Florence - Italy
1974 - 1985
San Niccolò 119r, , Florence, Italy
zonanonprofitartspace.it
zonaarchives@libero.it
Maurizio Nannucci, Paolo Masi, Mario Mariotti, Giuseppe Chiari, Massimo Nannucci, Albert Mayr, Alberto Moretti, Gianni Pettena
Founded in 1974 in Florence, Zona represents an unique example, of internationally recognized, non profit artist-run spaces. Situated in the historic quarter San Niccolò, Zona’s involvement with the experimental art movements of the 1970s and 1980s: multimedia art, concrete poetry, Conceptual art, performance, contrasted with the everyday life of the neighborhood.
In accordance with its mission - o show interdisciplinary work on an international level - Zona’s program sought a crossover of experimental visual arts, music, architecture, and poetry. The aim of overcoming traditional borders between the disciplines was achieved through a radical, anti-academic organization, and through the confrontation of the audience with unusual insights into multifaceted art experiments and experiences that anticipated developments in the visual arts. Zona’s activities included more than 250 exhibitions/events as well as Zona publications and editions. In 1981 ZonaRadio went online, broadcasting new music and sound by artists.
“Zona People” formed a flexible collective, without long term programming. Flexibility was important as there was no financial support either from private sponsors or from public institutions. Zona’s program was completely self-financed by the members of the space. Zona built up an international network that promoted new art movements and opened up the possibility of a global exchange between artists, art critics, and the public.
Organization: The nonprofit art space Zona was founded and organized by artists, musicians, poets, and architects, who were living and working in Florence.
Mission: Creation of a global network of interdisciplinary art practices and exhibition of international experimental art in Florence.
Program: Avant-garde art movements of the 1970s and 1980s, film and video, Conceptual art, Fluxus, performance, concrete and sound poetry, radical architecture, artists’ books and small press, audioworks, ZonaRadio.
Today: Zona Archives and Zona Archives Editions
Zona non profit art space and zona archives in Florence
by Maurizio Nannucci
Zona was created in 1974 out of the need and desire of a group of young artists to infiltrate Florence with contemporary art; the city is an environment historically inclined to maintain the status-quo and tradition, and is not open to change. Only with a profound knowledge of the city's social, political, cultural, and economic mechanisms, can the extraordinary significance of the artist-run space Zona and what the collective represented be appreciated.
In the 1970s there was huge international resistance to the establishment art galleries and to the ever greater power being acquired by militant criticism. As a result, many artists claimed their own autonomy, and undertook to create a strategic alternative circuit that would provide a direct link between their own work and the media, modifying the social status of culture and of its environment. Having abandoned 1968-inspired utopias, there was a move toward transparent, independent operations run by the artists themselves. By adopting Walter Benjamin's ideas about the reproducibility of art and Marshall McLuhan's concept of electronic multimedia forms, the artists aimed to eliminate the traditional qualitative parameters of art and to adopt new forms of anti-conformist behavior that would transform the artist’s role in society.
Zona was founded as a nonprofitorganization and space run by artists, architects, and musicians who were living and working in Florence and Tuscany: Maurizio Nannucci, Paolo Masi, Mario Mariotti, Giuseppe Chiari, Massimo Nannucci, Alberto Moretti, Alberto Mayr and Gianni Pettena. The exhibition space was on the Via San Niccolò 119r, inside the historical city center.
The founding of Zona took place during a period of great upheaval; a small group of people with great vision and a high level of professionalism undertook to bring the cultural scene in Florence into the contemporary world, and visa versa. As well as Zona, there were galleries such as Schema and Area, the Centro Di publishing company, and video works created by Art Tapes 22 and Edizioni Exempla. All these initiatives helped bring about a period of extreme cultural ferment in the city, driven by the energy of a new generation of artists.
