The research project Martellata_14.09.91 addresses one of the most paradigmatic acts of iconoclasm of the twentieth century: the hammer blow that Piero Cannata gave to the second toe of the left foot of Michelangelo’s David on September 14, 1991. The proposal happens in several outputs, from which the publication is the most important one. It is for this reason that its title is almost homonym.

The Martellata book presents a selection of all documents and information compiled during the investigation period, building up a chrono-material and dialectical reflection of the vandalic act. Escaping the accumulative logic of the archive, the book gathers, reviews and activates the different voices and perspectives of the agents and actants involved directly or indirectly in/by “the attack”. In the publication the notions of multivocality, multifocality and dys-poiesis have their maximum expression, within a conversational narration navigating between art history, psychiatry, restoration, geology, documentation and new materialisms.

The inquiring aims to contribute to the theories on artistic reception -and vandalism- with an object-oriented perspective, considering the quality/ies (and behaviours) of the masterpiece. This specific approach is motivated by the fact that significant scientific information for the conservation of the sculpture was obtained after the chemical and petrographic analyses of some of the fragments detached from the sculpture.

Martellata_14.09.91 is a major component of the ongoing doctoral thesis Behaving Unconventionally in Gallery Settings. Alteration in Cultural Practices for Rearticulating Relations among Makers, Objects, Audiences, and (Virtual) Museums. It experiments with instigating occasions for misrepresented (human and non-human) behaviours that, within the conceptual (virtual and non-virtual) architecture of display, could be considered non-conventional and traditionally unacceptable.

The research is being carried out within the Doctoral Programme at the University of the Arts Helsinki under the supervision of Jan Kaila, Julie Harboe and punctually of Hito Steyerl. It has received funding by Kone Foundation for four years, and the phase of gathering data for Martellata_14.09.91 has been mostly covered by this research and other purposes grant. An updated research plan may be consulted here.