MEN ABOUT ROME
ABEL FERRARA
INTERVIEW BY CARLO ANTONELLI
PHOTOGRAPHY BY PIOTR NIEPSUJ
OUT NOW
ISSUE 43 FW23
KALEIDOSCOPE's Fall/Winter 2023 issue launches with a set of six covers. Featuring Sampha, Alex Katz, Harmony Korine, a report into the metamorphosis of denim, a photo reportage by Dexter Navy, and a limited-edition cover by Isa Genzken.
Also featured in this issue: London-based band Bar Italia (photography by Jessica Madavo and interview by Conor McTernan), the archives of Hysteric Glamour (photography by Lorenzo Dalbosco and interview by Akio Kunisawa), Japanese underground illustrator Yoshitaka Amano (words by Alex Shulan), Marseille-based artist Sara Sadik (photography by Nicolas Poillot and interview by Daria Miricola), a survey about Japan’s new hip-hop scene starring Tohji (photography by Taito Itateyama and words by Ashley Ogawa Clarke), Richard Prince’s new book “The Entertainers” (words by Brad Phillips), “New Art: London” (featuring Adam Farah-Saad, Lenard Giller, Charlie Osborne, R.I.P. Germain, and Olukemi Ljiadu photographed by Bolade Banjo and interviewed by Ben Broome).
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NEW ART: LONDON
The art world’s compulsion to categorize by the yardstick of “hot or not” has historically been the driving force behind the market and the gallery system. Commerce is intertwined with this metric, spurred on by the insatiable appetite to find talented young things to build up. This system is uninteresting: what’s in vogue rarely reflects those operating at the cutting edge. Who are those young emerging artists making work against all odds—work that is difficult and costly to make, store, exhibit, move, and sell? These five individuals typify this path. Working across video, sound, installation, and sculpture, they march onwards, carving out their own niche—exhibiting in empty shop spaces one day and major institutions the next. For them, making is guided by urgency, and persistence is motivated by blind faith.
SARA SADIK
KALEIDOSCOPE hosted a solo exhibition by Marseille-based artist Sara Sadik (b. 1994, Bordeaux), in November 2023 at Spazio Maiocchi in Milan, with the support of Slam Jam. Inspired by videogames, anime, science fiction, and French rap, Sara Sadik’s work explores the reality and fantasies of France’s Maghrebi youth, addressing issues of adolescence, masculinity, and social mythologies. Her work across video, performance, and installation often centers on male characters, using computer-generated scenarios to transform their condition of marginalization into something optimistic and poetic.
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MANIFESTO
In 2023, from June 22 to June 24 during Men’s Fashion Week in Paris, KALEIDOSCOPE and GOAT presented the new edition of our annual arts and culture festival, MANIFESTO. Against the unique setting of the French Communist Party building, a modern architectural landmark designed by legendary Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer, the festival will bring together visionary creators from different areas of culture across three days of art, fashion and sound. The 2024 edition will run from June 21 to June 23.
CAPSULE PLAZA
In April 2023, a year after the launch of the magazine, Capsule introduced Capsule Plaza, a new initiative that infuses new energy into Milan Design Week by redefining the design showcase format. A hybrid between a fair and a collective exhibition, Capsule Plaza brings together designers and companies from various creative fields, bridging industry and culture with a bold curation that spans interiors and architecture, beauty and technology, ecology and craft. The 2024 edition will run from April 15 to April 21.
For the past four decades, American born, Rome-based filmmaker Abel Ferrara’sfilms, such as Bad Lieutenant and King of New York, have always been simultaneously on the edge and at the center of culture. Now 71, Ferrara is more opinionated than ever on his newfound sobriety, the differences between New York and Rome, and the intricacies of Pasolini and Padre Pio—the subject of his new film on the rise of Fascism in 1920 Italy.
Carlo Antonelli:
Are you still living in Rome? That's the legend. Are you there?
Abel Ferrara:
Rome, Colle Oppio.
CA:
Listen, why have you chosen over the last ten years very indicative, very precise figures as—somehow—brutally clear centers of your narrations? Why do you concentrate on particularly Italian ones? Of course, I'm referring to Pasolini and recently to Padre Pio.
AF:
They're really international players. Pasolini, I mean, he's a world figure, and so is Padre Pio. And my Italian roots are on my father's side. My grandfather was born at almost same time, same place as Padre Pio. Padre Pio was a writer too. And a lot of the movie is based solely on his writing. So, we just try to stay as true as possible to the guy's work. We tried to give it a cinematic reality.
CA:
Also, in the movie on Pasolini, it was really wild and beautiful the way you deconstructed his figure, his legend transformed into a strange prism. What you did, in my opinion, was like observing an emerald and seeing some angles and avoiding the most overexposed ones, respecting basically—inside Pasolini’s body of work—the strange narrative of Petrolio (1992), his experimental, amazing last book.
