People's History poster by Tim Simons - Taken from www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily

Here’s both the audio recording and text (PDF) of the double talk WM1 and WM2 gave at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, on April 5, 2011.
On the previous day we’d given the same talk at Duke University, Durham, NC. The UNC version is slightly different, because it took into account things emerged in the Duke Q & A.
We wish to thank, among many, Mimmo Cangiano, Roberto Dainotto and Federico Luisetti, who invited us and organised the whole thing; Laura Moure Cecchini, who put us up in her flat; the comrades of El Kilombo Intergalactico, for an eye-opening afternoon of “counter-tourism”; Michael Hardt, for being always the gentleman; Fredric Jameson, for supporting the initiative; Michal Osterweil, with whom we share precious memories of the penultimate uprising.
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This could be both stupid and interesting to someone (but we don’t know whom). It’s just an idea we had while translating the two talks we’ll give in North Carolina on April 4-5. These are the first five minutes (out of about 45) of each talk. They’re read by a certain “Alex”, ie the male voice of a text-to-speech software we happen to be tinkering with these days.

WM2 – How to tell a revolution from something else

WM1 – We are all February of 1917

Duke University, Durham, NC
Monday, April 4
5:00 pm
Franklin Humanities Institute Garage, Smith Warehouse
This event is also sponsored by the Franklin Humanities Institute, the Program in Literature, the Marxism and Society Program, and the UNC Department of Romance Languages and Literatures.

University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC
Tuesday, April 5
11:00 am
UNC Global Education Center, room 3024 (more…)

We’ve been neglecting this blog for too long (over a month has passed since the last post). It’s just that our main blog, Giap, requires a lot of work and takes pretty much all the time we’re able to devote to work on the web. Moreover, we’re writing the new collective novel on the French Revolution (with an eye on what’s happening in North Africa); Wu Ming 1 is translating this book here (1,000 pages to be delivered on September 15th!) and doing research for a project on Africa, mountaneering and fascism; Wu Ming 2 and Wu Ming 4 are teaching a course at the University of Pesaro; Wu Ming 5 is on national tour with his Oi! band Nabat (click on the name to see them performing live). And we’ve got little children to boot! In plain words, we’re juggling our way through life while riding a metaphorical bicycle like the one you can see in the pic, and translating stuff from Italian is out of question these days. This is unfortunate, for we’ve written a lot of pieces which, once slightly readapted, could be of some interest to non-Italians.
The difficulties we’re experiencing with all these projects are even preventing us from doing the usual book tour to promote our latest book, Anatra all’arancia meccanica [Clockwork Orange Duck], a collection of the short stories we wrote from 2000 to 2010. We’re very fond of this book, it’s a look back upon ten years of activities, but if we hit the road now, we wouldn’t be able to write :-(
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A Khaled Said y a todos los insurrectos en Nordáfrica y en Oriente Medio
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[WM1:] Intentaré poner al día a nuestros lectores acerca de lo que ha sucedido en la última semana en el frente del “rogo de libri” [quema de libros] véneto, y sobre como esta movilización se ha cruzado con otras luchas, en particular, la huelga general de los trabajadores de la industria metalmecánica.
Respecto a la batalla que llevamos adelante desde hace ya dos semanas, hay algo que podemos decir ahora mismo: hemos ganado el primer asalto. Pero procedamos con orden.

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In the last two weeks we’ve been campaigning hard against right-wing officials trying to ban books and authors in Veneto (North-East Italy). Alongside many writers and readers, we’ve been helping to coordinate a rich, manifold counter-informative operation which has taught us (and is still teaching us) many lessons. We already scored some important goals, as we managed to stop some hateful initiatives dead in their tracks. Unfortunately, we’ve been so engulfed in the campaign that we haven’t had time to keep you anglophones reasonably up-to-date with what was going on. If you look at this post’s comment section, you’ll find some useful texts and pingbacks. We even held a public meeting and made a demonstration “in the belly of the Beast”, ie in Preganziol, province of Treviso, the den of the hideous Northern League. A brief, partial report on what happened can be found here.
Anyway, we can’t omit to post stuff specifically related to our work as writers.
Thus, here’s the first batch of news of 2011. (more…)

[Translated into Spanish by Nadie Enparticular. Original text here. We're looking for people who can translate into English and other languages.]
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¿Quién es la mujer que declara que nuestros libros son “deseducativos”, pontifica sobre la “necesidad de buenos ejemplos, no de malos maestros” y pide a los directores de las escuelas de la Región Véneto que destierren cientos de títulos y –sobre todo– a sus autores? ¿Quién es ella? Fuera del Véneto, solo se sabe que es la consejera regional de Instrucción y Formación, y que es del PdL [Partito della Libertà]. Pero aparte de esto, que es el envoltorio, ¿quién es Elena Donazzan?
Bueno, para dar un ejemplo, es la que está dentro del círculo:

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- Atualisaçoes nos comentarios -

