Italian Futurism and the Machine Published

Friday 21 June 2019

Italian Futurism and the Machine, by Katia Pizzi, has just been published.  

Italian Futurism and the Machine is the first interdisciplinary exploration of machine culture in Italian futurism after the First World War. The machine was a primary concern for the futuristi. As well as being a material tool in the factory it was a social and political agent, an aesthetic emblem, a metonymy of modernity and international circulation and a living symbol of past crafts and technologies. Exploring literature, the visual and performing arts, photography, music and film, this monograph uses the lens of European machine culture to elucidate the work of a broad set of artists and practitioners, including Gianna Censi, Fortunato Depero, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Bruno Munari and Enrico Prampolini.The machine emerges here as an archeology of technology in modernity: the time machine of futurism. 

Katia Pizzi's previous volume, Trieste. Una frontiera letteraria, came out late last year.  In it, she explores the cosmopolitan and polyglot city on Italy's northeastern border. Trieste is a melting pot of peoples, cultures, trades and political activities. The volume is comprised of a chronology, an introduction and significant excerpts from works of writers who lived and worked in Trieste from the early 20th century to the present day, including James Joyce and Italo Svevo, with focus on innovative literary styles and technologies.

The author is Senior Lecturer in Italian Studies at the Institute of Modern Languages Research, University of London. 

Italian Futurism and the Machine is published by Manchester University Press (ISBN 97800-7190-9709-6, 320 pp, 2019)

Trieste. Una frontiera letteraria is published by Vita Activa (ISBN 978-88999-5113-9, 184 pp, 2018)