Gaddafi in Rome:
The Expanded Script
A lecture performance
by Alessandra Ferrini

Wolf Kino Studio

In June 2009 Muammar Gaddafi and Silvio Berlusconi met in Rome to celebrate the Italy-Libya Treaty on Friendship, Partnership and Cooperation and discuss the Bilateral Agreements on migration and fuel trade. As the event sparked several protests, it caused a media frenzy in Italy that brought to the fore the controversial relations between the two countries. Attempting to turn an archive of live news updates produced during the meeting into a script, this performative lecture strives to dissect the memory of this event and the way it was reported. Through the layering and interplay of text, archival imagery, media footage, and amateur documentation of the meeting available on YouTube, this ‘expanded script’ investigates how the news is produced and consumed today, while exposing the (neo)colonial relations between Italy and Libya and the way international politics are performed.

Supported by Q-INTERNATIONAL
A grant by Fondazione La Quadriennale di Roma

Followed by a dinner by Archive kitchen

Alessandra Ferrini is a visual artist, researcher, and educator based in London. Recent screenings and exhibitions include: Sharjah Film Platform (Sharjah Art Foundation, UAE, 2019); Villa Romana (Florence, 2019); Manifesta 12 Film Programme (Palermo, 2018); the 6th Taiwan International Video Art Exhibition (Taipei, 2018-19); Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo (Turin, 2018); Passerelle Centre d’Art Contemporain (Brest, 2018); the 16th Rome Quadriennale (Rome, 2016-17); Centre for Contemporary Arts Glasgow (2017). She is an AHRC PhD candidate at the University of the Arts London, and is affiliated with InteRGRace, the Interdisciplinary Group on Race and Racisms (University of Padua).