Zona Program
From the very beginning the Zona collective decided that information and the exhibition program should be the deciding factors in the identity and activities of the space, rather than individual self-conceit and self-reflecting narcissism. The strategy of opening up the exchange to the international art world meant that different cultures and experimental operative methods became part of Zona’s collective actions. Zona carefully cultivated a network of contacts and shared experiences with artists from different disciplines and tendencies from emerging contemporary fields. For this purpose, Zona People were engaged at Zona, and worked without receiving any financial remuneration.
As a further programmatic decision, the members of Zona reinforced their definition of themselves as an integrated body or collective. The confrontation of different disciplines and personalities became a driving force that contributed to the identity of Zona as an organization that was non-hierarchical and led by democratic ideas such as that art production should be inhomogeneous, contradictory, varied and articulate, diffuse and noisy, and non-identifiable in traditional terms, values, and expectations.
Autonomy and Independence
Zona’s connection with the local public and governmental institutions was characterized by an operative independence and autonomy; thus it was only rarely possible to present exhibitions such as Made in Florence, and others devoted to artists' books and performance. Zona differentiated itself from cultural institutions, and was responsive to sudden changes in the art world. It quickly became an internationally recognized—and preferred—channel for artistic activity, especially when compared with the lethargy and indifference of local institutions.
Zona became a pure cultural concept, with a multilingual and multi-ethnic composition, a space that was neither shared nor transitory, a shelter in thesteppe, an haven in the desert, in which the artist, like a nomad or explorer, momentarily finds hospitality and feels welcome. The choice of being precarious and semi-clandestine was a very conscious one; it was felt that it was necessary to ignore the certainties of tried and tested methods and communication. This choice entailed certain difficulties, both in terms of how the organization was run as well as financial concerns—it was necessary to find approximately $1,000 a year to support general expenses. In spite of its precarious financial situation, and thanks to its agile and flexible structure and dense network of contacts, Zona was able to realize more than 250 events, exhibitions, concerts, performances, installations, lectures, and video and film presentations.
Zona’s program received international acclaims, and established Zona’s reputation on the international contemporary art circuit in the 1970s and 1980s.
Beginnings and Shared Experiences
The event that officially inaugurated the space in 1975 was Per Conoscenza, an enquiry into artists of different disciplines active in Florence and Tuscany; a sort of getting to know "who we are and what we do," without becoming lost in local impulses that could subsequently be called regionalism or nationalism. The exhibition was made up of a series of 35 one-day shows, performances, films, and installations (with contributions by Luciano Bartolini, Lapo Binazzi & Ufo, Mario Borillo, Lino Centi, Giuseppe Chiari, Andrea Daninos, Bruno Gambone, Andrea Granchi, Ketty La Rocca, Auro Lecci, Mario Mariotti, Paolo Masi, Gianni Melotti, Verita Monselles, Alberto Moretti, Massimo Nannucci, Maurizio Nannucci, Adolfo Natalini & Superstudio, Bill Viola, among others). As Zona’s inaugural event, Per Conoscenza created a basic formula that would be used again in 1978 and 1981 for other events such as Aroma (which included Carlo Bertocci, Fabrizio Corneli, Luciana Majoni, Monica Sarsini, Marino Vismara).
Another paradigmatic event was Monografie curated by Mario Mariotti, an exhibition in 1977 of practitioners who assumed different artistic roles (Lapo Binazzi, Julien Blaine, Corrado Costa, Mario Guaraldi, Paolo Masi, Massimo Nannucci, Maurizio Nannucci, Fulvio Salvadori, etc. ). A series of 28 events allowed over 50 participants to express themselves, either individually or in a group. Artistic practices ranged from artist to editor, from architect to musician, from collector to craftsman.
