For the forth and last week of June, AUTORI-tratti interviews the Turin-based queer collective Intheghetto hosting the monthly show Ghettoknowus every 3rd wednesday of the month from 8 till 10pm.
Tell us something about you as a collective. Who are you, where are you from and what do you do in your life?
Geez, will you even beg us for a penny?! Besides jests, we’re three creatures with a different education and personal backgrounds, who match in our mutual love for arts: Davide Oberto, cinematographic curator, Fabrizio Modenese Palumbo, musician, and Francesca Puopolo, actress and theater writer, speaker and performer.
How did you get to meet each other and how did you start your collaboration as a collective?
Francesca: I met Fabrizio in the environment of LGBTQIA+ activism, later we became friends and collaborators also on a professional basis. I was asked to get involved in InTheGhetto, which already existed when I joined it, though.
Fabrizio: Davide and I met some centuries ago, attending the same squalid circles, but the three of us basically already knew each other already before actually getting to know each other properly.
Which experiences pushed you towards radio as a medium of expression? How did you get to know about RBL specifically and why did you choose to join it?
Francesca: I’ve worked in the radio environment for some time. To me, it’s a medium of communication which has never been as necessary as in our technocratic era: you have to listen to the radio, it accompanies you without asking for any particular attention, but at the same time it conveys some pieces of information which somehow remain printed in people’s minds. We’ve known RBL for a long time, because we’ve always attended the Turin-based hubs – the one in Via Baltea and the other one at Imbarchino cultural center -, and we consider it a project worth of great attention and interest, diversified and structured in a way that musical contaminations are easily encouraged (as well as those regarding contents) from communicative formats to entertaining ones. It’s a really free and completely independent radio, and this aspect is for us like a cherry on the top of a pie, never sickening us. Fabrizio: As a “Ghetto” we’re interested in all those media which are somehow able to build/create a “community”. Davide: Moreover, radio is overall a form that enables reflection, détour, sound disorientation and leaves room for imagination.
Where does the name of the collective come from?
Fabrizio: From welcoming everyone keeping our identities unaltered, from making available our own personal, cultural and social journey – and eventually there’s some gossip, which I leave for Davide, if he feels like telling you about it… Davide (blushing): Back then we didn’t even imagine that a pandemic could occur, but we were facing the colonialist twirl of a heterosexual directrice on the top of an LGBTQA+ festival, without any professional or political experiences which could justify such position. Without blinking an eye, the directrice even designed herself as a novel Giovanna D’Arco, who would open the doors of the ghetto where us, poor homosexual people, were locked up. And so, we decided that if there had to be someone who could choose if and how to leave that ghetto, how to set it up and who was invited to discover it, those would be us.
Your personalities are all driven by the urgency to “dig, re-interpret, re-found a queer imaginary to re-think, recreate and regenerate”. This specific “mission”, or the personal artistic journey from which each of you comes from, have in some way influenced what you do today with radio?
Francesca: Sure. It really is an urgency. As a non-binary person with a feminine appearance and a pansexual orientation, I’ve always encountered forms of layered oppression: on one side the oppression coming from the system persecuting those who don’t conform to the cult of appearance and to the bourgeois standards at the basis of heteronormativity, on the other side that of the LGBTQIA+ community – term which has always left me perplexed, since it presupposes an exclusive and welcoming grip, acknowledged at the beginning to put an end to persecutions and inequalities, in which strict and excluding identity standars keep persisting nowadays. The environment of LGBTQIA+ activism doesn’t escape these forms of oppression either, and, furthermore, you might happen to be manipulated and directed towards a sort of a performative and individualistic kind of activism. Our creative process is based on the need to undermine these dynamics in order to concretely promote self-determination and a never-ending development of a critical awareness.
How did you come up with the format of GhettoKnowUs and how does it reflect your work as a collective?
Fabrizio: It’s one of the elements reflecting our work, and so are live events and other things we’re planning on doing (a fanzine). The main idea is always that of defining and building imaginaries, creating connections and contrasts: a music track combined with a movie extract, a certain topic with its contrary. Davide: Radio, like fanzines and seasonal celebrations, has become the way in which we constantly keep re-declining the sense of queerness, which is, by its own essence, a continuous fluidity of forms and meanings.
What has the radio experience with RBL given you since you’ve started it?
Fabrizio: We’ve had a lot of fun, especially now that the shows from the Imbarchino are open to the public. Davide: And it forced us to put into play all our personal experiences, our journeys… Follow the yellow brick road…
Are there any shows on RBL that you particularly enjoy? If so, why do you like them best? Are there any conductors that you admire in particular?
Francesca: I very much enjoy Nei Meandri, a jukebox show hosted at Drop-In Torino – a service for consumers of illegal substances, who are in need of assistance. Whoever passes by can choose a song to put in the playlist and present it by microphone. Through the rotating voices, together with the tracks, I’ve got the impression to know for a sec the people who stop by.
Do you have a song that represents you or that sends a message that you appreciate? Can you share it with us?
