Stella Bottai’s “In Praise of Maintenance: Reading Mierle Laderman Ukeles’s Manifesto in 2020” starts out from the work of this artist to “provide practical tools to move forward.” Anna Franceschini, diving into the dystopian science fiction of Frank Herbert’s saga Dune, writes at the beginning of her own essay of “obligations and restrictions that have interfered with the dimension of appearance and the order of dress. The most manifest symbolic trait of these last has become the ‘half-face respirator,’ commonly called a mask.” It is in the space that has been removed, expressed by the absence of relations, that Elisa Frasson reflects on the No Manifesto of the American dancer Yvonne Rainer. The manifesto of Hervé Guibert’s body racked by AIDS, turned into a film by Guibert himself, obliges us in Michele Maltauro’s essay to confront a contagious disease that erases relationships, loves and friendships.

Producing a magazine with a multiplicity of voices signifies revealing yourself but it also means revealing others. So the issue hosts a wide range of interpretations of its theme, pursuing an idea of crossing disciplinary boundaries that lies at the root of the publishing project. The word “manifesto,” examined in terms of its relations with the cultures of design and the visual arts, elicited, in the month in which the call for papers opened, an exchange of ideas among the members of the editorial board that found expression in a series of daily posts on the Instagram account @dunejournal.

A manifesto, as Tristan Tzara once put it, is always right: it’s strong, vigorous and logical; it is a format that permits a rapid and combative kind of communication. We started out from connotations like these to outline a constellation of intimations with our posts. The environmentalist statements made on Katharine Hamnett’s T-shirts. “The mask as a cut between visible and invisible” on Alessandro Michele’s sweatshirt for Gucci. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s “We should all be feminists” on Maria Grazia Chiuri’s T-shirt as a wearable manifesto for Dior. Anna Piaggi’s “D.P.s” (Double-Page spreads) in Vogue Italia. The many faces of Cate Blanchett in Julian Rosefeldt’s Manifesto. Valerie Solanas’s S.C.U.M. Manifesto (“Society for Cutting Up Men”) reactivated through Chiara Fumai’s performance. Hussein Chalayan’s collection Manifest Destiny. The intimacy of Félix González-Torres’s unmade bed printed on billboards and exposed to public gaze. John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s pacifist bed-ins and the masked protests of the Guerrilla Girls. These are just a few of the stimuli that the workgroup lined up on the social network as they waited to receive the proposals and ideas in order to reflect the hybrid tension of this journal. The response was highly varied, sometimes unexpected, and the result is an issue that brings together textual and visual contributions from scholars, researchers and artists with heterogeneous approaches that have focused on little studied subjects on the sidelines or on crucial themes of contemporary life.

In this issue we have introduced and experimented with modes of writing that are new with respect to the previous one (a magazine is an open discussion and a means of self-examination), accompanying the essays with shorter texts in the form of a public pronouncement or letter. Fashion, design and visual culture have retained their central position but in open and constant dialogue with other languages and other forms of expression. The reactionary self-fashioning of the Futurists, the art of embroidery and a fax-testament from the artist and designer Cinzia Ruggeri are just some of the additional subjects tackled in this issue, insights that give rise and lend depth to analyses and reflections.

It was the Manifesto di Rivolta Femminile, written and posted up in Rome in July 1970 by Carla Lonzi, Carla Accardi and Elvira Banotti, that gave us the idea of involving in this issue the Claire Fontaine collective, which on several occasions has dedicated its own work to Carla Lonzi and the Rivolta Femminile group. The collective, invited to occupy six double-page spreads of the magazine, and the artist Kensuke Koike, who has designed the cover, were given complete freedom of expression and action.

Dune is a project that seeks to respond to the need for the sedimentation, transformation and evolution of a reflection on visual and design practices, setting out to grasp the broader and deeper dynamics of contemporary life. It was not in its plans to get caught up in contingent events (in the contingent aspects of contemporaneity, as it were) but the “accidental” elements that have imposed themselves on this issue have seemed as natural as they have surprised us. The reason is obvious: the contingency to be found in these pages is no less profound and significant than events and phenomena that have a sustained influence on culture (that is, at the moment, a more sustained influence). Although produced in and by the (extraordinary) year of the pandemic, this issue of Dune has sprung from an organic composition of discourses only apparently located on different levels of observation and reflection.

Claire Fontaine Claire Fontaine is a collective conceptual feminist artist created in Paris in 2004 currently based in Palermo. She has exhibited broadly in museum and international exhibitions and biennials. A monograph about the artist entitled Newsfloor has been published in 2020 with Koenig Books. In September 2017 has been published by DeriveApprodi the comprehensive collection of her texts entitled Human Strike and the Art of Creating Freedom, which came out in 2019 in French with Diaphanes and in2021 in English with Semiotext(e).

www.clairefontaine.ws

Stella Bottai , is officer for Epistemological, Curatorial and Editorial Maintenance of Pompeii Commitment. Materie archeologiche / Archaeological Matters at the Archaeological Park of Pompeii (curated by Andrea Viliani). In 2019 she was associate curator of the Italian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale (curated by Milovan Farronato); she edited the first monograph of Patrizio Di Massimo (CURA.); and created, with Lucia Pietroiusti, the site-specific podcast Cold Protein. She hosts the series “Art by Telephone” on Harper’s Bazaar Italia.