Collective Publishing and Extended Communication
After these first events featuring local artists, a whole series of manifestations followed, through which Zona was able to better demonstrate its role as a catalyst of a wide range of experiences and international events. A perfect example of this was the Small Press Scene exhibition in 1975. Curated by Maurizio Nannucci, it was the first to be devoted to this medium, gathering together more than 250 small press magazines dedicated to experimental visual art, concrete poetry, architecture, and new music (Agentzia, Ana Excetera, Ant Farm, Approches, Archigram, Art and Language, Art Rite, Asa, Axe, Azimuth, Coracle Press / Simon Cutts, Exempla, Fluxus, The Fox, Futura, Geiger, Giorno Poetry System, Integration / Hermann De Vries, La Mamelle, Nul, Le Petit Colosse de Simi / Daniel Spoerri, Poor Old Tired Horse / Ian Hamilton Finlay, Robho, Dieter Rot, Schema Informazione, Stereo Headphone, Tarasque Press, Tau/Ma, Vou, Zaj, etc.). This was the first presentation of artistic production tied to the Intermedia phenomenon, which had started in the 1960s at a time when some artists felt the need to release their work from the production of art objects, and wished to address interests and concerns related to other disciplinary categories. Their work opened up artistic research to other possibilities and experimentation. The small press materials today constitute one of the most consistent aspects of Zona Archives, which has grown consistently and which now contains over 1,000 titles.
The initiative continued with a series of artists’ magazines and artists-as-editors presentations such as Oolp (Luigi Ballerini, Mario Diacono), BaoBab and Geiger (Adriano Spatola), The Fox (Joseph Kosuth), Mèla (Maurizio Nannucci), Other Books and So (Ulysses Carrion), File (General Idea),Zweitschrift (Uta Brandes, Michael Erlhoff), Pim (Jeffrey Isaac), Aut, Trib(Tullio Catalano, Maurizio Benveduti), AEIUO (Bruno Corà), Impulse (Elton Garnet), Giorno Poetry System (John Giorno).
Small Press Scene was also the name of a 24-hour nonstop event of alternative information about small press, which took place in June 1984. It is also worth mentioning the British Small Press Book Fair (which took place at Zona in May, 1978) dedicated to the activity of small press in Britain, and which presented 50 magazines, including Poor.Old.Tired.Horse by Ian Hamilton Finlay and Archigram edited by Peter Cook.
Inbound/Outbound was an exhibition in 1977, the contents of which were sent directly to Zona (who had solicited their participation) by 100 artists from all over the world, with particular attention to East Europe countries, South America, Japan, and Australia.
Audioworks and Zona Radio
Maurizio Nannuccci started the Fonoteca (1977) a collection of records and cassettes of artists' audioworks and sound poetry, as well as previously unpublished original recordings. An exhibition of sound installations was shown at Zona for the first time; this later became a traveling show and went to museums in France, Austria, Mexico, and elsewhere. In the same year, Albert Mayr’s Suono & Ambiente festival increased awareness of sound art, and provided information about related events in different parts of the world. The festival took place at several venues in Florence, with concerts and musical actions by Beth Andersen, Cornelius Cardew, Giancarlo Cardini, Richard Hyman, and Alvin Lucier among others.
Parola e Suono (1979) was a review dedicated to meetings with authors of musical poetry and phonetic researchers. This has to be considered, like other manifestations, as a "work in progress," still open to further contributions. Ulysses Carrion, Henry Chopin, John Giorno, Sten Hanson, Bernard Heidsieck, Isidor Isou, Ferdinand Kriwet, Robert Lax, Maurice Lemaitre, Maurizio Nannucci, Diter Rot, Mimmo Rotella, Gerhard Rühm, Sarkis, and Adriano Spatola were presented, and Zona organized the attendance of other authors such as Brion Gysin, Ernst Jandl, Friederike Mayröcker, and Emmett Williams.
