Dora Garcia - Mad Marginal. Cahier #2

Are artists crazy? Is that a good thing? Is being an outsider a requirement for creating truly tradition-shattering art? Mad Marginal, part of the Spanish Pavilion at the 2011 Venice Biennale, is a project by Brussels-based Spanish artist Dora Garcia. She uses the tradition of anti-psychiatric and anti-institutional movements as a prism to look at the work of artists who have either consciously chosen to remain outsiders or been defined as outsiders by others. Through a series of conversations documented in this book, which is presented in the form of notebooks, Garcia explores the relationship between radical politics and radical art during the 1970s, and follows the theme to today. Includes conversations with Claudia De Michelis (Museo Laboratorio della Mente), artist Cesare Pietroiusti and Nicola Valentino (co-founder of the publishing house Sensibili alle foglie).