AF:
When you work with Petrolio, you're working with a piece of literature, so you’ve got to find the visual equivalent. Petrolio was also a very controversial book because it's a book about, in a way, the mystery of Italy and the dark side of Italian politics and institutional economy in general. What do you think he would be saying right now, Pasolini?
CA:
About Giorgia Meloni, you mean?
AF:
Yeah. What would he be saying?
CA:
Probably a very controversial thought, because this is also a vote that is coming, in a way, surely from the people, in the same way PPP defended the policemen as proletarians at work against the bourgeois students manifesting in the streets. It’s maybe obscene to say, but this has been a sincere victory. And it shows that, face it or not, at least millions of Italians are fascist. They kept the Mussolini image in their house for decades. And it's the first time that you can see in public… even in the symbol of Giorgia Meloni, there was the flame of the fascists. It’s reality, ma. You shiver, but you cannot deny it. What do you think about it?
AF:
I think you hit it on the head. You know what I mean? Yeah, what does she represent? Our Padre Pio movie is all about this. It's set in 1920. It's real and very political. You know the massacre in the San Giovanni Rotondo? It's about that.
CA:
And why were you interested? Because you can feel the air?
AF:
The first election in Italy ended with 13 people dead. And it was actually the first battle of World War II, the beginning of the Fascist Party. At the same time, Pio was having his stigmata.
CA:
There's always been an interesting spirituality, since the very beginning, in your movies. This is something that is very you. But why? Do you think it comes from a Catholic origin?
AF:
I'm a Buddhist now. I've been a Buddhist for 18 years.
CA:
Oh, really? Before you were a sinner.
AF:
I'm still a sinner. Because you never learn, bro. I don't know, because your ego just demands it. That’s why I live mostly in the daytime. I have a seven-year-old daughter and, right now, I'm writing my autobiography. My life is like a Borghese Roman’s: talk, cafes, restaurants.
CA:
The wild times are over.
AF:
Yeah. I don't know how wild they were. But we keep it interesting, though. It's more interesting than it should be at my age, let's put it that way.
CA:
And where are you from?
AF:
I’m a New Yorker. In fact… no, not really. I think I'm pretty much Italian now. And in the Bronx, where I grew up, half the people spoke Italian. So I was really in the Italian culture. I mean, yeah, I'm from New York. But New York is constantly changing and it's such a different city now. I don't like to pay $8 for a cup of espresso and I don't like to pay $12 for a San Pellegrino. I think it's a fucking rip-off. I don't like to see people working around the clock just trying to put a roof over their heads. That's just not where I'm at now. It's a city that just exists on alcohol, pretty much. There's no food you can eat, and the coffee's horrible. I don't get it. There's no appreciation for the folks who work for New York. When I came to New York, we didn't pay any rent. We couldn't have paid rent because we had no money. So now, how would you live in Manhattan, if you were an artist that just arrived? On the other side, Rome is where you don't have to eat poison. And Rome, for me, is from the train station to the Colosseum, from Santa Maria Maggiore to San Giovanni. That's my Rome. It has everything. It has the parks and it has the street life. It has the best restaurants in the world. Everybody's cool. There's like a big variety of people living around Piazza Vittorio. And it's physically youthful, and you have the very, very clear sense that you've been living in a city… It hasn't changed in 3,000 years. That's powerful for me. That's strong for me.
CA:
Do you see people? Do you look at people's faces?
AF:
Yeah, it's my job.
CA:
But that means that your eyes are the camera, all the time, since you were a kid?
AF:
It's my gig. I started making films when I was 16.
CA:
This is happening to you nonstop, from the moment you open your eyes to the moment you close your eyes, that's it.
AF:
Yeah, but I know what I'm doing, what my thing is. And I’m not fighting it. I'm not pushing it. I am letting it evolve. Clarity of what I see—seeing through the illusion, seeing through the delusion.
CA:
Do you dream?
AF:
Yeah, I dream all the time.
CA:
What do you dream? Dark dreams.
AF:
No, I mean, they’re almost impossible to describe. They're nightmares and they're not nightmares; they're the full spectrum. It's like me looking, watching… You're sleeping eight hours a night; one third of your life, you're dreaming. To me, there is really not that big of a separation between the dreams and opening up my eyes in the daytime. You wake up, and what you were dreaming is more real than what you're seeing with your eyes open.
CA:
Is it possible that your recent films are more close to these kinds of existence that you are describing? The joints between cuts, the joints between narrative are much more elliptical than what it used to be in the past.
AF:
Like Pasolini. You're making a film about a visionary. Yeah. Pio had visions, from the time he was very small.
CA:
And you had visions?
