Selected Writings, Conversations and Correspondences
Henry Martin: An Active Ear is the first publication dedicated to the work of Afro-American writer, critic, translator, and curator Henry Martin (Philadelphia, US 1942–Bozen/Bolzano, Italy 2022). Compiled and introduced by Emanuele Guidi, the book is conceived as research into Henry Martin’s contribution to cultural and artistic environments across Italy, Europe, and the US. Through a selection of his published and unpublished articles, essays, conversations, personal correspondence, and photographs from the early 1960s until his recent passing, it maps the relationships and experiences in which Henry Martin was actively involved. Gathered mainly from his private archive in Bozen/Bolzano and from the Archiv der Avantgarden—Egidio Marzona in Dresden, these documents are evidence of Henry Martin’s long-term dialogues with artists and intellectuals, and of the roles he played as a unique interlocutor to various radical artistic movements including Fluxus, Mail Art, Concrete Poetry, Arte Povera, Nouveau Réalisme, and Conceptual Art.
Newly commissioned essays discuss Henry Martin’s position, looking at his lifelong friendships and collaborations, his practice as a translator, and his decision to leave major cultural centers behind and relocate to the Italian Alps in 1971. The essays foreground his active position as a writer who allied himself to artists while also considering his life and work from a contemporary perspective—at the intersection of environmental thought and sustainable working practices. As poet and translator Allison Grimaldi Donahue writes in her essay, “Henry Martin is a character straight from a Borges short story. He is the writer of scenes that come to be lived out; he is ever present but rarely visible.”
Henry Martin: An Active Ear will be launched in October 2024 at:
Magazzino Italian Art at the Emily Harvey Foundation, New York, October 4
Film and Media Studies, Tufts University, Boston, October 8
Archiv der Avantgarden—Egidio Marzona, Dresden, October 11
Madre, Museo d’arte contemporanea Donnaregina, Naples, October 25
The project is supported by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture under the Italian Council program (12th edition, 2023), which promotes Italian contemporary art worldwide.
Henry Martin: An Active Ear–Selected Writings, Conversations and Correspondences
Compiled and introduced by Emanuele Guidi. With writings by Henry Martin and essays by Lisa Andreani, Luca Cerizza, Rosalyn D’Mello, Allison Grimaldi Donahue, Emanuele Guidi, Elisabetta Rattalino. Edited by Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Archiv der Avantgarden—Egidio Marzona, Emanuele Guidi, Rudolf Fischer in collaboration with Friederike Fast and Clemens Ottenhausen.
Graphic design: Helen Stelthove. Published by Spector Books OHG, Leipzig (Germany), ISBN 978-3-95905-822-3
For further information contact ada [at] skd.museum
