At the Café by Dayna Tortorici and Stephen Squibb
A part of Wanderings and Wonderings
August 20 and September 10, 2016
Beginning at the Storm King café
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.
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).
This work is presented with Storm King Art Center as part of their Wanderings and Wonderings series, made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.
As seen at © 2017 Siah Armajani / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.