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.

The book Arte contemporanea: Scusi, non capisco ('Contemporary Art: Sorry, I Don't Understand') originates from a famous format of the Merz Foundation in Turin, a series of events during which the public was led to listen to and interact with exceptional guests from different artistic fields. The project, based on an idea by Maria Centonze, aimed to meet the general public's need for a better understanding of the languages and thinking behind contemporary works of art.
Each one of us, if stripped of the many prejudices that hinder openness to any world other than our own, can and must try to understand, even in the way of art.
Costantino D'Orazio, art curator, museum director and cultural popularizer, takes readers on a journey through the ‘Scusi, non capisco’ - among others - of Serena Dandini, Andrea Zalone, Lucia Goracci, Ascanio Celestini and Maria Grazia Cucinotta.

Costantino D'Orazio (Rome, 1974), art historian, is the director of the National Museums of Perugia and the Regional Directorate of National Museums of Umbria. He worked at the Sovrintendenza Capitolina ai Beni Culturali as resident curator at the MACRO in Rome from 2014 to 2018; from 2008 to 2012 he was curator of contemporary art exhibitions at the National Museum of Villa Pisani in Stra. Recently, he curated the initiative 5 minutes with Van Gogh, the exhibition Artemisia Gentileschi. Coraggio e Passione at Palazzo Ducale in Genoa and Amarsi. Love in Art from Guido Reni to Banksy at the Fondazione Cassa di Rispamio di Terni. Since 2014, he has hosted the column AR Frammenti d'Arte on Rainews24 and is the art expert for Unomattina in famiglia and Linea Verde on Rai1, Geo and TG3 Linea Notte on Rai3. He is the author and host of the programmes Wikiradio and Vite che sono la tua on Radio3, as well as collaborating with the programme Radio3 Suite. From 2014 to 2019 he hosted the cultural popularisation programme Bella davvero and in 2021 the programme Due cose on Radio2. His latest publication as an author is Art Detectives. 30 cases to become real experts (Piemme, 2024).

The Pharaoh Amasi, XXVI dynasty, was a man of power whose models were neither the ‘golpe’ nor the ‘lion’, animals whose characteristics a prince should manifest, according to Niccolò Machiavelli's famous metaphor, to govern well. Amasi's model was another animal, according to the happy intuition of Giovanni Mariotti: the eel. Shifty, elusive, shifty, non-linear, cautious, slippery, elusive, the Pharaoh Amasi interpreted the role of the powerful in a decidedly unconventional manner, drawing on his own background as a grave robber. Even in death, Amasi remained as elusive as he had been in life. Instead, Mariotti manages to grasp him with this delightful, exquisite narration. In Amasi's interpretation of power and in the exercise he made of it, Mariotti sees a way, however fragile and imperfect, to keep the civilised life of his subjects within the realm of possible happiness: those who lived in Egypt under Pharaoh Amasi were able to experience la douceur de vivre. A power that was not aggressive, exercised more behind the scenes with intelligence than in the limelight with proclamations, anti-expansionist and attentive to the expansionist drifts of others, quiet in time: a breeze of spring blows from this period, recounted by Mariotti as a cast from Herodotus. And it is, mysteriously, the same fragrant breeze that passes through the perfect sentences of this prose that breathes, oxygenates, produces lightness and well-being in the reader.

Giovanni Mariotti was born in Versilia in 1936 and lives in Milan. He worked for many years at various publishing houses. He has translated works by Itard, Gobineau, Schwob, Denon and Nerval. Furthermore, he has collaborated with several newspapers such as L'Espresso, Corriere della Sera and with the art magazine FMR. His works include with Adeplhi Storia di Matilde (2003) and Piccoli addii (2021), with Franco Maria Ricci La carpa del sogno (2017) and La gatta, Borges e il foxterrier (2020) and with La Nave di Teseo the recent I manoscritti dei morti viventi (2023).

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.