“I don’t want to lecture you, but I’m going to give you a piece of advice that will always be useful. You are going to meet many assholes in your life. If they hurt you, think it’s their stupidity that pushes them to hurt you: that will keep you from paying them back in the same coin. Because nothing in this world in worse than bitterness and revenge. Always remain whole and true to yourself”.
(Persepolis, Marjane’s grandmother)

Persepolis is an animated film, the subject is by Marjane Satrapi and she created it with Vincent Paromeand. The story (autobiographical) starts a little before the beginning of the Iranian revolution and it narrates how the hopes for a democratic change are shattered when Islamic fundamentalists took the power, imposing women to cover their heads, further reducing the population’s freedom, with particular fury against women and imprisoning thousands of people. The story ends with Marjane, now a twenty-two-year-old, expatriating. The film won the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 2007.
Marjane Satrapi has been living in Paris since 1994. In a recent interview she says: “I miss everything of Iran: the sun, the snow, the mountains, the desert. But complaining is indecent. My homesickness is nothing compared to the difficulties of those who still fight for freedom on a daily basis” and again “My heart is big and has many segments, one French, one Iranian, one American, one German and one Swedish. My world is not divided between East and West, but between stupid fanatics and people who use their brains.” Now, in order to go on, I must go back a little and quote part of my comment For necessity the case published in the book Immaterial Art Living Art, edited by Roberto Barbanti (1994, Edizioni Essegi).

1988: The minor events

Here’s what happened. In 1988 some showings of the works of Mariella (Busi De Logu) and Donatella (Franchi) took place at the” Galleria delle Donne di Torino” (Women’s Gallery in Turin). The meeting was exceptional. It was part (as I’ve already said) of that field of exceptionality that sometimes involves women: mutually taking each other into view.
From Navigation Routes 2

This historical meeting was announced by minor events. Minor events are like the ants that have recently invaded my house: just like them, they don’t give up. Quiet and tenacious, in a constant and anonymous work, they dig and they go deep, coming back to light, sometimes they build, some other times they tear down, they add or subtract according to necessities; they are some kind of silent laborers that orientates our being, in this case being a woman. The minor events that concern me are born from case and necessity. And this particular combination made me arrive in Turin on a Thursday night, in the winter of 1988, with three rolls of transparent adhesive tape in my pocket, the equivalent of 132 meters of transparency.

A particular wind must blow in Turin because, as far as I know, quite singular people have worked and are working in this city. That kind of people, just to be clear, that have the characteristic of understanding “a little sooner” and going “a little deeper” . If I read a book I like, if I see a piece of artwork that strikes me, the artist is almost always from Turin. And the same happened during the meeting that Thursday night. Turin women, I knew right away, were part too of that large group of unusual people: them, along with Donatella (Franchi) from Bologna, made up a truly ingenious group. Maybe it’s the particular air that you breath in Turin – air is the only thing that female and male inhabitants share- the chances of meeting exceptionality are inversely proportional to other cities. In Turin, because of the air, exception is the rule. Just to make an example, I examine the city I apparently live in, Ravenna.

In Ravenna, it may take thirty years to meet two exceptional people –that’s the time it took me to meet Letizia and Roberto. They were there, I was too; at first, we heard whispers about each other, then we observed each other from afar and in the end the sum of minor events performed the miracle. Now it’s as if we’d known each other for thirty years, but it took me thirty years to get to meet them. I just needed to get to Turin. The journey from Ravenna to Turin is quite intricate, maybe, because of the example I quoted, Turin’s air doesn’t appreciate Ravenna’s dangerous air. It doesn’t want traces of Ravenna’s air. For this reason, I had to change trains three times and the waves and vibrations that marked the time during my trip did the rest; I got off the train without any traces of Ravenna’s air left on me. And there, at the train station, was a mysterious figure waiting for me –I’ll never forget her- with nothing superfluous, with a beauty of her own, essential, fierce and determined. It only tooks me three minutes in Turin and I was already absorbed in the genius of other people.

Caterina Furchì, this is the name of the mysterious figure: she brought me into that realm that included, beside her, Gabriella Montone, Cristina Saurin and Milli Toja. What can one say in the presence of genius? –Nothing- At most, if you manage to, you reciprocate. Between me and the genius I was witnessing, so well organized, polished and self-sufficient, there were deep voids. Their being there made sense, there were no cracks, no moment of loss, no gesture or word was out of place and all this with upsetting simplicity and tranquility. They were about to overturn the sense and the rules of the place of art and at the same time with their being there, just like that, they managed to untie my shrunken thoughts. I had found my territory back; two hours had passed and I was already included in unknown lives. It’s no wonder, when genius foresees and understands you, you calm down and give back in every way you know. After all, if genius does not foresee you, what kind of genius is it?

Luckily, even during that encounter, minor events came to my aid: those three rolls of transparent adhesive tape I keep in my pocket, the result of daily experimentations with the walls of my study, were never more indispensable. The three rolls of adhesive tape represented the common ground between me and those women of Turin, who later became dear traveling companions. The day after, in fact, they left me at the “Galleria delle donne” in Fabbro Street and I started crating huge transparent insects on the walls. When they came back, my work, from nowhere, a miracle for them, was done.

