Pier Paolo Pasolini in Contemporary Art: The Politics of Artistic Practice

Benjamin Fellmann

Fabio Mauri and Pier Paolo Pasolini at the rehearsals for Che cosa è il fascismo (What is fascism), 1971, Stabilimenti Safa Palatino, Roma ©Fotografia: Elisabetta Catalano Courtesy of the Estate of Fabio Mauri and Hauser & Wirth — Fabio Mauri and Pier Paolo Pasolini at the rehearsals for *Che cosa è il fascismo (What is fascism)*, 1971, Stabilimenti Safa Palatino, Roma ©Fotografia: Elisabetta Catalano Courtesy of the Estate of Fabio Mauri and Hauser & Wirth

Fabio Mauri and Pier Paolo Pasolini at the rehearsals for *Che cosa è il fascismo (What is fascism)*, 1971, Stabilimenti Safa Palatino, Roma ©Fotografia: Elisabetta Catalano Courtesy of the Estate of Fabio Mauri and Hauser & Wirth

The project aims to systematically investigate for the first time the fundamental impact of the life and work of Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922–1975) on contemporary art and its reception in the works of numerous international artists from his lifetime to the present day. The focus will be on works by around fifty international artists from different disciplines such as Francesco Arena, Elisabetta Benassi, Nina Fischer & Maroan el Sani, Alfredo Jaar, Bouchra Khalili, Fabio Mauri, Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Ming Wong, Cerith Wyn Evans, Hervé Guibert, and David Wojnarowicz, who found in Pasolini’s life and work inspiration for exploring the meaning of artistic creation in highly politicized contemporary societies. The filmmaker, poet, novelist, theorist, journalist, and critic, who commented on the challenges of global economic and political developments in post-war society, becomes in this way himself a lens for reflecting on the function of artistic creation, the engagement with cultural, social, and political structures, the appraisal of the social and ecological effects of capitalism, as well as the social status and meaning of artistic work. The core themes of his discussions speak directly to the current moment: processes of modernization and commercialization, forced mobility, communal living, the search for a language capable of capturing reality, interest in myth, developments in the so-called “Third World,” the question of the South not just in Italy or in Europe but on a global scale. The roots in the city of Rome and its historical sedimentations as well as the urban and social aesthetics developed by Pasolini on the one hand, and his international work and reception on the other, which was particularly intense in Paris and France more generally, where his work stimulated a theory-forming aesthetic reception, are a lodestar not only for numerous artistic endeavors but also for this investigation.