Wu Ming's Audiotheque & Podcast

You're on Wu Ming's Official Website, this is the audiotheque.
Home page in English	THE BLOG	feed en feed es	feed it feed pt	Except where stated otherwise, the content of this website is licensed under a Creative Common License. You are free to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work. You are also free to make derivative works, under the following commandments: thou shalt give the original author credit; thou shalt not use this work for commercial purposes; If thou alter, transform, or build upon a text, thou shalt distribute the resulting work only under a license identical to this one.

Wu Ming Audiotheque
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If you understand Italian, there's much more stuff on the other side of the website.

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STEWART HOME READS FROM OUR NOVEL MANITUANA
MP3, 64k, 1.8 k, 4 mins.
British novelist Stewart Home reads from our novel Manituana.
It is the "open letter" that the London Mohocks (a gang of proto-punk street thugs) address to chief Joseph Brant, head of the (real) Mohawk delegation visiting London in 1775-76.
Pre-recorded and then played out at the ICA, London, October 17th, 2009, with Stewart (badly) lip-synching.

SPEECHES ON THE NEW ITALIAN EPIC
Since the end of April 2008, a thorny debate has been taking place in Italian media, triggered by a "memorandum" published online by Wu Ming 1 (founding member of the Luther Blisset Project and currently one of the Wu Ming writing collective).
The text is entitled: New Italian Epic. Memorandum 1993-2008: narrativa, sguardo obliquo, ritorno al futuro [as of October 5, 2008, available only in Italian and French]. It is a reflection on current cultural circumstances in Italy and attempts a classification of several recent novels and/or "unidentified narrative objects", such as Wu Ming's Manituana, Roberto Saviano's Gomorrah, Giuseppe Genna's Hitler, Carlo Lucarelli's L'ottava vibrazione and many more, under the common aegis of a renewed interest in epic in Italian literature.
Wu Ming 1's memorandum was based on several talks given at North-American universities in the Springtime of 2008.
After the text was downloaded more than 30,000 times, in September 2008 Wu Ming 1 published a version "2.0" with extensive annotations, a move inspired by the work James G. Ballard did on the (revised) 1990 edition of his "novel" The Atrocity Exhibition.
On October 2nd, 2008, Wu Ming 1 opened the conference "The Italian Perspective on Metahistorical Fiction: The New Italian Epic" , which took place at the Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies of the University of London, with a speech that reflected on the NIE concepts with an even more radical approach.
Even if the memorandum itself is not yet available in English, listening to the speeches - especially the latest one - can give a good idea of a pivotal discussion taking place both in the Italian cultural wastelands and in the Italian intellectual diaspora.

Unidentified Narrative Objects in the skies of Italy

Wu Ming 1
ITALIAN ALLEGORITHMS: LIVE AT MIDDLEBURY COLLEGE
Recorded at Robert A. Jones '59 Conference Room, Middlebury College, Vermont, USA, on March 31st, 2008
Mp3 vbr 160-192 kbps, 50:00

On the last day of March 2008, Wu Ming 1 spoke at Middlebury College, Vermont. He explained such concepts as 'New Italian Epic' and 'Unidentified Narrative Objects', and used the term 'allegorithm' - which he borrowed from videogame theory - to crack the code of the latest Italian genre/literary epic narratives.
A few days later, WM1 used this very speech as a springboard, did some shifting of focus and gave another talk, this time at the MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts. The two talks are brothers (or maybe sisters?), they resemble each other but they aren't identical twins.
CONTENT. 'Postwar means nothing' - The End of Cheap Postmodernism - New Italian Epic and Unidentified Narrative Objects - Let Me Drop A Few Names - Will The Anglophone World Catch Up With Us? - Leaving The Orbit - Don't keep It 'Cool and Dry' - Napoleon Could Still Win At Waterloo - What Is An Allegory? Attila, Stalin & The Pope - "Allegorithms", DNA & a Black Leopard - We Are Facing Extinction - 'The Gaze' - What Fools Called 'Peace'.

'Profound and heartfelt thanks to Yumna Siddiqi and Natasha Chang for having made this possible. And many thanks to all the good people I met at Middlebury.'

Wu Ming 1
NEW ITALIAN EPIC: WE'RE GOING TO HAVE TO BE THE PARENTS
The London Speech. Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies, University of London, UK.
Opening talk @ the conference: "The Italian Perspective on Metahistorical Fiction: The New Italian Epic"
October 2nd, 2008.
Mp3 160 kbps, 43:58

The "Uncanny Valley" of the new Italian literature and the necessity to imagine the future, beyond the emotional blocks that obstruct our view.
The epic tale of two books, the obscure Medium by Giuseppe Genna and the triumphant Gomorrah by Roberto Saviano.
Unidentified Narrative Objects.
"Dead zones" in the sea.
Pain Asymbolia, the syndrome that makes you laugh when you feel pain.
Italy as the laboratory of our extinction, Italy as the place where the rain falls harder.
Going beyond our condition of being "post"-something, toward new foundational moments.
We're going to have to be the parents.
Dedicated to the late David Foster Wallace.
TRANSCRIPTION HERE

Many thanks to Claudia Boscolo, Giuseppe Genna, Marco Amici, Monica Jansen, Emanuela Piga, Valter Binaghi and the folks from Scrittura Industriale Collettiva.