A further contribution to the greater understanding and awareness of this form of sound research came with the creation of ZonaRadio. ZonaRadio continued the kind of research into sound seen at the Zona events with a cycle of radiophonic transmissions at the invitation of Florence's broadcasting station Controradio 93,7mHz (as well as from some foreign stations in the Netherlands, Canada, Germany, and Sweden. Over a period of three months Maurizio Nannucci and Albert Mayr broadcast interviews with as well as recordings and sound material by hundreds of artists such as Vito Acconci, Laurie Anderson, Robert Barry, Joseph Beuys, John Cage, Philip Corner, Coum Transmission, Antonio Dias, Brian Eno, Philip Glass, Jack Goldstein, Dick Higgins, Robert Lax, Albert Mayr, Maurizio Nannucci, Michael Snow, Keith Sonnier, Ben Vautier, and Lawrence Weiner. Their approach was an attempt to distance themselves from traditional broadcasting, and rather to adopt an editorial method that, without distorting the meaning of the transmitted works, would emphasize a cognitive approach suited to the medium of radio. In 1982 a special emmission of ZonaRadio was created in connection with the Ars Electronica Festival in Linz. In 1985, once again at the invitiation of Controradio, ZonaRadio Events broadcast new audio material.
Yves Bouliane, Logos Gent, Giuseppe Chiari, Steve Piccolo, Bill Viola, and Marino Vismara created solo installations, performances, and concerts produced by Zona Music and realized at the Palazzo Vegni in Florence between 1976 and 1981. In 1984 Albert Mayr invited some protagonists of experimental music to animate the Zona Musica Festival, which took place during five days in different indoor and outdoor venues in the city.
Zona’s International Art Network
Connections with both the peripheral and more mainstream art worlds led to exhibitions such as Iceland (1979, including Fridrik Thor Fridriksson, Margrét Jonsdottir, Steingrimur Eyfjörd Kristmundsson, Magnus Palsson, Bjarni H. Thorarinsson): a presentation of Icelandic art that included artworks, films, books, and documents by 25 artists working at the forefront of contemporary dialogue.
June 1984 saw the exhibition Zona Brasil, a manifestation in which Cildo Meireles, Iole de Freitas, and Carmela Gross presented their work in Zona's space. A personal connection with Canadian artists led to a series of artist's interventions (General Idea, Glenn Lewis, Ian Murray, Michael Snow, Vincent Tresov, and Bill Vazan). Zona was also linked closely to magazines and documents (including Parachute, Impulse, Impressions, Fuse,Parallelogramme, File), and was involved in information exchanges with nonprofitspaces such as A Space and Art Metropole in Toronto, and Western Front in Vancouver. In March 1980 Franklin Furnace's director Martha Wilson gave a lecture at Zona, in which she discussed alternative spaces and archives in New York, focusing particularly on Franklin Furnace, whose archive was purchased by The Museum of Modern Art in New York in the 1990s.
Zona Genève, curated in 1983 by Marino Vismara and including work by Françoise Bridel, Vivianne van Singer, Jean Stern, and Anne Sauser Hall, was an exhibition of a group of young artists working in Geneva and involved with the Furor art theory magazine. The show was organized as a result of exchanges with Swiss artist-run spaces in Geneva such as Ecart, Gaetan, and the Centre d'Art Contemporain. A.u.s.t.r.a.l.i.a (May/July 1983), curated by Maurizio Nannucci and Judith Blackall took place around the same time. It was the first European exploration of the Australian art scene, showing a variety of media and with the participation of over 30 artists (including Julie Brown, Juan Davila, John Nixon, Jill Orr, Imants Tiller, and Jenny Watson). Zona also presented videos featuring productions from Berlin and Great Britain; the exhibition America in a Box (1983) showed Sheila Klein and Gail MacCall, and was accomplished through a collaboration of Studio Alchymia, an Italian design studio. The Guerrilla Girls presented an exhibition of their leaflets and documents of political actions regarding discrimination against women in the art world (1985).
