Archives and Artists’ Books: The Politics of Visual Language
Symposium and museum visit

September 7, 17:00-20:00. Naples
Museo Madre e Dispaccio

Within the cycle
Archives and Artists’ Books
by Michela Palermo and Giorgia Basch

In collaboration with Palermo Publishing

With Giorgia Basch, Director of BilderAtlas
Michela Palermo, Director of Palermo Publishing
Ivano Bove, founder of Dispaccio
Alberta Romano, curator and art historian

Program

Hosted at Dispaccio on September 7, 2025 in Naples, this event marks the second talk in a series initiated by Michela Palermo and Giorgia Basch dedicated to exploring the potential of the artist’s book and the use of image archives in contemporary practice.

On this occasion, the conversation unfolds in dialogue with the pioneering feminist legacy of artist Tomaso Binga and the exhibition Euforia. Tomaso Binga, curated by Eva Fabbris with Daria Khan at museo Madre. The event, in fact, opens with a free guided tour of the exhibition led by Alberta Romano, winner of the 14th edition of the Italian Council with the research project Kinship and Archive. It will continue at Dispaccio with the participation of Ivano Bove, founder of Dispaccio, and Alberta Romano.

The guided tour of the Euforia exhibition is an opportunity to delve into the work of Tomaso Binga through a research perspective that explores the relationship between archival materials and intimacy, focusing on the concept of kinship and on how it can influence collecting and archiving practices while reshaping dominant narratives.

The panel, that will then take place in Dispaccio, explores the artist’s book and the use of archives as political tools – devices that do not merely preserve memory but reconfigure it. Through the lens of two distinct publishing projects, the discussion will examine how archival materials can be activated through artistic publishing to confront, reimagine, and resist dominant histories, and invent new languages.

The conversation will open with Giorgia Basch, presenting Al cerchio delle tue mani, a collection of never-before-seen photographs of the gatherings and communal life of the first feminist groups in Italy, taken by Bibi Tomasi. Published by BilderAtlas, the book draws from the photographic archives of the Libreria delle donne di Milano, one of Italy’s historical feminist collectives, which collaborated with Binga since its inception in the 1970s.

In parallel, Michela Palermo will present Whereupon and Whereupon, Turmoil, respectively a photo book and a fanzine developed from the archives of Allen Frame, an American photographer, writer and theatre director who documented the queer and artistic subcultures of 1980s New York. The books are published by Palermo Publishing.

Drawing on their practices as publishers, the speakers will reflect on how the artist’s book functions not only as a medium for aesthetic experimentation, but as a critical, relational and embodied practice. Central to this dialogue is the idea of the book as a feminist and queer space – a place where counter-narratives take form, archives are unsettled, and visual language becomes a site of resistance.
The panel will offer a space for collective reflection on how artist-led publishing reclaims and reanimates the archive, shaping new ways of reading, remembering and imagining.

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