http://www.facebook.com/pages/Le-Sante-Peccatrici/161972293846219

http://www.mondobizzarrogallery.com/exhibitions.asp?ID=36

http://www.bangart.it/sante-peccatrici/

http://www.rollingstonemagazine.it/cultura/gallerie/sante-tatuatrici-pregate-per-noi/32973/pagina/5

INTERVIEW WITH CURATOR VIOLA FROM HELL BETWEEN, BY MAXIME BUCHI, EDITED BY BEN PERDUE

Q. Who are you, what is your background?

Hello Maxime, my name is viola von hell, I’m a tattoo artist from Rome, working with several Italian studios from northern to central Italy. I come from a graphics and special effects background. Five years ago I decided to take a turn in my life and started tattooing. I felt the urge to experience something permanent and meaningful, especially in a society where everything is disposable. I was trying to become an independent and free woman, like the ones who worked in circuses during the Depression era. They showed their tattoos in order to express themselves and gain independence.

Q. How did you come up with such an idea?

It has always been clear to me that in Italy there are many female tattooers. I have also noticed how much effort it takes to be a tattooer, with lots of travel and continous research. So I said to myself: “why don’t we combine the efforts of each one in a project that can make our artistic skills known?”

I was thinking about this for months, I was very undecided, then I began looking for interested participants. At the same time I asked my colleagues what they thought about the idea of a group of female tattooers that constitutes an art exhibition. Everyone answered, a bit surprised, that nobody had ever made a show like this in Italy. So I contacted Margherita Baleni, editor of Tattoo Life and Tattoo Italia, and she immediately supported the project and also offered to write a piece about this venture.

We had to find a theme that had not yet been used and that would be exciting to every artist. So I decided to combine the sacred and the profane and create the project The Holy Sinners, to join the devil and holy water.

Who were the Saints? They were women who sacrificed themselves for their beliefs, who suffered tortures and torments in order not to give up that belief. Like us, like female tattooers today, struggling for our dreams and goals. Tattooers perhaps are a mix of effort and sin, so the theme of this art exibition was born. I have also had the pleasure of involving Luisa Gnecchi Rusconi, the famous Italian anthropologist – and wife of famous tattoo artist Gian Maurizio Fercioni – who has written books about tattoo culture.

Q. How do you perceive the evolution of women’s status in the world of tattooing?

I think that women represent an important part of the tattoo world. It is only a matter of time for our future affirmation. We belong to a group that is growing steadily, and we have more and more courage to claim our piece of the pie. We should keep in mind that women work in a different way than men and that this is very interesting. We have a different approach to tattoos and tattooing.

Q. Who are the people you choose?

I choose Italian artists who live in Italy and abroad, and who are active at international conventions, like Miss Arianna, Claudia de Sabe, Genziana, and young newcomers who have fresh perspectives.

Q. How did you select them?

Creating a list of Italian artists was not an easy task because I had to end up with a small number of women and girls, and I hade to take into account experience, skills and developmental ability. But I ended up with a number of interesting tattooers. I wanted to create a group of artists that together represents all the styles of the tattoo industry. Artists who use methods of expression like Realistic, Japanese traditional, Chicano and American traditional.

Q. What is the concept of the show, what will we see there?

The concept of the exhibition is to claim the specificity of female tattooing, the Italian scene, and create cohesion, exchange and collaboration between the artists.

The exhibition will open in Milan on February 28th and run until March 4th – with an event during Fashion Week -before moving to the Mondo Bizzarro art gallery from March 26th to April 14th. After that it will be travelling to other Italian cities.

Q. What is your personal opinion on contemporary tattoo culture?

The tattoo world today has lost some of the values from a time past. There are many people amongst us who tattoo only to achieve fame and fortune. But I trust in the fact that there are still those – even if they are modern tattooers – who firmly believe in values inherited from old school tattooers; values such as respect, devotion and loyalty for what you love and for tattoos.

SOFT TARGETS is a poetry, criticism and image publication directed by Sang Bleu & Novembre contributors Dan Hoy and Daniel Feinberg.

The issue below was released a long time ago (2006 I think) but I just put my little hands on it. Good stuff.

ORDER SOFT TARGETS v.1.1; SOFT TARGETS v.2.2; SOFT TARGETS v.2.1 HERE!

