Antonio Gramsci – Il vecchio mondo sta morendo
(Antonio Gramsci – The Old World Is Dying)
In December 2018, a poster bearing a quotation from Antonio Gramsci's Prison Notebooks (1929-35) appeared on central Rome's municipal billboards (Figs. 1, 2, and 3). While intended for highlighting an ongoing exhibition by the Chilean artist Alfredo Jaar at the city's MAXXI Museum, the appearance of these posters seemed to many contemporary observers as a thinly-veiled commentary on the growing influence of the far-right in Italy. Indeed, in an interview with one Roman journalist, Jaar explained: "In times like these, when fascism seems to be reasserting itself, I always return to Gramsci and his thoughts, under the shadow of which my work has developed" (Bulgarelli 2018).
"The old world is dying" and the "new one is slow to appear," the passage explains, and "in this interregnum [chiaroscuro], monsters are born." Beginning with small white lettering, the passage's typeface gradually increases in size, culminating with "monsters are born," visually, as well as metaphorically, simulating the slow, sometimes imperceptible, infiltration of fascistic ideas and values within a society.
The dissemination of these Gramsci posters in Rome coincided with the hosting of La Lega's (The League) first Roman rally, which took place on December 8, 2018. Marking the spread of far-right politics in twenty-first century Italy from the fringes to the mainstream, Matteo Salvini's xenophobic rally in Piazza del Popolo stoked controversy among the city's liberal and left-leaning communities, including the anonymous designer(s) behind a series of anti-Salvini posters, the members of the Roman chapter of the Associazione Nazionale Partigiani d'Italia (National Association of Italian Partisans), and the individuals associated with the Azione Antifascista Roma Est (East Rome Anti-Fascist Action).
The name of this digital archive – Where Monsters Are Born – was inspired by the appearance of Jaar's Gramsci posters in central Rome.
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