pde_gmm_02

COMPUTER COMICS | GIOVANOTTI MONDANI MECCANICI

As in a matrix animated by pixels and neon colors, Computer Comics tears apart reality to transport us into a digital dream dimension: the protagonists of this first 8-bit comic are men in suits, probably the alter ego of the components of the artistic collective Giovanotti Mondani Meccanici, wandering through desolate places of cities and surreal landscapes, perhaps after a nigh at the Tenax Club in Florence.

The project, created first as a comic in 1984, has since then evolved and over time has been declined in different forms. Created with the computer strip technique and reproduced on televisions, it is then photographed and printed in paper format for the Frigidaire publishing house. The project then returns as a video installation in which the scenes follow one another and create a dreamy narrative: the Giovanotti Mondami Meccanici, also known as GMM, are real hackers of the imagination and pioneers of a completely unknown use of the personal computer in the 1980s. In these experimentations the human finds its digital stylization with angular outlines. The cyberpunk and post-modern reality that in their stories makes them, even and still today, extremely contemporary and subversive: the strength of the strips, the ferocity of the raid through the digital streets and robotic and dark music make Computer Comics a mirror faithful to the multimedia that characterized the experiments of the Eighties, an image of a daily cultural and social ferment that invaded every aspect of everyday life.

Melodramma Moderno Notturno‘ recite the final credits, and actually once the viewing of Computer Comics is over it feels like returning from a night in a club at dawn: physically tired but enriched by an excited vitality that you would not find any sleep on contrary, like the characters, to continue wondering in the streets searching for new experiences. Like, awakened from a pleasant dream, you just want to resort to another one.

Computer Comics is on display at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome in the exhibition Il video makes happy open until 4 September 2022. On this occasion the work of Giovanotti Mondami Meccanici is presented as a projection on a tulle fabric in which the image it passes through to project itself onto the wall as well: the work of the collective is found to live on different layers of surfaces as if to symbolize the various experiments carried out over the years.

Giovanotti Mondami Meccanici
Computer Comics, Vignetta del primo fumetto GMM (“Frigidaire” n.42, maggio 1984), in mostra al Palazzo delle Esposizioni con l’installazione Computer Comics, 1984
Giovanotti Mondami Meccanici – Antonio Glessi © Andrea Zingoni by SIAE

06/07/2022