Aldo Piromalli once insulted the audience. Part I

Chapter 45 of the performance “The Inadequate” reads:

“45 ALDO  PIROMALLI’S  LETTERS

Timing:  random

The artist Aldo Piromalli might randomly send a series of letters to the Spanish Pavilion, addressed to The Inadequate.

Aldo Piromalli (Rome, 1946) is a poet and an artist. He wrote his first poem at the age of nine and soon became one of the protagonists of the Roman beat scene of the sixties. In 1971 he was sentenced to prison for marihuana use and, once released, left Italy and established himself in Amsterdam. He is the author of the graphic novel Psychiatry, or Death of the Soul (1977).”

I have found a page from this graphic novel in the very interesting page

http://psycheandmuse.library.yale.edu/anti-oedipus/

:

It reads, at the end:

“The doctors would be used to attach the label “schizophrenia” to the diseased object and then systematically set about the destruction of that object by the physical and social processes that are termed “psychiatric treatment”

Yes, Aldo Piromalli once insulted the audience. It happened in 1979. Being forced to take psychiatric treatment after brief incarceration for having been found carrying one gram of marihuana (Isn’t that a wonderful word, marihuana?), he abandoned Italy and sought shelter in Nederland. And then he came back briefly to Italy to take part in the Festival of Poetry in Castelporziano, where he read his poem “Affanculo”.

This poem was dedicated to “philosophers and intellectuals”. Enrico Pietrangeli remembers that moment with the following words: “On the stage, Aldo Piromalli grabbed the microphone, he was an Italian poet living in Amsterdam. For twenty minutes, he insulted everything and everyone. The audience applauded and shouted “Bravo!”. From time to time someone shouted “Asshole!”, which sounded very appropriate”. Carmelo Lucchesi corroborates the story saying “Most of the public followed the reading of the poem in silence, someone whistled at the end, but for the most part, they heartily applauded”.

So far, The Inadequate has received four letters from Aldo Piromalli. We will continue talking about them in Aldo Piromalli once insulted the audience. Part II, tomorrow most probably.