> .001.Jean-Jacques.Schuhl
> .018.Jon.Leon
> .022.Ariana.Reines
> .024.X
> .025.Alexander.Kluge
> .037.Lara.Glenum
> .045.Nathalie.Djurberg
> .049.Thomas.J.Thomas
> .054.Atelier.Van.Lieshout
> .066.Solon
> .067.TIQQUN
> .074.Victory.Over.the.Sun
> .076.Chris.Marker
> .088.New.Geometry.of.Hostility
> .090.Alain.Badiou
> .107.X
> .108.James.Tate
> .111.Ralph.Lemon
> .115.Daigan.Lueck
> .116.Phan.Ba.Tho
> .124.Johannes.Göransson
> .128.Pierre.Bourdieu
> .139.Rosenthal
> .140.Arno.Schmidt
> .146.Tatiana.Trouvé
> .150.Jane.Gregory
> .152.Battle.for.Jerusalem
> .154.X
> .155.Allyssa.Wolf
> .158.John.Waters
> .160.Alberto.Toscano
> .166.Christian.Marclay+Daniel.Feinberg
> .168.Richard.Greenfield
> .175.Zoe.Leonard
> .179.Standard.Schaefer
> .186.Yto.Barrada
> .190.Ly.Doi
> .196.Henri.Michaux
> .202.Our.Man.in.Pyongyang
> .203.Three.Steps.Closer
> .204.Gary.Lutz
> .213.X
> .214.Roberto.Bolaño
> .216.Toba.Khedoori
> .218.Justin.Marks
> .222.Filippo.Del.Lucchese
> .227.Lucy.Harrison
> .233.Lisa.Jarnot
> .234.RAQS.Media.Collective
> .238.Ben.Lerner
> .241.Devious.Cruising
> .242.Epilogue
> .243.Credits
> .246.One.State.Solution
> .248.Blood.Count

Dropped by AKA to say a quick hi to Jon John. Guest tattooers from Milan and London landing soon. Loved Berlin. Never been so cold in my life though.

Another series of pictures brought to us by Omar Macchiavelli.

This weekend, the yearly Milano Tatto Convention took place.
Pictures by Stefania Loschi.

SANG BLEU is currently looking for a living/working space there.

It has to be light, big, well-situated and available ASAP.

Spacious industrial/loft type of space/studio would be ideal.

Indeed, if it has a balcony that overlooks a small river, it’s also of interest.

Send any serious proposal/plan immediately to jsr@sangbleu.com

Tonight, Alexandra Bachzetsis is showing her new piece at Theaterhaus Gessnerallee in Zürich. Other dates will folloe in Basel, Geneva, Frankfurt and Kriens.

An open-ended series of solos passed from one performer to another, much like reflections in a mirror, Alexandra Bachzetsis’s newest work, “A Piece Danced Alone,” investigates ideas of originality and imitation—as well as the failure and transgression inherent in any interpretation. Through formal elements of repetition and mirroring, Bachzetsis’s solo performance for one person, which will serve as a score for subsequent dancers, will explore the effort to “try again”—or to “fail better,” as Samuel Beckett famously put it. Endlessly inventive, “A Piece Danced Alone” will take shape in three stages. First, it will investigate how much the repetition of movements, gestures, phrases, images, or words is essential for the production of meaning and the establishment of new cultural codes. This repetition will unfold in a double sense: on the one hand, it might be described as the intentional reoccurrence of a movement, its reproduction or imitation; on the other hand, its repetition might also stand for a rehearsal (and, in French, literally so: répétition). Second, Bachzetsis will address the failure of repetition, which is, by its very nature, inexact. As an act of interpretation and not merely a reproduction of an image, repeated movement cannot be identical to the original, because interpretation itself involves deviation. Finally, “A Piece Danced Alone” will explore the origins of contemporary icons and explore their transformation in different cultural, social, and political contextual spaces.

Bachzetsis’s past body of work—which has been lauded and exhibited widely across Europe—has often dealt with physicality and the phenomenon of transformation. Her performances often focus on imitating and recording the expressions— gestures, looks, or dress codes—consciously and unconsciously embodied by various cultural spheres and subjects. Her works ask how one can capture the charismatic presence of a person in movement, as well as how this “capture” can be recorded and passed on for future reference. “A Piece Danced Alone” will specifically address this last question in the form of an “instruction manual or index” of movements that Bachzetsis will develop which will eventually become a book or a film. In addition, Bachzetsis is engaging a number of vaunted collaborators from myriad fields—criticism and art history, dance and design—to collaborate on the realization of “A Piece Danced Alone.” The resulting work—which Bachzetsis will dance herself—will be built from the information that results from these dialogues. In the end, the piece will be both an interpretation of an instruction and an instruction that can be interpreted—and endlessly mirrored—by others.

Text extracted from Alexandra’s website.