A poetry collection by Elia Romanelli, with drawings by Marzia Migliora.
Born from the need to gather a carefully curated selection of the poems written over twenty-five years by Elia Romanelli, a Venetian anthropologist, filmmaker and writer, Bill of Materials is a pocket-sized book with a mirror-image structure. On one side of the volume are the poems, through which Romanelli sets down what he knows of himself in an exercise in self-auscultation; on the other, once the book is turned over, are the works of the artist Marzia Migliora, which enter into dialogue with the texts, completing, questioning or contradicting them. The volume also features an introduction by the writer and screenwriter Elena Stancanelli and an English translation by Clarissa Botsford. As Romanelli writes, "In words, I searched for all my bolts and springs, the quantities, the measurements, the millilitres, the screws, the nails. Not, of course, in the hope of achieving completeness, which would be impossible, but rather of tracing an outline and making it tangible, something that could be touched, even caressed."
Elia Romanelli is an Italian anthropologist, filmmaker and writer.
Marzia Migliora (born 1972 in Alessandria, Italy) is an artist who uses a wide variety of languages, including photography, video, sound, performance, installation, and drawing, to create works that elevate even the simplest human activities to moments that narrate excerpts of collective history. Recurring themes in her work are memory as a means of articulating the present and the analysis of labor as an affirmation of participation in the social sphere.
