Caterina Davinio

You know I have no myths.
I love the rally cars
and a few other things
that I cannot say.
—Caterina Davinio, from Serial Phenomenologies
Language is an interface between us and the world. Beyond language, there is nothing but pure mystical contemplation of the universe.
—Caterina Davinio, from Virtual Mercury House. Planeatary & Interplanetary Events
Caterina Davinio

Caterina Davinio in 1990
Born 25 November 1957
Foggia, Apulia, Italy
Occupation poet, writer, new media artist
Literary movement Postmodernism, Concrete poetry, Visual poetry, Digital art, Digital poetry, Net.art
Notable works Karenina.it, Global Poetry, The First Poetry Shuttle Landing on Seconf Life

Caterina Davinio (born Maria Caterina Invidia; November 25, 1957, Foggia) is an Italian poet, novelist and new media artist. Author of digital art, net.art, video art. She was the creator of Italian Net-poetry in 1998.

Biography

Born in Foggia, she grew up in Rome since 1961. She studied literature and art history (student of Giulio Carlo Argan) at Rome University La Sapienza, where, in 1981, she received a bachelor's degree in Italian Literature. Caterina began to write poetry when she was fourteen years old.[1] In Rome she came in contact with the international circuit of experimental poetry and art,[2] resulting in an intense curatorial activity in collaboration with renowned artists, critics and poets of the avant-garde.[3][4] Since 1997 she has been living in Monza and Lecco, working at international level.

From the early 1990s Davinio was a pioneer of Italian electronic poetry, in the experimental field among writing, visual art, and new media, using computer, video, digital photography, Internet. She was the first woman artist who utilized the computer and Internet in literature and poetry in Italy.[5] Author of novels, poetry, essays, visual and sound poetry,[6] she created also works with traditional techniques, such as painting[7] and photography. She collaborated to netOper@ in 1997, the first Italian interactive work for the web by the composer Sergio Maltagliati.[8] She also initiated Net-poetry in Italy, in 1998, with the website and network Karenina.it.[9][10] The participants included Julien Blaine, Clemente Padin, Philadelpho Menezes, Mirella Bentivoglio, Lamberto Pignotti, Eugenio Miccini, and many other new media artists, critics, and experimental poets.[11]

Her art has been featured in more than three hundred international exhibitions and festivals in many countries, among them the Biennale de Lyon, the Biennale of Sydney, the Athens Biennial, E-Poetry (University SUNY Buffalo, NY, and Barcelona), Polyphonix Festival (Barcelona and Paris), seven times in the Venice Biennale and collateral events, where she collaborated also as a curator.[12][13][14][15] She exhibited animated digital poetry works - called "Terminal Videopoems" - in the 1997 Biennale, in VeneziaPoesia, a project directed by the poet and writer Nanni Balestrini.[16]

Davinio's net-poetry participated in the Biennale di Venezia in 2001 - Harald Szeemann curator - in the context of Bunker Poetico,[17][18] which was a collaborative installation - involving 1000 international poets and artists - created by the architect Marco Nereo Rotelli in cooperation with Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Filosofici of Venice, Massimo Donà, I Quaderni del Battello Ebbro publisher, Caterina Davinio, Milanocosa cultural association, and others.[19] Davinio engaged in this project renown avant-garde poets and organized a virtual happening on-line called "Parallel Action-Bunker", simultaneous with real readings and performances at Orsogrill delle Artiglierie, a venue of the Venice Biennial.[20][21] She created the virtual installation The First Poetry Space Shuttle Landing on Second Life and other on-line happenings in the 2009 Venice Biennale Collateral Events, engaging more than 200 poets from around the world, to celebrate the centenary of Italian Futurism.[22] In the context of the 2009 Venice Biennale Davinio participated also in the exhibition Détournement Venise 2009.[23]

Caterina Davinio in Bologna in 1981.

