With her debut chapbook, award-winning author and curator Legacy Russell returns to poetry with her GAY POMPEII, a collection of lyric poems that begin at the end of the world. Rising out of Russell's 2022-2023 Digital Fellowship for Pompeii Commitment.Archaeological Matters, the first long-term, contemporary art programme established by the Archaeological Park of Pompeii, the author and curator explores ash, filth, dirt, and decay, intersectional with the fetishistic mythos of Pompeii and its destruction in 79 CE by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Pompeii today is a UNESCO World Heritage Site that receives over two million visitors per year to view its archeological excavation. Russell puts the mass voyeurism, sensation, extraction, and loss of Pompeii—a devastating moment frozen in time—to work. In GAY POMPEII, the site becomes a device with which Russell unspools birth, death, genocide, visual culture, and space-time. The title of this compilation underscores the essence and demand of capitalism: to be carefree in the face of looming extinction. Russell's GAY POMPEII is a selfie taken at the edge of catastrophe and a polyphonic elegy.
About Pompeii Commitment
Pompeii Commitment. Archaeological Matters is the first long-term contemporary art programme, established by the Archaeological Park of Pompeii. Starting from December 2020, and launching a new programme since July 2022, Pompeii Commitment reconfigures the archaeological site of Pompeii as a foundation for alternative forms of knowledge, forming through a multiplicity of functions: artistic and curatorial research in situ and remotely (Digital Fellowships), digital artists’ contributions (Commitments), collection of testimonies (Fabulae) and documents (Historiae), indefinite collection (Collectio), hypothetical and transdisciplinary museum (Inventario), library in formation (Library of Archeology and Futurology). All these possible departments are dedicated to studying and sharing the multiple cognitive potentials of Pompeii and the episteme of its “archaeological matters”.
Edited by Stella Bottai, Caterina Avataneo, Laura Mariano and Andrea Viliani
Designed and printed in risograph by Be Oakley
Co-published by GenderFail and CURA.
Published in conjunction with Legacy Russell’s 2023 Digital Fellowship with Pompeii Commitment. Archaeological Matters
Pages: 78
Dimension: 105 x 175 mm
Soft Cover
1st Edition
ISBN: 978-88-99776-50-3
Year: 2025
Edition of 1000