Distribution and Circulation of Information
Zona also collected information about other exhibitons, tracing visual art's most significant developments. As a result of Zona’s policy of showing an artist only for an evening, or limiting the event to the time required to make it possible, the space was extremely dynamic, in sharp contrast to the more established spaces in Florence, which were not reactive or responsive to new artistic developments.
Zona realized several solo exhibitions and events with artists such as Alighiero Boetti, James Lee Byars, Sarah Charlesworth, James Coleman, Peter Downsbrough, Terry Fox, General Idea, Jeffrey Isaac, Joseph Kosuth, Mario Merz, Steve Piccolo, and Bill Viola. Following the same style of exhibiton, but integrated in a thematic context, group exhibitions were held with artists such as Giuseppe Chiari, Fabrizio Corneli, Mario Mariotti, Paolo Masi, Alberto Moretti, Massimo Nannucci, Maurizio Nannucci, and Marino Vismara.
Steve Piccolo, the bass player of the musical group Lounge Lizard, made particularly notable interventions in Demos Project (with Maurizio Nannucci) and in the Le Pietre Graffiate exhibition; he also performanced with Piero Pelù, the lead singer of the Florentine rock group Litfiba, at the Vivita gallery for the opening party of Nannucci’s solo exhibition in the Sala d’Arme at the Palazzo Vecchio. In February 1978 Magazzini Criminali (Marion d'Amburgo, Sandro Lombardi, and Federico Tiezzi), invaded Zona's space with a series of theatrical events entitled II Carrozzone. A performance-homage to Ketty La Rocca, in which Gianni Melotti, Verita Monselles, and Fulvio Salvadori also took part, was presented in Zona’s cellars.
Exhibitions with Mario Merz and Alighiero Boetti corresponded to an open project for which Zona's space was “lent” to a series of galleries. The galleries/gallerists involved in Zona events were Franco Toselli’s Milan Gallery (Merz), Massimo Minini from Brescia (Boetti), followed by the Lucio Amelio’s Napolitan Gallery, which presented Ernesto D'Argenio at Zona Space, as well as Francoise Lambert from Milan who showed Alberto Garutti.
Mater Materia (1977) was an exploration by Lanfranco Baldi, Carlo Bertocci, and Paolo Masi into the poetry of materials through images, books, critical articles, samplings, and editions donated by over 80 European and American artists.
The series Zona Critica (March–June 1982)presented theoretical information and artworks, documenting a series of contemporary situations new to the critical field. This event characterized the beginning of the 1980s in Italy. Each of the critics invited (Rossella Bonfiglioli, Laura Cherubini, Massimo Carboni, Maria Luisa Frisa, Elio Grazioli, Flaminio Gualdoni, Ida Panicelli, Demetrio Paparoni, Loredana Parmesani, Sandro Sproccati, Barbara Tosi, Giorgio Verzotti) asked an artist to intervene in Zona's space, which became a direct intermediary between the critics and the cultural space: a precursor to other, similar manifestations.
Crossing Disciplines
Zona Architettura Corretta Londinese (1979), curated by Gianni Pettena with the British Council and the Architectural Association in London's cooperation, proposed, on a weekly basis, an overview of the emerging school of London's young architects who approached their practice through research into the environment and physical space. John Andrews, Nigel Coats, Christopher Harding, Antonio Lagarto, Jenny Löwe, John Ryba, Trisha Pringle, and Peter Wilson followed one another with installations produced and carried out in situ, as interpretations of Zona’s space. Their installations used post-conceptual spatial language and were far from being purely graphic representations of real constructions; these interventions acted as references for those by previous architects such as Lapo Binazzi/UFO, Michele De Lucchi/Cavart, Ugo La Pietra, Adolfo Natalini/Superstudio, Gianni Pettena, who were part of the Architettura Radicale group. In May 1984 Gianni Pettena also organized the Theatrium Artium review, with 12 international architects' plans for the same numbers of pavilions around the amphitheatre in the Cascine Park in Florence.
