Giulia Damiani

Napoli in the Unmapped Practice of Le Nemesiache: A Feminist Gazetteer gives voice to the untold story of a feminist collective that operated in the 70s and 80s in Napoli, Le Nemesiache, unveiling its relevance for today. The vigour, contradictions, personality and very soul of the city shaped the group’s activity and determined the character of their political and artistic practice. Napoli was the setting of Le Nemesiache’s films and the stage for their performances. It is the subject of their paintings and the background of their visual work. The city is described and lives through the feminists’ writing, being the chief character of their poems, political texts and novels.

My final project gathers together essays, transcriptions from films and performances as well as extracts from original and unpublished texts, tracing the history of this forgotten feminist phenomenon through the streets and venues where it emerged and acted. Also, it makes use of the words and narrations of some the members whom I interviewed during my stay in Napoli in September 2013. Le Nemesiache’s methods, the enactments of their ideas, as well as their unique ways of interacting with and embracing their environment represent an exceptional case. Their multiform approach to society and their interventions in Napoli were distinct from any other feminist activity in Italy, then as now. However, at present their work is almost totally disregarded.

Napoli in the Unmapped Practice of Le Nemesiache explores the mythological territory of the group through a number of Neapolitan locations. The different sections of this project are arranged like entries of a geographical dictionary: houses, natural elements, public spaces and collapsing buildings of  Napoli open up to discussions on the feminists’ practice. Throughout the narrative of the text, the performances by Le Nemesiache, their films, their political pamphlets and theoretical articles emerge as being the receptacles of the history of a city over a certain period of time.