At the Café by Dayna Tortorici and Stephen Squibb
Presented with Storm King Art Center
Storm King Art Center, Mountainville, NY
August 20 and September 10, 2016
Inspired by Siah Armajani's Gazebo for Two Anarchists, a prominent sculpture in Storm King's collection, writers and editors Dayna Tortorici and Stephen Squibb will present their adaptation of Errico Malatesta's At the Cafe: Conversations on Anarchism, altered and updated for the present. Originally published in Italy in 1922 after his imprisonment, Malatesta's seventeen fictional dialogues were short, entertaining texts on the practical applications of anarchism that doubled as a running commentary on the times. Set in a cafe, the author's stand-in, Giorgio, an anarchist, discusses private property, common ownership, the causes of poverty, government and the state, police, patriotism, and gender equality with Cesare (a shopkeeper), Prospero (a wealthy bourgeois), and Ambrogio (a magistrate). Tortorici and Squibb's adaptation sets corollary conversations—about the New Right and populism, police and the prison system, gender expression and civil rights, and the service economy—among a new cast of characters.
This program is presented with Storm King Art Center as part of their ongoing Wanderings and Wonderings series. Initiated in 2013 by the Storm King Art Center, Wanderings and Wonderings invites visitors to engage with artists in creative and unexpected ways. Participating artists have created tours, maps, performances, poetry and movement workshops, new media, and deeply thoughtful conversations. Since 2015, Wanderings and Wonderings has been co-presented with Shandaken: Storm King, and features select alumni and their collaborators.
Dayna Tortorici is a writer and coeditor-in-chief of n+1, a magazine of literature, culture, and politics based in Brooklyn. She is the editor of No Regrets and two other small books.
Stephen Squibb is a writer and the editor of e-flux journal, and coeditor of City by City: Dispatches from the American Metropolis (FSG, 2015).