On the occasion of the inauguration of the Istituto Patafisico per l'Etruria and the Proto-Istituto Alternativo Zona,the documents and editions of the College de ’Pataphisique, were shown in Italy for the first time. ZonaPatafisica, 1981, curated by Maurizio Nannucci and Thierry Foulc, presented material from the College de ’Pataphisique archive, with over three hundred publications of books, magazine, cards, booklets by Antonin Artaud, Jean Dubuffet, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Lucio Fontana, Alfred Jarry, Raymond Queneau, and Man Ray.
In 1977, more than ten years before the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, Maurizio Nannucci curated an exhibition that gathered together material relating to Situationism, some 20 years after its creation. Zona Internationale Situationniste presented magazines, books, films, and original articles written by the protagonists, as well as related materials from all over Europe—a kind of free consulting library. The opening was memorable for the unexpected presence of Guy Debord.
For the exhibition Zona Invitation Postcards in December 1977, Maurizio Nannucci asked Pier Luigi Tazzi and Luciano Bartolini to carry out a first critical enquiry into the unusual subject of invitation cards—not only the exhibition invitation cards sent by galleries and museums, but also those sent by the artists themselves. A series of categories proposed, through the presentation of over three thousands examples collected by Exempla Archive, the creative and original elements that artists use to send messages and to document their own work.
Zona Films, Videos, and Multimedia
More than once Zona'sspace was turned into a cinema with projections of artist's films. Zona Artist's Films (1976) was an international festival organized by Maurizio Nannucci and Andrea Granchi, which lasted over three months with 40 days of projections. There were also monographic evenings in which many artists took part (Joseph Beuys, Mari Boyen, Marcel Broothaers, Antonio Dias, Herbert Distel, Terry Fox, Dan Graham, Gordon Matta-Clark, Alberto Moretti, Massimo Nannucci, Bruce Nauman, Dennis Oppenheim, Luca Patella, Angela Ricci Lucchi & Yervant Gianikian, Franco Vaccari, etc.).
Independent Super8 Films from Australia, 1983, was a festival presented in parallel to the exhibition A.U.S.T.R.A L.I.A,dedicated to new art scene of this continent.
In 1975 Bill Viola’s first video installation, Vapore, was presented; at this time he was also contributing to the activity of Art Tapes 22 created by Maria Gloria Bicocchi. Collaborating with Bicocchi Zona organized meetings with Vito Acconci, Daniel Buren, Buckminster Fuller, Tadeusz Kantor, and Living Theatre. Video Arte in Gran Bretagne took place in 1984 and the complete video and film works of Gilbert & George, realized with the assistence of the British Council, were presented.
Zona and some of the collective’s artist-members were frequently invited to produce projects in public institutions and museums, often reworking and extending initiatives created in Via San Niccolò, or simply proposing the same projects again. Collaborations took place with the Archives of the Venice Biennale and the Moderna Museetin Stockholm for the Small Press Sceneexhibition, and with the City of Florence for the exhibitions Formato Lib(&)ro, 1978, and Artists’ Books, 1978. The DAV archive (Documentazione Arti Visive, 1980–1982) was also created by Maurizio Nannucci for the City of Florence. Other collaborations were realized with the Paris Biennale;the Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea in Milan; the Centre Georges Pompidou and Bibliothèque Nationalein Paris for Cent Livres d'Artistes Italiens (1981); as well as with MoMA, New York; the Frankfurter Kunstverein; the British Council, London; and Rai, Rome.
