value in the (re)current context of ubiquitous societal violence? How can you work around your limits as a cultural worker when confronted with structural injustice on a global scale? What does artistic freedom mean when you are paralysed by images of death? How do you tackle the unrepresentable horror of war in an era characterized by a proliferation of unreliable images? What are you going to do about the ongoing erosion of democracy? See also: - Wassily Chair Replicas Society, 2025 https://andreagaliazzo.com/Pax-Europaea Tue, 14 Oct 2025 11:36:52 +0000 Andrea Galiazzo https://andreagaliazzo.com/Pax-Europaea Pax Europaea, 2025 One day, some guy woke up and coined the term ‘pax europaea’, forgetting all about the anti-Soviet resistance by the Ukrainian insurgent army, the Greek civil war, the Northern Ireland conflict, the Basque conflict, the Cyprus emergency, the Soviet invasion of Hungary, the invasion of Czechoslovakia, the Turkish invasion of Cyprus, the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, the Yugoslav wars, the Georgian civil war, the East Prigorodny conflict, the war of Transnistria, the Chechen-Russia conflict, the Albanian rebellion of 1997, the Russo-Georgian war, the Russo-Ukranian war, the Kamanovo clashes, but also the direct involvement of European countries in the Indonesian war of indipendence, the Suez crisis, the first Indochina war, the Algerian war, the Ifni war, the Bizerte crisis, the Angola war of independence, the Dhofar rebellion, the Guinea-Bissau war of independence, the Mozambican war of independence, the Shaba conflicts, the Falklands war, the Gulf war, the Afghanistan war, the Iraq war, the military intervention in Libya, the Northern Mali conflict, the Central African Republic conflict, as well as the support provided to coups d’etat, repression, repression, occupation, apartheid and war crimes in various regions around the world. See also: - Wassily Chair Replicas Society, 2025 https://andreagaliazzo.com/Anne-Boyer-Rip-Off Tue, 14 Oct 2025 11:53:26 +0000 Andrea Galiazzo https://andreagaliazzo.com/Anne-Boyer-Rip-Off Anne Boyer Rip-Off, 2025 I am not working when I write applications, check my emails, pick up Astri from kindergarten, speak on the phone, fill out paperwork, check my social media, witness genocide, buy groceries, do my laundry, talk to friends, read the news, listen to the radio, look for that file, cut my nails, have a cigarette. I am not working when I dance, read a book, think about Anne Boyer, indulge in despair, wait for that email thinking it will contain bad news, think about death, colonialism, racism and how to get rid of fascism without using fascist methods, nor when I brood over the past, wonder whether I wrote already such a text before, look through my notes to check if that is the case, find out that it reads: I am not working when I sell my labour-power, when I buy, when I smoke, when I cook, when I eat. I am not working when I sleep, nor when I wake up, make breakfast, prepare my daughter’s lunchbox, take her to school, I am not working when I am on the subway, at the bar, at the lecture, at the gallery, on the plane, on the beach, I am not working when I read the newspaper nor when I reply emails. I am not working when I think about work rather than working on something. I am not working when I believe I am actually onto something, then change my mind realising it was a crappy idea. Nor when I type this list on my mobile, the glass of which I just noticed got cracked. I am certainly not working when, instead of working, I ponder over the fact that perhaps a part of that could actually be considered work, and suddenly realise I am running late to pick up my daughter from kindergarten. I am not working when I get back to this text and realise it sounds depressing, nor when I justify it by thinking I am merely describing how processes of production and consumption influence my daily life and my perception of time, and if it sounds depressing, so be it, please blame someone else. On a positive note, I am working now, when writing and editing this text, and I will be working when I will translate it into an artistic form, suitable to be presented in some upcoming exhibition. But the bottom line remains the same: up until now and for the foreseeable future, I’ll still have to spend most of my time dealing with not-working. See also: - Wassily Chair Replicas Society, 2025 https://andreagaliazzo.com/Decalogue-for-Personal-Use Tue, 14 Oct 2025 11:27:18 +0000 Andrea Galiazzo https://andreagaliazzo.com/Decalogue-for-Personal-Use Decalogue for Personal Use, 2024 - Accept the constitutive incompleteness of life, distrust beginnings and ends - Repudiate uniform, unidirectional and measurable concepts of time upon which myths of endless progress are grown and maintained - Commit to unlearning ideas of all-encompassing rationality - Pledge fidelity (with reservations) to production without immediate profit - Take yourself seriously - See limitations and flaws as resources - Do not force your work to fit a determined typology or tradition - Explore the margins, trespass occasionally - Do not reduce multiplicities to rigid dichotomies - Fully embrace ambivalences and contradictions - Exercise the mimetic faculty - Include your situation and the conditions of the context - Keep a critical attitude towards any form of cult of the personality, but commit yourself in the construction of your own story that otherwise would be left at the sole mercy of future historians - Acknowledge yourself as a human being, sobbing, gasping, enjoying, etc. - Be visionary, do not dilute your plan from the start, rather adapt it at need - Life is dramatic, work is important, allow your sense of humour to dwell there - It is ok to make works about not having brilliant ideas (remember when you were struggling to avoid generalities about the pandemic, the way the cultural landscape changed and