[Pedimos aos leitores para reagirem. E eles já o fazem! Todas as sugestões que demos ao final deste artigo estão sendo postas em prática entusiasticamente, melhoradas e compartilhadas por uma multidão de pessoas que estão horrorizadas pelo que está acontecendo na região de Veneza. Editores estão produzindo declarações e lançando comunicados oficiais, a mídia nacional está começando a cobrir o assunto, a Associação Nacional de Bibliotecários (AIB) condenou enfaticamente a proposta e convidou os leitores a relatar qualquer tentativa de censurar e banir livros. Contudo, isso ainda não é suficiente. Precisamos que as pessoas de fora do país saibam o que está acontecendo, há o fedor da prática nazista de queima de livros na Itália, e o caso do fugitivo “ex-terrorista” Cesare Battisti (agora no Brasil) não é mais que uma desculpa para a repressão. O período de declínio de um regime pode ser muito longo, e é seu período mais perigoso, à medida que os lacaios ficam cada vez mais desesperados e recorrem a todos os tipos de atos absurdos de modo a manter suas garras sobre a sociedade.]
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As melhores palavras, dadas as circunstâncias, foram encontradas por nosso colega Serge Quadruppani. Aqui estão, traduzidas do francês: (more…)

[Traduit de l'italien par Gaia Manco. Mise à jour dans les comments]

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Serge Quadruppani a su trouver les mots les plus indiquées. Les voilà: (more…)

[Traducido desde el italiano por Nadie Enparticular. ACTUALIZACIONES EN EL COMENTARIO]
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Las palabras más adecuadas a las circunstancias las encontró Serge Quadruppani. Las traducimos del francés, son estas: (more…)

N.B. UPDATES BELOW, IN THE COMMENT SECTION

[English translation of the "call to arms" we issued yesterday. We asked readers to fight back, and fighting they are! All the suggestions we gave at the end of this article are being enthusiastically put into practice, improved and shared by multitudes of people who are horrified by what is taking place in the Venice area. Publishers are making statements and releasing communiqués, the national media are starting to cover the affair, the National Association of Librarians (AIB) has strongly condemned the proposal and invited readers to counter any attempt at censoring and banning books. However, this isn't enough yet. We need people abroad to be aware of what's going on, there's a stench of nazi book burnings in Italy, and the case of fugitive "ex-terrorist" Cesare Battisti (now in Brazil) is nothing more than an excuse for repression. The period of a regime's decline may be very long, and it's the most dangerous period, as the lackeys get more and more desperate and resort to all kinds of senseless acts in order to keep their  grip on society. Thanks to Gregorio Magini of Scrittura Industriale Collettiva for translating our piece, we really wouldn't have had time to do it! In the next few hours we'll provide translations in French, Spanish and Catalan. We badly need a Portuguese version. French-speaking readers can already read Serge Quadruppani's article on Rue 89.]
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The best words, given the circumstances, were found by our colleague Serge Quadruppani. Here they are, translated from French: (more…)

Here’s the recording of the talk Wu Ming 1 and Wu Ming 4 gave at the British Library Conference Centre, London, on 13 October 2010. Thanks to Joshua Eichen for sending the mp3. He warned us: “It’s not a clean edit at the front nor the back.” In fact, it stops abruptly. No ending. If we remember correctly, what was left out was a more political question on Italy etc., and our answer(s). Anyway, here you’ve got more than 1 hour of stuff. Enjoy! (As your Superego commands).
[Click on the small Playtagger icon to listen without leaving this page. Click on the text link to listen on a new page. Right click and save (or ctrl + click and save) to download the mp3s.]
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A smallish cluster of news before 2010 ends in flames.

The Book Bloc
Yes, yes. Don’t ask no more. “Book Bloc” is our coinage. To the best of our knowledge, we were the first ones to come up with the pun, on 24 November, a few hours after students clashed with the police in Rome carrying padded shields styled as books. That practice – which took us by surprise – is the real invention, not the name. Anyway, both the name and the practice extended like fire in a prairie. The Book Bloc showed up all over Italy, and – most notably – in Parliament Square, London, on “Day X 3″ of Demo 2010, 9 December 2010. Here’s an interesting meta-post entitled “A Book Bloc’s Genealogy”. (more…)

An interview with Wu Ming 1 is online at wordswithoutborders.com. Here’s an excerpt:

King’s style looks simple, but it is actually very difficult to translate. As an author, he’s very fond of puns, neologisms, idioms, local slang and so on. He plays with all the singularities of the English language, precisely the stuff that can’t be translated in any way! This is typical of, er, “monoglot” writers, by which I mean those writers who don’t care about what happens to their works when they’re translated into other languages.
There are basically two kinds of novelists: those who care about translations, like Italo Calvino and Umberto Eco, because they’re used to exploring foreign languages, and those who don’t care, like Elmore Leonard or Uncle Stevie, because they’re perfectly happy with inhabiting their native language, with no forays in other cultures and koines.
If you’re a careful, attentive reader, you can tell one kind of writer from the other simply by reading. There’s a prose that’s translation-conscious, and a prose that is not.

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