Zona Archives
Establishing the Zona Archives at this time, and the start of its editorial activity was very important; material is still being added to the archives today. The material that has been collected includes: the small press collection, artists’ books (four thousand books), audioworks by artists with records and tapes of new music (over one thousand items), audioworks by artists and poets, and the concrete poetry collection (more than six thousand documents) with which the Exempla Archive's materials have been merged. Zona has not simply collected and released information, but also have their own autonomous editorial activity, Zona Editions, which has not limited itself to the publication of catalogues and books about Zona events, but has also produced (and continues to do so), records, artists’ books, editions, and multiples by artists such as Paul Armand Gette, John Armleder, Luciano Bartolini, Claude Closky, Robert Filliou, Rainer Ganahl, General Idea, John Giorno, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Dick Higgins, Joseph Kosuth, Robert Lax, James Lee Byars, Sol Lewitt, Paolo Masi, Jonathan Monk, Olivier Mosset, Massimo Nannucci, Maurizio Nannucci, Carsten Nicolai, John Nixon & Marco Fusinato, Yoko Ono, Michael Snow, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Lawrence Weiner, Heimo Zobernig.
Although the artist-run space in Via San Nicolò 119r was closed in 1985, Zona's activity has continued through the archives and the organization of external events. Zona Secret Events (Daniel Buren, Terry Fox, General Idea, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, James Lee Byars, Maurizio Nannucci, Lawrence Weiner, etc.) invites artists to intervene in different places in Florence with hidden (often clandestine) works. The presence of these works is voluntarily concealed and any search for them is helped only by insufficient clues. Zona Archives regularly supplies materials, documents, and works to art institutions that request them for their exhibitions. Zona has also produced exhibitions and events. Among these are A.P./Artists Photographs (John Baldessari, Christian Boltanski, Luciano Fabro, Fischli and Weiss, Dan Graham, Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, Ed Ruscha, Cindy Sherman, etc. ), which took place at the Archivio Storico in Marciana, Isola d’Elba (1986), and A.B./Art in Bookform, organized by Maurizio Nannucci and Pier Luigi Tazzi at the Alvar Aalto Museum and the Pori Art Museum in Finland in 1987. Other projects curated by Maurizio Nannucci includeD.i.s.c.o.t.h.e.q.u.e (Maison du livre, de l’image et du son, Villeurbanne/Lyon, 1989), Bookmakers (Limoges, 1995), Murs de Son (Villa Arson, Nice, 1995), and Keeping Time, the sound archive of artists' audioworks (Zona, 1977) was shown at Villa Arson in Nice (1995), the École des Beaux Arts in Bourges (1996), the Kunstmuseum in Bregenz (1997), and the Palazzo delle Papesse in Siena (1998). Nannucci also curated the exhibitionZona People at Mamco, Centre d’art contemporain, Geneva, 2003.
Zona’s objectives have never been to celebrate a particular moment of an artist's work, much less its own activity. Rather attention has always been concentrated on communication, information, and recording events that other organizations, with different remits and constraints, would not be able to record. The continuity of the commitment that has always been given to Zona has allowed it to explore areas in which it is possible to research and formulate new models of artistic methodologies and behaviors. It is precisely in terms of the continuity and the attention given to the immediate reception of events, many of which have been forgotten by more official artistic channels, that Zona has built its identity.
Small Space, Great Ideas
Zonaand its collective places itself in the sphere of an international communication network strongly characterized by ideological problematics that, alone, take on all the artistic (as well as non-artistic) questions of the 1970s and 1980s. The communication is reciprocal and is a base for further elaborations. In this way all the assumptions of non-participation,of delay, of communication's autism, of provincialism are demolished.
The capacity and potential to receive everything places Zona in a unique position. Zona, venue of numerous strategic points, took Florence back to a communicative centralization through minimum and marginal signs. In 1985 the members of the Zona collective decided to bring an end to their activities as a group. As a result, the decision was made to close down the space in via San Niccolò 119r, so opening a new chapter in a story that is and will continue to be exemplary.
It is to these people and to these events that these pages are dedicated. Memories, but without nostalgia. Bearing witness to a conscious decision, to a gentle but intense experience, and to a path that could possibly still be taken up today. For this reason, this experience cannot be dedicated only to one single place but to the world, and especially to all those artists and people who shared it and those who want to live it today.