the polarisation of the public debate while finding your personal experience less relevant, considering you didn’t loose your job or spend the lockdown days in hell, and you were anyway taking parental leave and moving to a new place with no time to enjoy the flood of content suddenly available online since some assumed others had extra time off you were also hoping you could work on your stuff you even bought an old sewing machine to learn something new and you rather wanted to look ahead to a hopefully brighter future and you felt silly because you didn’t have any good ideas and maybe even more idiotic for being occupied with that craft and resorting to that broken English in those tough times with yet another war that time at your doorsteps you hoped it could turn out ok considering the nonsense all around you) - Hack the pillars of your upbringing - As you are erratic by inclination, you can both indulge into it and go against it. - Remember to set time aside, to the extent this is possible, to find poetry in your everyday experiences, while acknowledging the privilege to have such opportunity - Always consider the class perspectives - Do something, do anything, doing nothing maintains the status quo See also: - Wassily Chair Replicas Society, 2025 https://andreagaliazzo.com/On-Note-Writing Tue, 14 Oct 2025 11:46:27 +0000 Andrea Galiazzo https://andreagaliazzo.com/On-Note-Writing On Note-Writing, 2024 - You write a note for future use. When you want to retrieve it, you are unable to find it. You wish you wrote down its location. A new note to be kept somewhere. Another note to be lost. Perhaps notes are not so much a memory aid. Writing notes enables you to forget, and focus on something new. Perhaps this is why, despite the frustration, writing puts you in a good mood. - Writing notes unfolds time (it revolves with repetitions, interruptions, accelerations and associations. Due to its constitutive incompleteness, writing notes is production without immediate profit, an exercise in unlearning ideas of all-encompassing rationality, systematisation and efficiency. Transcending writing-as-information, it is a form of poetry. - Squeeze the expressive, associative, and combinatory potential out of unpretentious descriptive exercises - Objects, places, materials, plants and animals can have a “voice”, exercise the animistic faculty - (Re)name places based on observation (an endless process of verbalisation producing multiple temporalities) - Speak directly to the reader(s) (you are the author after all) - On the use of the singular first-person pronoun I: it may well be a symptom of rampant narcissism but how else could I hold myself accountable for the content I produce? - Insert stories within your story - What is an anecdote What is a story What is a fact What is important - It is ok to write (confused) lists - Use fiction, use humour, make it useful, use the tools of satire, situate yourself (and your authorship) in time and space, use asides, address your characters, your audience and your real-time (?) companions, jump in and out of roles, selves, frames, screens, windows     - Focus on the plastic crudeness of the ever-changing present, rectify stone inscriptions on an atomic level, produce additional temporalities, ventriloquise past and future in a perpetual reconfiguration of fragments See also: - Wassily Chair Replicas Society, 2025 https://andreagaliazzo.com/Twelve-Months-1 Tue, 14 Oct 2025 10:49:44 +0000 Andrea Galiazzo https://andreagaliazzo.com/Twelve-Months-1 Twelve Months, 2024 March The air temperature increases at this time of the year and when he walks around he kicks the snow to make it melt faster Feeling like a kid draining the ocean with a bucket April He just found a bunch of notes he thought were lost and he is wishing he had written down where all the other notes are Yet another note that could get lost too Perhaps notes are not memory aids On the contrary, they clear the way into oblivion so that you can focus on something new May Look, he is using his notes as a carpet as a blanket a piece of garment a playing mat for the children a beach towel to think about labour So irretrievably disenfranchised from the succession of the seasons June He left this note for me Focus on the plastic crudeness of the ever-changing present Rectify stone inscriptions on an atomic level Produce additional temporalities Ventriloquize past and future in a perpetual reconfiguration of fragments July Ti ricordi i petroglifi della Grotta del Bue Marino Gli ornamenti in ceramica a Dorgali La luna pazzesca che sorge dal mare in quelle tarde serate al Miraggio con i bambini stanchi ed eccitati dalla musica dal vivo? August Another one reads Repudiating the uniform, unidirectional, and measurable concept of time upon which myths of endless progress and growth are maintained Committing to unlearning ideas of all-encompassing rationality Pledging fidelity to production without immediate profit Professing faith in the constitutive incompleteness of life September And here he is again Hacking the pillars of his upbringing Skewing the patterns he is able to recognise Reweighing affections and affinities Reflecting - to the extent this is possibleon what “to the extent this is possible” means And still forgetting to set time aside to read poetry October Horrified, dismayed Left to post on social media while people are dying So much hate, so much love May they be doomed to eternal suffering by the tribunal instituted on the ashes of their sadistic souls I am swearing so much that I think it’s better I go to sleep No dream can be worse than this November This is when autumn knocks down the door When cold air makes atmospheric moisture nucleate forming light-weighted ice crystals that precipitate and accumulate on the ground “Snow” as it is commonly known and he is already counting the months to see it melting And we repeatedly called for a