Stella Bottai’s research on Mierle Laderman Ukeles and the notion of "maintenance" forms part of a wider collaboration between Dune and The Archaeological Park of Pompeii in the context of the program Pompeii Commitment. Archaeological Matters, conceived and co-ordinated by Bottai with Andrea Viliani and Laura Marian.

s.bowtie@gmail.com

Michele Maltauro, has a degree in Modern Letters and is studying for a master’s degree in Modern Philology at the University of Padua. Following his experience at the University of Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3 under the Erasmus exchange program, he is working on his master’s dissertation on the late work of the writer and photographer Hervé Guibert (1955-91).

michele.maltauro@studenti.unipd.it

Carmelo Marabello, Carmelo Marabello, who trained in philosophy and anthropology, teaches cinema and photography at the Iuav University of Venice. In the nineties he was the author and curator of Fuori orario for Rai 3 and curator of the Taormina International Film Festival. He has produced several edited films, some scripts and radio dramas. Among this main publications are Sulle tracce del vero. Cinema, antropologia, storie di foto (Milan: Bompiani, 2011), Il potere del film. Gregory Bateson nell’America in guerra contro il nazismo (Milan-Udine: Mimesis, 2018).

carmelo.marabello@iuav.it

Iuav University of Venice

Matteo Billeri, studied at the University of Florence and the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he was awarded a PhD with distinction for his dissertation on Fashion and Literary Modernism in Italy (2019). His research focuses on European modernism, the avant-gardes, the history of fashion and visual studies. His articles have appeared in various journals, including Paragone, Autografo, and L’avventura: International Journal of Italian Film and Media Landscapes. He currently works as editor for Mondadori Education.

billeri@wisc.edu

Silvia Calderoni, is an actor and performer. She trained under the choreographer Monica Francia and with the Teatro della Valdoca company. Since 2006 she has been an active member of the Motus theater company. She was the lead in The Plot is the Revolution alongside Judith Malina. Since 2015 she has toured with the solo performance MDLSX, for which she also wrote the script together with Daniela Nicolò. She won the Ubu award for best actress under 30 in 2009. On the big screen she played Kaspar in the cult movie The Legend of Kaspar Hauser in 2012.

Giulio Testi graduated in Multimedia Arts from the IUAV University in Venice in 2019 with a dissertation centered on the relationship between photographic inquire and flânerie.

Elisa Frasson, is a PhD Candidate in Dance Studies at Roehamtpton University (London).

She has worked in different educational contexts and on independent and institutional projects in Italy and the UK. She has extensive experience within organizational contexts of dance and screendance events and in mentoring dance and performance students in creating their own work. Her interests involve dance studies, the impact of somatics on choreography, screendance, and electronic music. She is currently based in Berlin.

frassone@roehampton.ac.uk

Roehamtpton University, London

Elena Fava, is a research fellow (PRIDE.IT workshop, IR.IDE infrastructure) and adjunct professor in the degree course in Fashion Design and Multimedia Arts at the IUAV University in Venice. She has a PhD in Art History and collaborates on exhibition projects with the CSAC (Centro Studi e Archivio della Comunicazione) at the University of Parma. Her research focuses on archives, the phenomenon of Made in Italy and the relations between fashion and the culture of design.

efava@iuav.it

Iuav University of Venice

Anna Franceschini, is a visual artist, filmmaker and PhD student in Visual and Media Studies at the IULM University of Milan. Her areas of practical-theoretical research are: the display in the double sense of presentation of consumer goods and artistic installation, the migration of aesthetic codes between the artistic and non-artistic spheres, the store window as a cinematic device and the film as a display.

anna.franceschini@gmail.com

IULM University of Milan

Maria Luisa Frisa, is a critic and curator. She is Full Professor at IUAV University of Venice, where she is Director of the BA Program in Fashion Design and Multimedia Arts. Her latest book: Le forme della moda (Il Mulino, 2015). She also edited Desire and Discipline: Designing Fashion at Iuav (Marsilio, 2016). Among her latest projects: the exhibition and the book ITALIANA. Italy Through the Lens of Fashion 1971-2001 (Milano, Palazzo Reale, 2018); the exhibition and the book Memos. On Fashion in This Millennium (Milano, Museo Poldi Pezzoli, 2020).

frisa@iuav.it

IUAV University of Venice

Stefano Tomassini, teaches Choreography, Dramaturgy and Theory of Performance at the Iuav University of Venice, he is dance writer for Artribune and, during the years of his training, studied the Italian Baroque as a counterculture. He is currently writing a book on the choreographic reception of J.S. Bach’s music in twentieth-century dance.

stefano.tomassini@iuav.it

Iuav University of Venice

Edoardo Brunello, is an architect and fashion designer. He graduated from the IUAV University in Venice. Since 2014 he has been a teaching assistant in the Workshop of Fashion Design of the Department of Design Culture. Currently he is studying for a PhD in the “Culture of Design Made in Italy” at the Research Infrastructure of Integral Design Environment – IR.IDE.

ebrunello@iuav.it

Iuav University of Venice

Jacopo Miliani, is a visual artist who lives and works in Milan. In his practice he treats performance as a methodology of research, observing the connections between language and body. He is the founder of the independent project Self Pleasure Publishing. He has collaborated with various performers and his interdisciplinary projects have seen the participation of the movie director Dario Argento, the designer duo Boboutic and the music producer Jean-Louis Huhta. He is currently working on his first feature film: La discoteca .

www.jacopomiliani.info