AF:
Not like Pio. No, I don't. I'm not a visionary. I'm a filmmaker.
CA:
You're 70-something. Do you have a projection of what is going to happen in 20 years?
AF:
I’m taking it one day at a time, man. I mean, it’s a miracle that I’m this old. I mean, really, it's a miracle I made it to this point. Because I stopped drinking and I stopped drugging. And that was ten years ago. That moment gave me a chance to fucking live. Now how old am I getting? My grandfather lived to 96. He lived a tough life, but he obviously didn't do drugs. He lived in New York. He worked hard in a port.
CA:
But, listen, you did something like 50 years of, let's say, excess?
AF:
For sure, some days, but it depends on how much money I had and where I was. You could get in the shit, it's fine. A lot of times, you were in places where you couldn't get stuff for it.
CA:
But that means that you did it in Rome too.
AF:
Rome's a tough city to score. Napoli is real… sex and drugs. Rome is not the place. You got to go to Napoli.
“To me, there is really not that big of a separation between dreams and daytime. You wake up, and what you were dreaming is more real than what youʼre seeing with your eyes open.”
CA:
Well, what kind of drugs? Did you do heroin too?
AF:
It was a typical story. I started off smoking pot and then more reefer and smoking reefer all the time. And then drinking. And then, when I started making money, went off the pot and the hash and started focusing on the coke. And then, I didn't want to do heroin. I kept that as a line I wouldn't cross. Then, one day I crossed it. And then, once you do that, that's you. I mean, if you're under the delusion that you need drugs, heroin is the end of the road. To me, it's all a delusion. I didn't need those drugs and I didn't need the alcohol. I was under the delusion that I needed those things to do what I do anyway. I was making films before I was doing cocaine and alcohol and drugs. And I've been doing films for the last ten years, and there's no difference.
CA:
And what was the delusion? Did you find out?
AF:
The delusion that I needed to be a human being, that to perform the function I perform as a human being, to do my work, I needed to be under the influence. Because I grew up in the hippie generation. I grew up with rock and roll and drugs and being an outlaw and everything, and never, ever wanting to be what I am now, which is a normal person. I was living the scoring-drugs life, which is very isolated and takes you to some dark, scary, isolated places. Crazy places. Like the Tiburtina. But I scored there. My drug dealer lived in the most beautiful part of Rome, but I would still score at the train station, score wherever. Wherever I had to go, I went. But Napoli is different. You go to Napoli, bro… First of all, that's where the drugs are. The best drugs are in Napoli and New York. That's the best place that I've found. And Bogota. I'd say, yeah, Napoli and New York are like Disneyland for drug users.
CA:
How do you get rid of it?
AF:
How did I quit? I went to a community outside of Napoli. It was fucking awesome, bro. To stop using after using for 44 years was like a white-light, spiritual awakening to me.
CA:
It was a beautiful release. And now that you meditate, do you get rid of all your thoughts? Do you finally reach a place where there is emptiness?
AF:
I just focus on the positive side. But life is a bitch, bro. You know what I mean? I mean, just because I don't drink, it doesn't mean I'm not an addict. I'm still an addict. I still have big anger issues, irritability, all kinds of fucking demons working me.
CA:
And do you have the image of the demons that own you? You see them? Or it's like a metaphor?
AF:
No, it's not a metaphor. It's your negative actions, your negative thoughts, your negative words, your hurting others. The thing about Buddhism that got me really into it was the tenet that you’re not on this earth to suffer. I'm talking about everybody. So if you are suffering, if you're in pain and you're anguished, you've got to figure out what it is that's creating this. And then there are ways of dealing with that. First of all, if you're on the drugs and alcohol, it's very hard to even come to terms with your basic fear, your ego, your desire.
CA:
And now is it just a total discovery of life, in a way?
AF:
It's like living like a normal person. It’s like walking with my daughter and seeing the Colosseum. My daughter is awesome. I mean, every father thinks their daughter's great, but mine is really cool. She's, like, a real Roman. She was born here. She speaks English and Italian. If she's not eating food unless from fucking here… Don't give her spaghetti if we're in Paris. It ain't going to work. You know what I mean? She's got a real Roman girl attitude on the world, so she's cool.
CA:
Let’s face it. Your life in Rome is awesome, now that you're cleaned up.
AF:
Life is a bitch, no matter how you look at it. Yeah, I've got a lot of positive things that are happening and I appreciate them. I'm grateful for them. But there's a lot of… I don't want to get into it here, but, trust me, they are there, bro.
INTERVIEW: CARLO ANTONELLI
PHOTOGRAPHY: PIOTR NIEPSUJ
STYLING: FRANCESCA IZZI
CREATIVE DIRECTION: ALESSIO ASCARI
PRODUCTION: CAROLINA DE NICOLÒ
