A green thread links the cherry blossoms in Japan to the gum trees of Malaysia, the botanical gardens of Singapore and the destroyed Perfect Brightness - a green thread that defines the anthropocene and the way nature is plundered, for its immediate utility and to create symbolism in step with current ideologies.
In this volume we look at the stories of our times, seen through the petals of flowers chosen to represent a nation, with the desire to bend a small fragrant corolla to ideologies useful to those in government at the time. They are also the stories of how our poetic images clash against our inability to live without destroying what surrounds us. Through the symbolism of flowers and gardens we talk about politics and history, colonialism and ecology, nationalism and authoritarianism, in an anthropocene short-circuit.

Ilaria Maria Sala is a writer, journalist, poet and ceramist, and has lived in Asia since 1988. She completed her studies in Beijing and London, then moved to Tokyo, and later based in Hong Kong - meanwhile spending long periods in Shanghai, Kathmandu and Dakar. She is the author of four books: the first, Il Dio dell'Asia, religione e politica in Oriente (Il Saggiatore, 2006) won the Brice Chatwin Prize for travel literature; Lettere dalla Cina (Una Città, 2011); Beijing 1989 (Una Città, 2019); L'Eclissi di Hong Kong, topografia di una città in tumulto (ADD Editore, 2022). He contributes to numerous newspapers, both Italian and international, including Il Domani, Internazionale, Il Post, The New York Times, The Guardian, The South China Morning Post, and many others, and is a member of the Lettera 22 association of journalists.

The catalogue documents Mario Merz's exhibitions Qualcosa che toglie il peso e che mantiene l'assurdita e la leggerezza della favola (Something that takes away the weight and maintains the absurdity and lightness of the fairy tale), held at the Fondazione Merz from 8th July to 6th October 2024 and from 28th October 2024 to 2nd February 2025, respectively.

Within the Echos project, a pas de deux between visual art and theatre, the two artists, Alfredo Jaar and Romeo Castellucci, one for each of the two languages, find themselves answering the same questions, as if in front of an imaginary mirror. The structure of the double, of the mirror in fact, reflects and ideally crosses the different looks, approaches and results that find - not surprisingly - surprising commonalities. Alfredo Jaar and Romeo Castellucci, leading figures in contemporary creation, are the protagonists of the first volume.
(On the occasion of the Festival delle Colline Torinesi in world premiere currently available on the hopefulmonster website and in the bookshop of the Fondazione Merz in Turin.)

Romeo Castellucci, director, creator of sets, lighting and costumes, is among the most significant authors of contemporary theatre. A graduate in painting and set design from the Accademia di Belle Arti in Bologna, in 1981 he co-founded the Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio. In 2005 he was director of the theatre section of the Venice Biennale and in 2008 he was associate artist of the 62nd edition of the Festival d'Avignon. Winner of the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in 2013, the following year he was awarded an honorary degree in music and theatre by the University of Bologna. Among his most recent creations: the plays The Third Reich (2020), Bros (2021), the direction of the operas Pavane für Prometheus IX (2021) and Bluebeard's Castle (2022), the public action Milan (2021) and the installation Tomorrow (2022).

Alfredo Jaar is a Chilean artist, architect and filmmaker who lives and works in New York. He studied architecture during the dictatorial regime in Chile and moved to New York in 1982. His work focuses on socio-political issues, the semiotics of images, themes of utopia and failure. He has participated in the Venice Art Biennale (1986, 2007, 2009, 2013), the São Paulo Biennale (1987, 1989, 2010, 2021) and Documenta (1987, 2002). He received the Hiroshima Art Prize in 2018 and the Hasselblad Award in 2020. His works have been exhibited worldwide.

Everything that is recounted in these escapes is seen and lost sight of through the mists of history, it is a flap of burning existential truth caught up in the never-to-be-specified web of collective events: the agony of Italy's colonial adventure through the warped lens of a ‘family history’; the trial of Leni Riefenstahl, Hitler's director, reconstructed in the form of an audition for a play; the rambling confession of the first dissociated terrorist of the German revolutionary left in the 1970s; Russian imperialism repeated in farce in the exploits of an actor called to replace Vladimir Putin on official occasions; the May of ‘68 concentrated and dissolved in the claustrophobic “chamber drama” of a Parisian police station.
In a continuous confusion between background and figure, the individual continues to be, as Georg Büchner said, ‘just foam on the waves’ and the anachronism of the theatre the only place where his scream can still echo.

