Ivan Pozzoni
Your work has left a significant mark on the Italian and international art scene. What inspired you to start the NéoN-Avant-gardisme movement, and what did it mean to you personally and artistically?
In Italy, a culturally mediocre nation, which I sarcastically call the Papal States, I have left no influence, outside of the major literary critics, who define my verses as "masterpieces". However, in Europe there is no public for poetry, as the Greek scholar Bruno Gentili explained well. Therefore, among Italian critics I am a sort of genius; the public does not exist, and I do not exist. In Italy an intermediate level of artistic diffusion has formed, made up of mediocre magazines and lit-blogs that sponsor, in a mafia-like manner, their mediocre authors. I, not being mediocre, am not contemplated. Not being mediocre and a friend of a friend, I do not fall within the Mondadori Monopolistic group.
Abroad they include me in all the magazines in the world (90 nations): from Ulan Bator to Iran, from Qatar to Mozambique. There are two csis: either the world is idiotic, or Italy is idiotic. What do you think?
The Neon-avantgarde, built with Zygmunt Bauman, was a movement that fought against this Italian situation (the activists were 1200 Italians). With the NeoN-avantgarde, a militant movement, we closed down dozens of mafia sites and dozens of fraudulent publishing houses. We attacked Mondadori, winning in court. The Neon-avantgarde was one of the militant, and military, Italian movements with a large following. When we moved from the modern era to the late modern era, the neon-avantgarde became anachronistic.
You’ve always blended activism with art. Why do you think it’s important for artists to take a stand on social and political issues, and how does your new movement, Kolektivne NSEAE, reflect that?
For me, a jurist academic, the ethical/legal analysis of artists has always been important. After the (anachronistic) neon-avant-garde closed in 2018, I withdrew from the art world until 2024. I had to reformulate the theoretical foundations of my movement. In Italy, five people did it. The other mediocre Italians write and theorize as if they were in 1985. From the reformulation of the theoretical foundations, internationalism exploded: with the KNSEAE movement I merged with the Russian, Serbian, Alaban, US, UK and 30 other nations movements. We are 30,000 militant activists. The militants attack: with actions of sabotage/legal boycott. Art is not only aesthetics: it is sociology of art and politics of art. The KNSEAE movement is this dimension of aesthetics: art, sociology and politics.
With 150 books and over 1,000 essays to your name, your productivity is extraordinary. How do you keep your creativity and energy flowing across so many projects?
My academic productivity is combined with my work career: CEO of many multinationals. When you answer 100 phone calls a day and five hundred emails a day and decide to fire 1000 employees and close 10 warehouses, what does it take to write 150 volumes and 1000 essays? In Europe, I am the man of steel, in the world I am the white tiger of the Himalayas. I am known in the world of work and in the world of art as very ferocious.
When I was young, it was normal to read historical texts between the end of work (04.00-19.00) and the evening football match: at Mac Donald's they don't bother you.
Now universities all over the world have to beg me.
When you decided to close the NeoN-Avant-garde movement in 2018, what was the driving force behind that decision? And how did it shape the new direction you’re taking now?
The neo-avant-garde millennial movements are significant in moments of "krisis" (Greek term). The world crisis, according to my master Bauman, began with the financial crisis (Lehman Brothers) and ended with the change of era. We are in the late modern, similar to the Latin late antique: the aesthetic ontology has changed. How long will the late modern last? Probably a few centuries. The catch is that artists write like modern artists in the tradomodern. As if Cicero wrote in the late antique: the late antique created unknown authors like Ausoni, Claudiano, Giovenco. They believed they wrote like Cicero. Thus, the mediocre moderns, write like Cicero and are Giovenchi. They have not understood, being devoid of sociological and historical knowledge, that they are anachronistic.
My new direction is the new sociology (Bauman, Beck, Lipovetsky, Sennett, Gallino). My riots are late modern.
You’ve worked with artists and writers from all over the world. What do you enjoy most about connecting with such diverse voices, and what challenges have you faced in promoting global artistic collaboration?
Simply, with my determined and ferocious character, collaboration has been: either collaboration of the artists who asked what I wanted or proposed; or annihilation of the idiotic international artists, similar to the Italians. Annihilation, destruction, massacre. My ancestors, the Celts of Northern Italy, painted their faces blue, sharpened their axes, and chopped off heads. Militant and military movements achieve the same result.
You’ve described your vision of the “poet/sophos” as someone who combines intellectual depth with creative power. How do you think artists can embody this role today, especially in a world so dominated by commercialism?
You force me to overflow. For me the poet/sophos is a model of art. Italian and international artists who write about friendship, love and birds, make me swing the battle axe. They keep proposing to me, all over the world, to participate in anthologies on friendship. Fuck friendship. Art is battle. If the artist is not also a philosopher, he writes nonsense. I despise fake artists who understand nothing of the theoretical foundations of "poetry": I was discussing the relationship between art and consumerism in 2011. Contemporary artists understand nothing. They are not academics: they invent artists.
Your new movement speaks of “aesthetic guerrilla warfare” and supporting new voices. What kind of impact do you hope these efforts will have on the artistic world and the larger cultural landscape?
Unfortunately, it is a question of ethnic groups. Aesthetic guerrilla warfare is interpreted by European groups as a legal analysis of the correctness of adversary sites, publishing houses and lit-blogs; by non-EU groups, Russians, Serbians, Albanians, as hackering and physical annihilation of adversaries. I am not able to control non-EU groups. Our adversaries have suffered both forms of boycott/sabotage. However, I assure you that legal sabotage/boycott creates greater damage.
What impact? As we have (legally) annihilated every Italian adversary, we will annihilate every international adversary. However, I admit, that international adversaries, like two/three scammers, are not many. Foreigners are more intelligent than Italians.
Philosophy seems to play a big role in your approach to art. How do philosophical ideas influence your creative process, and why do you think they’re important for understanding art in our time?
I have lived an extraordinary situation in Milan: the feud between new analytical philosophers and historians of philosophy in the university. The analytical philosophers, the only Italian university, won, and my professors and assistants of reference were eliminated. How did I survive? I proposed to the analytical philosophers, who analyzed the sentences of the Court of Cassation, to create a history of the Italian analytical philosophers of the 19th century. I specialize in the Italian analytical philosophers, whom I rediscovered, Giovanni Vailati and Mario Calderoni. For me they anticipated American analytical philosophy by a hundred years.
As a pragmatist and an analytical philosopher, I introduced the theoretical foundations of pragmatism and analytics to Italy: text-context analysis and the replacement of semantics with pragmatics. Italian artists rightly do not understand anything: they are donkeys.
"Poetry" must not be enlightenment or inspiration, as in artistic romanticism. The "artistic experiment" (Mach) must be organization, planning, analysis. Anyone who, in the 21st century, relies on romantic inspiration (because he is ignorant and inadequate) is an idiot.
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