Wu Ming 1
LIVE AT MIT: SLIGHTLY MORE THAN EXPECTED FROM A BAND OF NOVELISTS
Recorded at Building E51-335, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, on April 2nd, 2008.
Mp3 192 kbps, 75:00
On How and Why a Group of Writers Called Wu Ming Set to Disrupt Italian (nay, European) Literature and Popular Culture
(and then Came to Boston to Brag About It).
Wu Ming 1's speech at the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program.
Introduction by

Henry Jenkins.

Thanks to Henry, Gene, Ana and all the folks at MIT, and... to Steve Martin for the opening lines.

From Radio-Eye, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 11 March 2001
THE LUTHER BLISSETT ENIGMA (A RADIO NOVELLA)
mp3 - 26:27 - 96kbps
B: Music/fx F.W. 27'' "It was dusk..." E: L.W. 25'38 "...yours whenever, Luther Blissett"
Music / FX out D: 26'34" Luther Blissett: Norman Kaye Sound Engineer: Andrel Shabunov
Producer: Luther Blissett

From The Europeans, Australian Broadcasting Corporations, 11 May 2003
SPRINGTIME OF THE MOVEMENTS
mp3 - 27:15 - 96kbps
A Broadcast on the social protest movement in Italy, featuring Wu Ming 1 and Franco "Bifo" Berardi. Producer: Jason Di Rosso

Furia Elettrica & Luther Blissett
Q, THE ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK pt.5
mp3, 96 kbps, 4:06
Track #18 from "Luther Blissett, The Open Pop Star", WOT4 (January 2000). "The music accompanies the main character's sojourn in Eltersdorf, the town where he temporarily adopts the name Gustav Metzger."
Order the cd "Luther Blissett: The Open Pop Star"

Utter Bliss
MULTITUDES
mp3, 160 kbps, 13,4 mbs, 14:48
Voicing of the declaration "From The Multitudes of Europe" (may 2001). Anna Rispoli - voice; Lovely Tony - vocalise; Massimo Carozzi - sounds.
English translation here.
"Those are painful things to recall. Memories of tragic events. We tried to give a contribution in terms of mythopoesis, in collaboration with many other people.
A few months before the [G8] summit we started to write epic texts such as "From the Multitudes of Europe" (and many more), you know, it was like an edict and it went: "We are the peasants of the Jacquerie… We are the thirty-four thousand men that answered the call of Hans the Piper… We are the serfs, miners, fugitives, and deserters that joined Pugachev's Cossacks to overthrow the autocracy of Russia…" Then we pulled media stunts in order to create expectations for Genoa. An example: on a quiet springtime night, we put placards around the necks of the most visible statues in Bologna (guys like Garibaldi and other nineteenth-century national heroes), with messages encouraging all citizens to go to Genoa. Not to mention all the work we did on the web, on a now-defunct website called tutebianche.org.
We wanted to persuade as many people as possible to go to Genoa, and we ended up convincing as many people as possible to fall into a full-scale police ambush. Demonstrators were assaulted, beaten to a bloody pulp, arrested, even tortured. We didn't expect such mayhem. Nobody did. I regret we were so naïve and caught off-guard, although I think that was a crucial moment for the latest generation of activists. In a way, it was important to be there. That experience has created bonds between a transnational multitude of human beings. Today, if you say "I was in Genoa" in Italy (and the rest of Europe), it's like saying "I marched in Selma with M.L.K." forty years ago. Those are pivotal moments. We'll see the consequences of that "being there" for a long time to come, on a grassroots, extended, long-tailed level." (from an interview published on the Chicago Review, issue 52:2/3/4)

Utter Bliss

SEPPUKU
mp3, 96 kbps, 5:35
Song for the end of the Luther Blissett Project's Five Year Plan (1994-99). Track #20 from "Luther Blissett, The Open Pop Star", WOT4 (January 2000). Leo Mantovani - voices; Massimo Carozzi - sounds; lyrics by WM2 & WM1.
"Begin the millennium with a seppuku. / Ritual suicide is the folk hero's ultimate escape to the woods. / To strike by subtraction generates countless re-births. / To throw one's sword to the ground / is part of the art of warfare. / Fighting with no sword / creates new styles. / Fight with no sword. / Strike by subtraction / as everyone wants to be Cary Grant. / To strike by subtraction / is part of the art of warfare. / Everyone would like to be Cary Grant, / begin the millennium with a seppuku."

Order the cd "Luther Blissett: The Open Pop Star"

Manitou Scissors
CHANGE EVERYTHING AND EVERYONE
(When even Malevich flew off the handle)
mp3, 160kbps, 4:22
DYNAMIC PSYCHOMONUMENT TO THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL
mp3, 160 kbps, 3:53
Tracks #12 and #17 from "Luther Blissett: The Original Soundtracks" (1995). The album includes all the soundtracks from Luther Blissett's films. #12 and #17 are from "A Russian Supreme", written and directed by Luther Blissett (16mm., b&w and colour, 110', 1969).

DEUTSCHE

LUTHER BLISSETT RETTET DIE WELT!
von Anja Mauruschat
mp3, 64kbps kbps, 63:07
Zündfunk - Nachtausgabe, Bayern2 Radio, 18 Januar 2003 (featuring Wu Ming 1)

The latest novel's possible soundtracks
Audiotheque and podcast on the official website

You're on Wu Ming's Official Website, this is the audiotheque.
Home page in English	THE BLOG	feed en feed es	feed it feed pt	Except where stated otherwise, the content of this website is licensed under a Creative Common License. You are free to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work. You are also free to make derivative works, under the following commandments: thou shalt give the original author credit; thou shalt not use this work for commercial purposes; If thou alter, transform, or build upon a text, thou shalt distribute the resulting work only under a license identical to this one.