Attilio Scarpellini, critic, writer and, dramaturg. One of the founders of the Lettera 22 association of journalists and one of the main supporters of the Independent Theatre movement, he has written on the pages of Diario and the online weekly La differenza. He edited the magazine Quaderni del teatro di Roma and collaborated on the theatre column of doppiozero. A dramaturgy tutor at Elvira Frosini and Daniele Timpano's ‘Corpo scritto’ workshop, he has taught at the University of Rome La Sapienza and at the Da.re school of advanced dance training. His writings include L'angelo rovesciato. Quattro saggi sull'11 settembre e la scomparsa della realtà (Idea, 2008), La fortezza vuota. Discorso sulla perdita di senso del teatro (with Massimiliano Civica, Edizioni dell'asino, 2014), Il tempo sospeso delle immagini (Mimesis, 2020) and Figlio di cane (Mimesis, 2024). He talks about images and books at the microphones of Rai Radio 3.

The first volume of the catalogue raisonné of the artist's work is dedicated to igloos. Based on the exhaustive research conducted by art historian Maddalena Disch, it is an editorial project of the Fondazione Merz, with the support of the Scientific and Editorial Committee composed of Mariano Boggia, Luisa Borio, Richard Flood, Beatrice Merz, Frances Morris and Vicente Todolì. The volume is introduced by a text by Beatrice Merz and an essay by Maddalena Disch. Each work is presented with an analytical historical and biographical profile supported by accurate bibliographical references and an exhaustive photographic repertoire.

The volume includes texts by the artist and interviews with Jean-Christophe Ammann, Mirella Bandini, Sergio Barana, Matteo Benvenuti, Achille Bonito Oliva, Germano Celant, Bruno Corà, Danilo Eccher, Corinna Ferrari, Piero Gilardi, Marlis Grüterich, Claudio Guarda, Michael Haerdter, Richard Koshalek, Corrado Levi, Salvatore Licitra, Beatrice Merz, Linda Morris, Fumio Nanjo, Suzanne Pagé, Gabriele Perretta, Bartolomeo Pietromarchi, Mila Pistoi, Barbara Reise, Giuseppe Risso, Harald Szeemann, Laura Tansini, Caroline Tisdall, Tommaso Trini, Paolo Vagheggi, Gemma Vincenzini and Francesco Vincitorio; as well as a biographical note and bibliography edited by the Merz Archive.

The book, consisting of 560 pages and 350 images, is published in two editions, one in Italian and one in English.

The project is realised thanks to the support of the General Directorate for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture within the framework of the Italian Council programme (2023).

An athlete dies in circumstances that cannot be explained, and reconstructing his life will be his girlfriend Hildi, commissioned by a publishing house to write a mémoire. Hildi thus begins to investigate, trying to shed light on the affair, on her beloved Bálint's colleagues and on the suffocating post-war atmosphere that surrounds them. Against the backdrop of a closed, controlled stadium, much like the Hungarian socialist regime of the time, a group of friends are united by a single, coveted goal: achieving supremacy, in sport and in their own lives, through challenge and self-knowledge. They soon discover that this aspiration will be anything but easy, almost as elusive as truth and death itself.
Finished in 1961, La morte dell’atleta only came out in Hungary in 1966 after having been published in French by Editions du Seuil (1965) and shortly before it was published in German by Hanser Verlag in Munich (1966), which prompted the Hungarian censorship to allow it to be published in Hungary. Since then it has been translated into almost ten languages.

Miklós Mészöly (Szekszárd, 1921 - Budapest, 2001) is one of the most significant Hungarian writers of the second half of the 20th century.
After graduating in law in 1944, he was sent to the front the same year, falling prisoner in Serbia. He worked as a playwright, from 1958 he collaborated with the literary magazine Jelenkor, co-founded the Széchenyi Academy of Arts and Literature, and was among the spokesmen of the Demokratikus Charta. Translated into many languages, he is considered the master of some of the greatest exponents of contemporary Hungarian literature (Nádas, Esterházy, Krasznahorkai). Among his best known works - for reasons of political censorship not many have been published - Magasiskola (1957), Saulus (1968), Pontos történetek, útközben (1970), Film (1976), Megbocsátás (1984), Otthon és világ (1994).