In the early period of collaboration the individual elements of A/I changed in form, but not in substance. Everyone continued their own activities in their cities. In Florence, what they did differently was give out email addresses from the new domain, engaging in a work of widespread dissemination.
Pinke:Mille made it a personal crusade. He opened hundreds of mailboxes and mailing lists for existing political organizations. For our part we discussed how to bring A/I into the real world and did it by tabling at events and painting graffiti. Our work was manic, making photocopies on top of photocopies – that’s what they were used to at the Cecco – and giving
out A/I leaflets, Kriptonite, or floppies by Strano Network while tabling. We went to university
parties, to the festivals organized by L’Unità,95wherever there were people. When the free
photocopy period was over, to continue giving away the material we taxed ourselves, and later we made our own merchandising: t-shirts, stickers, pins, and sweatshirts to finance it. Mille meanwhile approached everyone and convinced them to open an email account. He did all this work and opened an infinite number of accounts. On top of that, he opened lists for collectives and visited everybody to explain that mailing lists were a coordination tool, and since these tools proved to be really useful, at some point collectives asked us to create them.
Inventati had to really pressure the political groups, the social centers, squatted houses, and collectives to use these new technologies. These new means of communication were met with huge distrust, starting at the Cecco itself. It wasn’t only the group’s base of operations, but as it was populated by the youngest activists, it was supposed to represent a gathering of the most open minded.
Blanqua:It seems impossible, but at the beginning many of us didn’t even know how to switch on a computer. Yes, the computer: the enemy. That’s how it was. I remember the work to create the Batcave and that Pilar, my dog that I’d just gotten at the time, had decided to shit only in there. And in my heart I thought she was right. What kind of room should only have computers in it?
95 L’Unità: Italian newspaper founded by Antonio Gramsci; it was originally the official newspaper of
the Italian Communist Party (1924-1991). The ‘Festa de L’Unità’ is an annual event which used to
finance the newspaper. In Tuscany and Emilia Romagna these festivals are especially widespread and significant.
In practice, only those who came from the hacklabs or knew ECN understood A/I’s mes- sage. For the majority of people, the talk about privacy, anonymity, and technology was still incomprehensible.
Pinke:It must be said that email wasn’t the indispensable tool it is today. The internet and tools for it were starting to spread, but they were still something for the elite.
In such a situation Inventati’s answer was the elaboration of a broad communication strategy, something that created curiosity, something that, in substance, was closer to the people in the collective. To do it, the decisive push came from the squatters of the Cecco.
The group that was squatting the Cecco contained a strong component inspired by situation- ist96 practices, which gave the Cecco its second name ‘GSA’ (‘ghetto super giovani antinoia’).97 It was from their ideas of détournement98 that Inventati devised their guerrilla advertising campaigns to publicize themselves locally.
Cojote:At the Cecco we learned a lot from one other… the idea for our graffiti came from our situationist friends. It was them who told us how to do things and how to communicate with people.
The two groups at Cecco weren’t cut from the same cloth and in many cases came from very different cultural backgrounds. Nevertheless they had known each other for a while and had united in pulling off a series of actions and provocations – from an improvisational play staged in a bus to the squatting of the farm house that would become the Cecco.
Pinke:Initially we had to take stock of one another: on one side we brought the computers into the Batcave, constructing this dark, shadowy environment; on the other, they were in the garden, bucolic… in brief, we had to find a way to understand each other. One time they even did a march inside the Batcave singing ‘Playstations, pigs, and cops, we’ll wipe you out
from the Cecco Rivolta!99
The Cecco was a lively political experiment, twenty people working out a way to live together. There were even ‘internal factions’: the cinephiles, the technocrats, the philosophers. How-
ever, after the first session/clash, the squatters got to know each other better and share their mutual passions and interests.
Blanqua:Whether you wanted it or not, at a certain point the Batcave became real. Imagine about fifteen people who have never been to a web page, never been on the internet. And then suddenly someone shows up and explains to you how to turn on a computer, how to
96 Situationist: The Situationist International was a group active between 1958 and 1969, predominantly in continental Europe. Whilst it is often associated today with the cultural avant-garde, it was actually a social revolutionary organization which sought to overcome capitalism and end the separation between life, art and politics. Its best known exponents were Guy Debord and Raoul Vaneigem.
97 ‘Super Young Anti-Boredom Ghetto’: A pun on CSA, which means ‘centro sociale autogestito’, or self- managed social center.
98 Détournement: the practice of re-purposing well known symbols, characters or narratives for subversive purposes.
99 A play on the 80s Autonomen chant: ‘Eroina, fascisti e polizia, dai nostri quartieri vi spazzeremo via’ (Heroin, Fascists, Cops, we’ll wipe you out of our neighborhoods!).
turn it off, how to navigate the internet… but guys, everything comes at a cost. You couldn’t possibly open the sloooow mail from Inventati on Windows: it would have been too easy! Windows had become the new super-enemy for the Super Young Anti Boredom Ghetto, we had to learn how to love our server and above all Linux, that great unknown. Regarding Linux I mainly remember Ilnonsubire, like when you’re in elementary school and you have to learn
Alessandro Manzoni’s poem Il cinque maggio100by heart; he taught me how to download
my mail. Mutt, ping, pong – when I recall them, I feel like a professional hacker. But what happened was really a miracle. Inventati, also for someone like me who today still labors to understand the mysteries of the internet, was a child of a collective organism. I didn’t really know what it was all about, but it was mine too.
And following the suggestions of the other Cecco squatters, Inventati ‘launched’ a graffiti campaign, designed to appear on walls both highly visible and hard to reach – in fact some lasted five or six years before someone took the trouble of painting over them. To do it they climbed up and down to reach bridges, overpasses and the most unlikely places.
At first they only said ‘Inventati’. The idea was to create anticipation and many people started to wonder what this word meant, how it was pronounced, who could be behind it. Afterwards they started to write ‘Inventati.org’. This bizarre operation brought the attention of some local journalists, given that, at the time, it was very strange to see an internet address on a wall. The idea of graffiti for an underground media launch had been tested during the protests against the war in Kosovo, when the city was plastered with a peace sign with ‘WHY?’ next to it. Among the significant places chosen for this inscription was the scaffolding that at the time covered the facade of the famous Basilica of Santa Croce.101
Cojote:The trick of direct communication lies in the pervasiveness of the message. In this case the idea was that every tourist that passed in front of Santa Croce would take a photo, it would circulate at such a level that it would achieve its effect. As for the writing ‘Inventati’ we wanted to create anticipation and we did. The domain was bought before we put it on a server and was virtually empty. We wanted to attract people. The curiosity it provoked helped us, but what counted above all was the fact that we were always in the right place at the right moment during important events, when things happened. That’s how we rooted ourselves in the territory. The thing that worked is really that we tried to be everywhere.
A/I’s foundation and putting the independent server online, the graffiti campaign, their con- stant presence in social spaces, and Mille’s personal crusades were all elements that when put together exceeded all expectations. Within a few months, the movement started to understand the meaning of the project. When they were tabling there was a line to get passwords and instructions for a new or first email address on little handwritten pieces of paper.
Mille:Often we made @inventati email addresses, but it was also possible to make @autistici addresses – the form was the same, but it was hard explaining this dual possibility! Until we opened the other domains, we would advise one or the other depending on the type of proj- ect, but after all, people in Florence in general would always ask to have an @inventati email, because it was cool, we were well known, etc, etc. Vice versa in Milan they asked for @autistici.
100 Il cinque maggio: Poem by A. Manzoni about the death of Napoleon Bonaparte on Saint Helena. It is taught in Italian schools.