After three years of thorough study of all actants[1] (human and non-human agents) compromised by the attack, Martellata has the objective of compiling all events directly and indirectly (inter)linked to the iconoclastic gesture to the David; aiming to generate a complete and comprehensive story of the vandalistic act. Such story will be a result of a dys-position[2], of an apparent chronological disorder of the different (inter)details involved. This acronological presentation of the different perspectives of the event establishes tactics of arrangement and analysis of the act of Piero Cannata from the multivocality; avoiding a representational analysis of his act, beyond a description of the damage to the David, further than our epistemological coordinates.

Escaping the accumulative logic of the archive, the book will gather, review and activate the different voices and perspectives of the actants while establishing dialectical and chrono-material relations between all the components of the publication itself. It will present within different narratives, the most important documents and information compiled during the period of investigation; also relevant insights of the other outputs of the project.

The process of writing and relating all materials will require testing a narrative style between essay, magic realism prose, and documentation, which beyond art history, will also adopt and adapt knowledges from psychiatry, justice and law, restoration, geology, and speculative fiction; among others. A reference for an engaging conversational narration; navigating between history, autobiography, documentation and fiction is The Expedition by Bea Uusma[3].

It is the first occasion, after editing and publishing books, that a work requires narrative skills. Therefore Míriam Cano (writer and poet) and Michael Lawton (Doctor of Fine Arts, painter and writer) will supervise the process. Examples of the first experimental texts and a rough selection of the documents can be checked out in the following section.

The main components of the book will be:
– Comprehensive interview to Piero Cannata (all questions and interactions with Cannata will be prepared under the supervision of psychiatrist Isabel Valli)
– Interview to Albertini Nicola, witness of the Cannata’s act (data obtained from the GIP files, at the Superior Court of Florence)
– Interview to a guard of the psychiatric prison Montelupo Fiorentino, where Piero Cannata was confined during 2000 and 2007 (the direct contact was provided by Radio Papesse)
– Testimonies of Franca Falletti (director of the Galleria dell’Academia during 1992 – 2013), Angelo Tartuferi (current scientific expert and deputy director of the Galleria dell’Academia), Cinzia Parnigoni (restorer), Susanna Bracci (scientific restorer of the CNR), Fabio Fratini (scientific restorer and geologist of the CNR), Annamaria Giusti (art historian and director of restoration of the OPD), Luigi Davitti (cast technician of the Gipsoteca)
– Interview to Georges Didi-Huberman. On dys-position; the understanding of an event avoiding the chronological order of appearance of its aspects; the mobilization of the memory in matter, in its fragments and its remains
– Interview to Dario Gamboni, about the destruction of art and the particular case of Cannata
– Insights of the different sculptural experimentations: A computerized act of vandalism as a performance, A re-re-copy, Gaps, Clouds of marble dust, and Materiality filters in multiple directions
– Inclusion of some photographs of the series
– Reproductions of selected documents from the archives of Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Opificio delle Pietre Dure i Laboratori di Restauro, Tribunale Superiore di Firenze, Gipsoteca dell’Istituto d’Arte di Firenze, Fondazione Michelangelo Buonarroti, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze
– ‘Voice’ of the cloud of micro-particles of marble that -because of their small size- would have remained levitating in the Galleria dell’Academia. These micro-particles would have been ‘affected’ and also witnessed ¡the different events’ related to the hammer blow

The process of inquiry and the formalization of all the final outputs of Martellata_14.09.91 will be published in the Research Catalogue in the form of an exposition. Other journals as TadeoArte and UOC will be considered. A proposal will be submitted to the 11th Annual Conference of the Society of Artistic Research, as a performative talk of the first texts of the book (see an example). The project will be shown at the Exhibition Laboratory of the Academy of Fine Arts of the University of the Arts Helsinki. It will also travel to the Glass Pavilion at Villa Romana in Florence, for later being exhibited in spaces like Sala Muncunill (Terrassa, 2022). I will make performative readings of the book in all venues.

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[1] According to Bruno Latour, the world is like a network of actions whose nodes, sometimes changing, are “actors” or “actants,” that is, “human” or “nonhuman,” respectively. “Translations” (transformations, changes) occur when those actors or actants (who can be human beings, organisms or things) “make do,” that is, make a “difference.” This means that they establish a new course of action, linked to a new stabilization within the network (what was traditionally called a fact or an object). LOREDO NARCIANDI, José Carlos. “¿Sujetos o “actantes”? El constructivismo de Latour y la Psicología Constructivista” in AIBR. Revista de Antropología Iberoamericana 4. January 2009.

[2] To dys-pose things would be a way to understand them dialectically, to disorganize their disposition or order of appearance. The ancient Greek verb dialegestai means to controvert, to introduce a difference (dia) in the discourse (logos). DIDI-HUBERMAN, Georges. When The Images Take Position. Madrid: Antonio Machado Books, 2008

[3] Bea Uusma. The Expedition. A Love Story. Solving the Mystery of a Polar Tragedy. London: Head of Zeus, 2014. First published as Expeditionen. Min Karlekshistoria in Stockholm 2013, by Norstedst Forlägsgrupp AB.