storia di tommaso (2023)

storia di tommaso

tags: queer-things-take-time; storia-di-tommaso
August_September 2023.

Storia di Tommaso is a performative novella informed by concepts of queer temporalities that attempts a queer narrative of becoming, identity and purpose outside of the frames of linear storytelling and timelines. Set in the first part of the 20th century in South Tyrol, the story is told over three languages and perspectives of witnesses to one man's story who, during the fascist process of 'italianisation' of the land and its subsequent attack and colonisation on Ethiopia, tried to define himself across the the frames and temporalities of Christianity and Italianess.

The week of the exhibition had a number of events and workshops. Over the course of the it, I had two readings from the story in front of small public. The picture above is from the first one.

An undeground parking space with dim lighting. An overhead light illuminates a desk with a typewriter and two framed pictures, one with a child playing on piano and the other with a drawing of praying hands. In front of the latter sits a candle flame, not lighted, ina bronze holder. Next to the typewriter are pages, which could be used by visitors in conjunction with the machine. In front of the desk is a chair with a an jacket fashioned in the traditional German style, or Tracht. Next to the desk papers are hung up on a string across the wall.

First cluster: Prologue / Part V: The Gospel of Tommaso / Epilogue

Introduction and conclusion to the story with words from the heart of the story, Tommaso's perspective. Presentation of the technique and main questions of the novella.

Installation with writing desk: candle, writing machine, writing paper, portrait and devotional image. Chair, jacket, and string from which the pages hung. At the side of the typewriter, a page invited comments and especially continuations of the story. Five additions were made by visitors and hung alongside the other pages.

Second cluster: Part I: Days of Halcyon / Part II: Body

Tommaso and Johannes's childhood in South Tyrol: becoming friends, growing up; the shadow of war, of decisions to be made and lived with. Adolescence, its changing of the body, comes and means different things for them. Biblical study, working on the land. There isn't much time left for hiding anymore.

Account by Johannes in German, mine in English. Arranged in a tree-like pattern, growing sideways.

Corner of a the same underground space shown in the previous pic. A soft blue light acts as a spotlight on the otherwise dark room. The left wall is white, the right one is dark. The left one has a number of pages, arranged in rows that continue on the other wall. The right wall showcases less pages than the other.

A dark wall with a singular, soft orange spotlight. On it, pages are hung, in and out of the surrounding dark.

Third cluster - Part IV: Bekehrung

Three account's of Tommaso's conversion/s, the First Miracle and the secret beginning one: Johannes as second-hand, doubtful account in German; hagiography, recorded by Agnese in Italian; Tommaso's autobiographical retelling, coming to the page for the first time.

Arranged in a spiral-like movement, culminating with Tommaso's pages.

Collages for the collective Queer Things Take Time zine, one for each session of the workshop: queer apocalypse; queer childhood; queering the archive; queering the public space.

A collage made mostly of one piece of normal paper with typewritten text, that's been ripped on the top left corner, continuing into the top right one, to reveal a line of sky with a little moon on the left, just above the paper line, and a flame on the other corner. The text occupies the central part of the page and reads: <<You ask me about a queer weapon for the end of the world. I don't know. I don't know how to fight it. Most days (line break) I'm not even sure I want to. (line break) I'm not strong enough for the eschaton. (line break). In the meanwhile, Tommaso dreamed of an apocalypse without pain, without resurrection. The end of pain and the end of memory. I haven't been able to save him - I threw him into the war, I made him lose everything, so that he could exist. I had no other choice. He got stuck in his mind. Eternally perched over the end of the world, waiting for the dead to come back, for a dawn that will not come. (line break). And so the pilgrimage refused to end, went around in circles (line break) and so the story begins anew every day. (paragraph break) Let me try again. Come back to me>>. Below the text there is a superimposed image, stripped from a copy of a painting, showing a woman sitting on her bed, hands in her hands, looking distraught in front of a source of light that's been stripped away, along with the rest of the painting.

A collage. The top part is made of a black and white picture of an archway upon which a picture of a young kid with their hand against the wall, peeping from behind it. Below, the text reads: <<The queer child doesnt exist. (line break). It isaan inventiion, (line break) It is (line break) It is an invention, the result of pu tting together fragments with the best possible terminology. What is queer in the child lets itself not be described. But still you go back into the nights that were, with their nameless immediacy, and you make-pretend an annunciation. But you cannot touch the child. The queer child who was not allowed queerness. Childhood feelings, eternal summer days, peeking out into the world, being alone with your desire. Thre is no name big enough for that. (line break) The queer child can only appear after its death, at a basic removal, the necessary distance for it to be safe. (line break, ink running out) How far I've had to go to find you>>. Below the text there is another scrapped piece from a painting, showing a group of dark birds against a snowy field. Over it is a scrapped picture of a young girl with a pink shirt and pink toy butterfly wings attached to her back, caught in a movement of dancing, with her eyes closed in concentration.

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