ceasefire and his parents came to visit and we were all reminded of the impermanency permeating our existence (when did I become so dramatic) December Do you remember we were pondering the question of unproductive time when the current economic model has pervaded all aspects of life when leisure is coopted by market driven infrastructures life enjoyment partaking in the experience economy digital platforms monetizing the time we spend feeding them with content When capitalism is unable to provide solutions to the crises it produces and still we found ourselves frustrated for not using our time productively What’s the problem with us January This is what I’m doing now I mean, at the time of writing editing those notes the script for this film which I wonder if it’s worth it If it is worth anything at all Or if I should do something else instead like reading the newspaper Getting frustrated and sad and angry for how things seem to unfold And Feeling like doing something about it would be stupid and exploitative And feeling stupid for thinking like this for doing nothing is the worst thing to do February And now, in the present of my unresolved and still evolving contemporaneity In this unattainable present, already receding into the past I am reaching out to you to apologise for addressing so vaguely yet so straightforwardly For using redundant and imprecise temporal clues of presentness For disrupting the suspension of disbelief not even letting you enjoy a moment of relaxed fruition See also: - Twelve Months, 2023-2024 https://andreagaliazzo.com/An-Episode-of-Violence Sun, 09 May 2021 16:21:17 +0000 Andrea Galiazzo https://andreagaliazzo.com/An-Episode-of-Violence An Episode of Violence, 2021     Individuals who are seeking for opportunities to exercise gratuitous violence, will find plenty as law enforcement agents. Most perpetrated violence will likely go unpunished. (Police Violence for Dummies, 2021}I consider myself lucky. As a white boy growing up in a predominantly white, and relatively safe society, police violence was never a primary concern. Nonetheless, and even though it wasn't that dramatic, I had a chance to experience it firsthand. I am riding my bicycle to meet her. Tonight we are going to a party out of town. She has a scooter and often offers to tow me. As it can be tiring for her arm, I sometimes lock my bike and sit behind her instead, even though this option entails the risk of getting a fine. I am riding my bicycle, and I am cycling as fast as I can, for I am late. Suddenly, I hear a vehicle accelerating. The next moment, I am flying over a car hood. I swear. As I am realizing I just got cut off by a police car, a huge officer grabs me and throws me in the car. He loads my bike in the trunk and starts to drive without any explanation. The back seats are made of a single piece of hard plastic, with no loose components. A sheet of glass separates this part of the passanger compartment from the front sits. Of the two agents sitting there, i already know who is the bad cop. I am scared. I try to ask what is happening, I didn't do anything wrong. No reply. My heart is pounding, I am thinking about those who were beaten up during the recent G8 in Genova. I was suppose to meet a friend, she shouldn't be left waiting on the streets at night. No reply. Don't I have the right to know why and where are you taking me? No reply. The drive is short, I notice we are entering the police headquarter. I start to picture the tiny room where I will be tortured. White, hard walls, no forniture, neon lights at the ceiling. I wonder if I will be able to get out of it unharmed. I am at their mercy. As soon as the engine is off, I realize my questions and claims of innocence have likely made things worse. I should have enjoyed those harm-proof seats after all. I try to show i am collaborative. I am coming, I will do anything you ask me to do. Doesn't help, the bad cop drags me out of the car and pushes me into the building through a back door. He is now holding my arm with one hand, pressing his knuckles into my back with the other. The pain forces the curvature of my spine, in a position where my vital parts are exposed. Going up the staircase, I notice his colleague isn't there anymore. I bet no surveillance camera here, but try not to panic. Once more, I ask for an explanation. You really have to shut up or else I brake you. His voice and body language are utterly aggressive, he can barely control himself. No, he can't. He presses and swipes his knuckles against my skull. It hurts. I am sure this won't show on the skin, he knows how to inflict pain without leaving marks. Once upstairs, I am somehow relieved as I see several agents going frantically from room to room. They bring in a lady to which I am preventively asked not to talk to. It wasn't him, she says. After being left alone for a moment, an older officer comes in. You are free to leave. The fear turns into anger. I don't want to leave, I want to know what the hell was this about. The woman's bag was snatched by a guy on his bike. He was wearing blue jeans and a white t-shirt, just like you. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, wearing the wrong clothes. I tell him I want to file a complaint against his sadist colleague. It is not my job, you have to go downstairs, by the main entrance. The agent at the reception is evasive, pretending he doesn't understand what happened. What is the exact nature of the alleged misconduct? What is the agent name? Of course, I don't know his name. I am actually terrified at the idea of meeting him again. What if he takes me into custody once more? And anyway, any possible soar will likely be gone by the time I get to see a doctor. Moreover, she is probably still waiting for me, and I would certainly make use of a drink. Better try to make it to that party instead. I left, but coudn't stop swearing for the rest of the evening.