Alexandra Kollontai’s Many Lives | by Michele Masucci

  In Alexandra Kollontai’s own words, she lived many lives.1 Her life, brimming with events, relationships and disillusionment, is fascinating in itself. Reading Kollontai means tracing the life of a revolutionary through the numerous books, pamphlets, articles, speeches and actions that she took part in organising. We may differ with Kollontai on many of her choices, yet it is critical to contemplate the difficulties one always faces in being part of a movement with the passionate goal of forming a better world. Kollontai lived many lives surrounded by many loves, the greatest one perhaps being the 1917 October Revolution, which…

Nanni Balestrini | “I close my eyes and start to sing”

NANNI BALESTRINI (1935-2019)     I close my eyes and start to sing threads are entangled and transformed into spots whose dance moves ever more slowly I sang my repertoire then I started monologues with my eyes closed I walked back and forth in the cell four steps forward four steps back I invented dialogues for two characters that spoke different languages like at the cinema when the film ends there are those who make love who smoke there are those who merely exist   Nanni Balestrini, the radical Italian experimental visual artist, poet, and novelist known for recombinatory, revolutionary…