Karenina.it

Net-poetry project Karenina it (1998) was the first art-poetry-communication project presented on the web in an Italian context; the website was not a simple cultural on-line journal, but a "space of aggregation", which hosted an ongoing discourse, involving emerging and established experimental artists, critics, and visual poets. The communication aspect was treated as an artistic medium that goes beyond the contents or the quality of the words: borders among art, critic, and communication, in Davinio's own concept, were cancelled. The flow of words and information became art in itself, transcending the necessity to view art in traditional terms of form.[24] The suffix ".it" present in Karenina.it title is a geographic locator for the origin of the website. The value of the site resides within the conceptual framework of the Fluxus art movement."[25] Karenina.it won MAD03 Award (section Net-Zin) in 2003, Madrid.[26]

Other Net.art Works

Other Davinio’s net-poetry and net.art performances and events are based on the evolution of the multi-located structure experimented with Parallel Action-Bunker, mentioned before: beyond the simple presence of the performer on stage, performance is considered a collaborative, decentralized, multi-located action; poetry is conceived as "social structure, e-communication, real/virtual interaction", and "e-communication" is assumed as a new material for the artist.[27] Among them:

Caterina Davinio, Self-Portrait, Munich 1979.

Net-Poetry Links

Digital Art and Video

Exhibitions

Caterina Davinio participated in more than three hundred international art exhibions in the world, among them: Biennale de Lyon (two editions), The Venice Biennale and collateral events (seven editions since 1997, where she collaborated also as a curator), Athens Biennial, Poliphonyx (in Barcelona and in Paris), Biennale of Sydney (Online Venue), Liverpool Biennial (Independents, Online Venue), ParmaPoesia, VeneziaPoesia (Nanni Balestrini curator), RomaPoesia, Biennale di arti elettroniche, cinema e televisione of Rome (Marco Maria Gazzano curator), Le tribù dell'Arte, Tribù del video e della performance (Rome, Galleria Comunale d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Achille Bonito Oliva curator), Artmedia VII (University of Salerno, Mario Costa curator), E-Poetry Festival (University of Barcelona, University SUNY Buffalo, NY), Interactiva, New Media Art Biennial, Merida, Mexico, Hong Kong Artists' Biennial, and many others.

Publications

Novels:

Poetry books:

Essays:

Other publications:

Personal Life and Curiosities

Student at the Faculty of Humanities, University La Sapienza of Rome, in 1977, she participated in the Movement of 1977 and in the occupation of the faculty. Davinio lived a turbulent young life marked by heroin addiction and abuse of drugs and alcohol; this experience emerges in many of her literary works, particularly in Il libro dell'oppio 1975 – 1990 (The Book of Opium 1975 – 1990).[31][32][33][34] In 1980 she married the Turkish entrepreneur Levent Muharrem Sergün in Rome, moving to Munich and Istanbul; in 1982 their son Leonardo was born in Rome. After the divorce in 1984, Caterina married Claudio Preziosi in Rome in 1986, giving birth, in the same year, to her son Riccardo Amedeo. Lover of travels, Davinio dedicated to India, Africa, and many other places, poetry and photography works. She has nine tattoos made in her travels, including some Sak Yant, traditional South East Asia tattoos, realized in Cambodia.