But what do I mean when I talk about “genius”? Here it is. Around 1987 Milli decided to open her study to turn it into a “border place”, a place open to the experience of other women. She moved her sculptures in the basement and made her study a gift to other unknown women. She understood a little sooner than the rest of us that it was time to look away from one’s work. Was it too soon, was it too late, was it such a dangerous operation that it could be confused with “the haven” or “the ghetto”? With the courage of foresight, they started. At first Milli and Caterina, followed by Cristina and Gabriella. Giovanna, from the Librellula Bookshop in Bologna, gave them Donatella’s address and mine too. I answered straight away, it was what I needed: right time and right place. It was nearly a miracle for me, because I was constantly out of time and out of place. Out of place in the scene of a lonely and deadly self-representation, inadequate to welcome Christy, that silent burden of noise I carried on myself. This way, the silent burden of noise made up confused babble, turned into a concert of many voices.

Even in this moment my wish consists in recording multiple voices through the quote of others, but when I need to choose a passage from a book by Carla Lonzi, for example, the operation is nearly impossible to me. I would like to include the whole book in these words of mine. And in order to say what needs to be said, besides Carla Lonzi, I get help also from Luisa Murano, Chiara Zamboni, Marina Cvetaeva, Clarice Lispector, Virginia Woolf, Christa Wolf, Adriana Cavarero and Cristina, Donatella, Milli, Grabriella, and Caterina. With them in my mind and in my heart I go on, apparently alone: it’s Saturday afternoon and no one’s here in my study- but through the regions I just crossed, we are many people.

And so I go on, apparently alone, and I come back to the “Galleria delle donne” in Turin. At that time I had decided to do no more exhibitions; showing myself had become unbearable. Just the way it happens at funerals, during inaugurations, after finishing off all the formalities, -condolences to the relatives of the dead, quick look at the works and compliments to the artist- it’s all a buzz of voices, talking about something else. Conversation involves commonplace topics, it runs through the real and reassuring cosmos of external events. It’s the only way to withdraw, to take a step back from certain events we are not trained to comprehend any more. The choral farewell –the funeral- has already lost the great dignity of a shared pain. And the work of the artist, in other ways, has lost its pathos too, it became unbearable alone. Just like death, the work needs strong external elements and a support apparatus created by the patriarchal order, so that it can be shared: codification (the written word, the most totalizing, universal, and extreme possible) and sacredness of the place ( a museum can conceptually be dismantled, as long as it remains solidly standing). These buildings ensure the motionless look, always fixed on itself, the sight of the work. The tamed eye sees what it is forced by the outside to see. To see without these assumptions is pure clairvoyance and that’s what Milli wanted to see. Her fulfilled desire –opening the study- matches with the shifting eye that woman whom, freely and individually, knows how to tell herself apart from others and in others, recognizes and finds herself.

Opening her study, Milli made the great and reassuring gesture of the mother that decides to “give birth to the world”. And between the others, I too came back to the world. A gesture and the swerve of the eye were enough to give value –authoritativeness- to our being there, in that moment. I don’t even ask myself what would have become of me had I not gone to Turin. The possibility of not being there wasn’t even taken into consideration by minor events. But what happens in Turin, Bologna, Milan and all the other cities we meet in? I’m buying time because I would feel compelled to say “Nothing”. But I can’t, because later on I will have to give that “Nothing” it’s particular value. When we meet, every time, art of politics and relationships takes form. We always feel like reciprocating the deepness of the gift. Now, if I write what I write and I can finally be who I am and if I walk along the avenues of heresy and paradox with such ease, straying to the dark paths of delirium too –well- the reason is all in the great game of those relationships that, bit by bit, reveal and give value to mine/ours necessity. And I throw myself right into it –body and soul- with all the passion and fun that the unveiling of this necessity of mine creates. And if, from a certain angle, my necessity may seem simply delirious, it leaves me totally unconcerned. From that angle I can say that I’m perfectly conscious of my delirium. As a matter of fact, I’ll say “Nothing”.

Testimonials

These days, I keep on witnessing what is happening to women in a world I feel is similar to a slaughterhouse. And we often are its passive audience. Even when I’m talking about my experience in arts, I bring this time of ours with me and I can’t forget about it because otherwise I would forget about myself. And so here I am. I am Loujain Hathloul, in Saudi Arabia I got arrested and tried for terrorism because I was driving my car. I am Tiziana Oliveri, one of the hundreds of women victims of femicide. I am a woman, lapidated in an Islamic country, simply because I laughed. I am a Kurdish woman. In this first piece of 2015, I would like to remember Monica Grady, who worked for 10 years to send robot Philae on that comet and Samantha Cristoforetti, the first Italian woman in space, Giusi Nicolini, mayor of Lampedusa, who governs the border between North and South, Maryam Mirzakhani, Iranian, Stanford professor, the first woman to win the Field medal, the Nobel for Mathematics. Moreover, I was deeply moved by the speech about gender violence Emma Waston gave at the UN.

In the end, my thoughts go to the Mexican writer Lydia Cacho, author of Demons of Eden, who received death threats several times because of her investigations over children trafficking in Mexico, to the girls kidnapped in Nigeria, who don’t know about the “Bring back our girls campaign”. And once again to Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani activist severely wounded by Talibans for her campaign for the right to study: the youngest recipient of the Nobel Prize for Peace.

Translation by Matilde Castagnoli