Where and when
“Westuff” 1984-1987: fashion, art, entertainment in underground Florence
Speakers Bruno Casini, Ilaria Cicali, Maria Luisa Frisa, Giorgia Marotta
The “Westuff” publishing project was born in Florence in December 1984, from the meeting of Bruno Casini, Stefano Tonchi and Maria Luisa Frisa, when the city was animated by a great cultural and youthful ferment. “Westuff” aims to look from a privileged observatory, as Florence could have been in those years, to the Italian and international art scene, bringing together art, fashion, music and theater, with an eye towards the great capitals, such as London, Paris, New York. The result is a magazine capable of capturing the most hidden artistic and creative situations, but also of reflecting large-scale phenomena such as the emergence of fashion as a powerful communication system.
Through a dialogue with Bruno Casini and Maria Luisa Frisa, Ilaria Cicali and Giorgia Marotta will retrace the history of the magazine and its role within the cultural scene of the time.
Bruno Casini deals with communication and cultural promotion and specializes in research and studies on youth cultures in Italy. Since the 1980s he has participated in theatrical and musical projects and collaborated with radio and magazines in the sector. He was one of the founders of the “Westuff” magazine. For several years he curated the Independent Music Meeting, was part of the artistic direction of the Fabbrica Europa festival and the jury of the Ciampi Award and directed the On the Road Festival in Pelago. Together with Ernesto De Pascale and Giancarlo Cauteruccio he curated the exhibition on the twentieth anniversary of Tenax at the Stazione Leopolda in Florence in 2002. He wrote for the Tuscan cultural pages of “Il Manifesto”. He has published numerous volumes on the Florentine art and music scene with particular attention to the period from the 1980s onwards. He teaches Communication at the Art and Restoration Institute in Florence. Since 2006 he has been in charge of the Artistic Direction of the Florence Queer Festival.
Ilaria Cicali, PhD in art history, he discussed his doctoral thesis “Alexander Archipenko, an artist in the context of contemporary sculpture” in 2013 (University of Florence / Université de Paris Ouest Nanterre).
Author of essays and critical texts concerning the art of the twentieth century, in particular sculpture, she has participated in numerous international conferences and exhibition catalogs. After a semester of post-doctoral research at the Center for Italian Modern Art in New York (January-July 2015), he is currently working in Florence in the field of cultural mediation and as a professor of contemporary art history.
Maria Luisa Frisa she is full professor at the Iuav University of Venice, where since 2005 she has directed the three-year degree course in Fashion Design and Multimedia Arts. Critic and curator, she directs the Mode series for Marsilio Editori dedicated to the ideas and figures of fashion. Co-founder of the independent magazine Westuff (1983-87), she has always been interested in the complexity of the contemporary imagination and in the continuous crossovers between art, fashion, design and communication. She has curated numerous exhibitions and their respective catalogs. His latest book: The forms of fashion (Il Mulino, 2015). His latest project: the exhibition and the book Bellissima. Italy of high fashion 1945-1968 (Rome, MAXXI, November 2014-May 2015; Brussels, BOZAR, June-September 2015; Monza, Villa Reale, September 2015-January 2016; Fort Lauderdale, NSU Art Museum, February- June 2016). In 2016 he edited the book Desire and Discipline: Designing Fashion at Iuav (Marsilio), which celebrates the 10th anniversary of the degree courses in fashion at the Iuav.
Giorgia Marotta, art historian, she specializes at the University of Siena with a thesis entitled: “European relations by number (1949-1953)”. She participates in the FIRB research project (2009-2011) for the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa and in 2013 she was selected for the European project “The European correspondence to Jacob Burckhardt” to carry out the research at the Bibliotèque National de France in Paris. He has participated in in-depth conferences on themes of contemporary art and collaborated with various contemporary art events including TusciaElecta Contemporary Art in Chianti and The Screen of Art Film Festival. She has published essays on 20th century art and criticism for numerous exhibition catalogs.