References

  1. ↑ Interview, 2011
  2. ↑ (2007.) "Interview: Caterina Davinio." Jip.javamuseum.org. Accessed December 2011.
  3. ↑ Caterina Davinio, Tecno-Poesia e realtà virtuali (Techno-Poetry and Virtual Realities), essay (It. / En.). Preface by Eugenio Miccini. Collection: Archivio della Poesia del 900, Mantova, Sometti Publ., 2002, pp. 239-270. ISBN 88-88091-85-8
  4. ↑ Electronìe d'arte e altre scritture, meeting, Museo Pecci, Prato, 1995.
  5. ↑ "D'Ars", review directed by Pierre Restany, anno 43, n. 175-176, Dic. 2003, Milano, ISSN 0011-6726. p. 98. See pp 89-98.
  6. ↑ Athens Biennial, 2007.
  7. ↑ AAVV, Davinio, Roma, Parametro, 1990.
  8. ↑ Sergio Maltagliati. "netOper@, Contributors". Retrieved 1997. Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
  9. ↑ Digital Visions, UBC
  10. ↑ RCCS, review by Jorge Luiz Antonio
  11. ↑ Caterina Davinio, Tecno-Poesia e realtà virtuali (Techno-Poetry and Virtual Realities), essay (Italian / English). Preface by Eugenio Miccini. Collection: Archivio della Poesia del 900, Mantova, Sometti, 2002, ISBN 88-88091-85-8, pp 86-88.
  12. ↑ Tecno-Poesia e realtà virtuali, cited essay, pp. 244-247, 251-254.
  13. ↑ Oreste At The 48th Venice Biennale, Ed Charta, Milano 1999. Catalogue of Oreste Project at the Venice Biennale 1999, Italian Pavilion. ISBN 88-8158-279-1
  14. ↑ 49ma Esposizione internazionale d'arte Platea dell'umanità La Biennale di Venezia, Electa 2001. Project: "Bunker Poetico", by Marco Nereo Rotelli.
  15. ↑ La Biennale di Venezia, 51ma esposizione internazionale d'arte, Partecipazioni nazionali - Eventi nell'ambito, catalogo Marsilio, ISBN 88-317-8800-0. Project: Isola della Poesia, by Marco Nereo Rotelli, Achille Bonito Oliva curator.
  16. ↑ AAVV, VeneziaPoesia 97, catalogue of the exhibition, Edimedia, Venezia 1997.
  17. ↑ Marco Nereo Rotelli, Bunker Poetico. La poesia come opera. Porretta Terme - BO, I Quaderni del Battello Ebbro, 2001 ISBN 88-86861-49-4, p. 81 and 245-246.
  18. ↑ Parallel Action-Bunker, Davinio's event and web site for Bunker Poetico, 2001 at the Wayback Machine (archived January 31, 2006).
  19. ↑ 49ma Esposizione internazionale d'arte Platea dell'umanità La Biennale di Venezia, Electa 2001, p. 395.
  20. ↑ Parallel Action-Bunker, June 7th, 2001, on-line event realized during the Opening of the Bunker Poetico of the 49th Venice Biennale at the Wayback Machine (archived April 6, 2004).
  21. ↑ Tecno-poesia e realtà virtuali, cited essay, pp. 42-43, 253-254, 290-291.
  22. ↑
  23. ↑
  24. ↑ "CommunicAction and Perspectives on Modern Web Literary Avant-Garde", by Enrico Gianfranchi, in Digital Visions Festival, Sylvia Borda director, University of British Columbia .
  25. ↑ Enrico Gianfranchi, in Digital Visions Festival, Sylvia Borda director, University British Columbia Karenina.it and other net-poetry projects.
  26. ↑ AAVV, MAD 03, Secondo encuentro de arte experimental de Madrid, October 24 to November 16, 2003, catalogue published by AVAM, Artistas Visuales Asociados de Madrid, with the support of Ministerio de Cultura, Concejalia de las artes del ajuntamiento de Madrid, p. 97 and 102.
  27. ↑ definition from the artist's page. The artist expressed these concepts also in some interviews and in the essay Tecno-Poesia e realtà virtuali, Mantova, Sometti, 2002.
  28. ↑
  29. ↑
  30. ↑ http://www.diariopartenopeo.it/arriva-ole-01-festival-il-primo-in-italia-dedicato-alla-letteratura-elettronica/
  31. ↑ Interview, 2012
  32. ↑ Review
  33. ↑ Review
  34. ↑ Poems from The Book of Opium

Bibliography

External links

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Books

Interviews

Reviews