User:Jacopo/bio

Observer and things-maker, aiming to explore and contribute to the multiple ways in which contents, media and language merge in the publishing process. The attempt is to suggest new directions, imaginaries and landscapes, melting together all the paths actually fragmented by a present where free, shared spaces threaten to dissolve into passive, crossing points.

I jumped into the event organization before many, other things. I was 16 when I sorted out the first event. Despite its self-evident lack of contents, I immediately faced up the responsibility - together with the pleasure - in taking care of people and their free time. That pleasure never left me alone. Later, moving away from the province-flavoured atmosphere, I moved to Turin, where my practice met new opportunities for engaging more people, while starting to develop my personal visual language. Inspired also by the Italian Afro Music movement, and considering its resilience, made possible only by rough tapes and bleached vinyl stickers, which still last nowadays; I started working on the idea of events that, once concluded, could carry on the discussion around club-culture’s heritage, going beyond time limitations. With this idea, in 2017 I started Amphibia, a publishing platform working at the intersec tion of nightlife entertainment and visual research, outputting live events reciprocally related (and fed-up) by various printed matters, such as books, zines, small music releases, t-shirts and so on. I wanted to see the “club” as a playground for creative production, where cultural, pro-active exchange naturally springs up by people brought together only by similar interests and feelings; inspired also by the artistic offering.

My thesis project, completed in 2019 and entitled “Amphibia: Graphic Design and Cultures of Night Entertainment”, carried on the discussion. It's an historically grounded narration of the club culture imaginary – based on an extended research of various printed materials produced since its very beginning. Recently, while collaborating with ClubToClub festival and Cripta747, I have designed Amphibia’s first editorial publication, a book that pays homage to Cocoricò (presumably, the most important club of Italy). I have interviewed and collected the memories of the same people who contributed to the making of Cocoricò as a free territory for exploring the most diverse forms of entertainment and the most hidden manifestations of becom ing-other-than-oneself. Hand-crafting each of the 300 made me confident with the practice of book-making, nurturing, while binding them one by one, the idea of doing the right thing at the right moment. Actually I’m working on a new publication about sticker propaganda, as the most efficient communication tool within the province-range. Starting collecting stickers used to be made by small local shops, clubs, and cultural associations in Italy, I re-assembled a pattern that now brings back to us a strong and vibrant visual imaginary, while contributing to the definition of the 70s and 80s aesthetic paradigms.