My article about coffee cultures in Naples has just been published on the American magazine Fresh Cup. In this article I go back to my hometown Naples interviewing three owners of different typologies of cafès, the historical Gambrinus, the typical Bar Nilo and the innovative Spazio Nea.
Here’s the link to the article on Fresh Cup website
Here you can order a copy of the magazine
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I just came back from my 32nd interview for my reportage in Australia, so I finally feel like I can tell my opinion about how to interview an artist.
The first thing you have to do is obviously contact the artist and you usually do that through her/his mail on her/his personal website.
The first mail has to be a quite formal style, without exaggerating though.
You have to be short and clear, explaining the artist why you want to interview her/ him and what aspects of her/his work are you interested in.
If your interview is part of a bigger project, like a reportage, spend a few words to inform the artist about it.
Don’t forget to explain her/him if this is your own project or if you are working for a magazine.
In this last case it would be nice to put a link to the website of your magazine, so the artist can have a look.
Put also your own website or blog in the signature, along with your personal page on a web magazine that hosts your work, if you have one.
That would give you credibility and would also give the artist the possibility to take a peek at your style and at the kind of articles you usually write.
The next mails would probably me more informal. At this point you can get rid of all the links in your signature, the “best” and “regards” and sign with just your given name.
In your second mail you can suggest the artist a place where you can have the interview.
The most common places are the artist’s studio, a nice and quite café, the space where the artist has currently a show or the gallery that represents him.
Give options to the artist. To meet her/him in his studio would be ideal – you can guess much more from the artist’s natural habitat than from outcomes of a simple conversation.
Of course, you can suggest to meet in the studio, but not all the artists have one and not everyone is happy to let a suspicious journalist or art critic in. If the artist tells you that his studio is empty or messy at moment, just don’t bother. Above all don’t insist.
If you are doing the interview in your own city, you probably would know the most quiet and suitable cafe for an interview. If you are abroad don’t be shy, just ask the artist if he knows a nice cafe to meet.
The choice would probably tell you something about the artist lifestyle and tastes.
In any case discover new places in a new city is always exciting.
Productivity and Bohemia are concepts which are seldom associated.
You have to admit though that having grown up reading Sartre and Simone the Beauvoir – or at least having seen the pictures – you are not immune to the charms of café.
Every city has is own aesthetic when comes to cafés.
Not everyone is snob enough to live in Paris and go to the Café De Flore – whom has turned into an established place for loaded folks anyways.
What it is left to us is send to hell the Café De Flore, and create our own, well… café mythology.
If you live in Rome you certainly know the cafés Canova and Rosati in Piazza del Popolo.
During the sixties these two cafés gathered the so called “artists from Piazza del Popolo”, but now Canova and Rosati are the equivalent of the ultrachic cafés in Saint Germain, Paris.
Sure, it is always cool to pass by Piazza del Popolo and say hi to the Italian dandy artist Ontani– last time I checked he had a permanent permit to be parked at Canova – yet these cafés are too posh for us.
Same things with the cafés in Via Veneto, once Antonioni, Mastroianni and Fellini’s reign.
You have to consider as well that in Italy there is this tradition of kicking you out if you take too long to sip your coffee.
If you are in Rome and you are a writer looking for a place to read and write quietly, you will be likely accepted in some cosy and shabby-chic looking cafés in Via Giulia, Pigneto or San Lorenzo.
You can start to create your own café mythology from there.
Hot white tea and a slice of cake.
Inspired by this Simonedebeauvoirian-Sartrarian-Camussarian extra
romanticized attitude of writing in the cafes instead of quietly staying
home and working hard, my old fellow Lucas and I started hanging out in the
in the cafes on Via Giulia, Rome every so often.
I was reading a couple of books to widen my perspective on Indonesian
Contemporary Art. For an insight into the East/West dichotomy, the curator of Indonesia’s exhibition at MACRO, Dominique Lora, recommended Flavio Caroli’s “Arte d’Oriente Arte d’Occidente”.
Tano D’Amico lancia al registratore appoggiato sul tavolino uno sguardo lungo, obliquo, minaccioso, di assoluta disapprovazione. E si che è stato lui a dire che la macchina fotografica è stupida, ragionevolmente non considererà un registratore tanto più intelligente: “Preferisco che tu scriva quello che ti rimane impresso.”
Siamo seduti ad un bar vicino l’Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma, in Via di Ripetta, e già qualche studente si è seduto al tavolo con noi, accolto con allegria da Tano.
C’è un’empatia naturale e reciproca tra i ragazzi e il “loro” fotoreporter, quello che gli ha fornito le immagini mitologiche delle rivolte studentesche, dagli anni ’70 fino ad oggi, oltre le banalizzazioni “pornografiche”, come le definisce lo stesso D’Amico, che i media erogano a getto continuo: “Sono immagini brutte, che non aiutano a vivere, bloccano la memoria, spesso non aiutano nemmeno ad esorcizzare il presente. Sono immagini fatti con gli occhi del boia, in una sorta di compiacimento della crudeltà, con l’alibi della documentazione. In queste immagini il carnefice ha un quoziente di umanità maggiore della vittima e sono indispensabili per chi comanda.
Naima Morelli is an arts writer and journalist specialized in contemporary art from Asia-Pacific and the MENA region.
She has written for the Financial Times, Al-Jazeera, The Art Newspaper, ArtAsiaPacific, Internazionale and Il Manifesto, among others, and she is a regular contributor to Plural Art Mag, Middle East Monitor and Middle East Eye as well as writing curatorial texts for galleries.
She is the author of three books on Southeast Asian contemporary art.
Reach out: contact [at] naimamorelli.com
