Anna Adamolo

intro
images gallery
links
press release

Dall'Onda Anomala esce Anna Adamolo
(From the Freak Wave comes Anna Adamolo)

Anna Adamolo is an untamed
and unformalized imagery,
the wish to keep open
the multiplicity
and the feasible against
the arrogance of those
who think just about economy, the refusal to heal the today’s difficulties
with the tomorrow’s miseries.

Anna Adamolo is
“Noi la crisi non la paghiamo”(We won’t pay your crisis), students, temp workers, teachers, children, parents that during
this months have brought
in the Italian squares,
a protest against the current and future swindlers never seen before.

On June 25th, the Berlusconi government passed the decree concerning the Education sector entitled "Urgent provisions for economic development, semplification, competitiveness, stabilization of public finance and tax equalization". This becomes the provisional Law 133 on August 5th.

The Berlusconi government is persevering in the reform of the national education system and in its destruction, a process that was already started during the previous legislature in particular these reforms concern all levels of education, from elementary schools all the way to university.

Amongst other plans, the reform plans for:

The return to single teachers in primary education classes. (At the moment there are different teachers for different subjects).
The introduction of a compulsory uniform in elementary schools.
The creation of separate classes in primary schools for Italian- speaking pupils and for foreign pupils who do not speak Italian.
The re-introduction of a ‘behavioural’ mark that can be used to impede a pupil’s progress onto the next year.

These proposals are coupled with a reduction on all levels of funding for education.

Specifically, there are proposals for a reduction of workers in the education sector and, of course, there are no plans to integrate the millions of temps that have been working in the sector for years. The issue is very similar in the university context, where thousands of temps lecturers and researchers, who are in effect part of research teams, have no guaranteed income for the future. The reduction of the quality of the teaching would be felt in the primary schools, but would be felt more strongly in the universities. An important issue is the reduction of the workforce and the absence of any solutions for workers stuck in a system that relies on an extremely precarious work culture (especially for university researchers).
The issue of funding weighs heaviest upon Universities. The neo- liberalism of this law is to encourage universities to become private foundations, reliant upon private money. The ultimate aim is to create an education system where there are ‘schools of excellence’ that access most the available money (public and private). Such a system would eventually lead to the impoverishment of most other universities.

Consequently to this reform, from the last september, a lot of strikes, movements and demonstrations have been started in Italy and they are still going on under the slogan "We Won’t Pay For Your Crisis"

more info:
http://www.edu-factory.org/images/stories/edufactory/anomalouswave.pdf

As often happen during periods of intense social movement, as protests, strikes and demonstrations, people share time, events, feelings and experiences which became common to all of them; often the experience of a collective action causes the generation of a collective identity. People realize that the same ideas are shared by others and realize to have something in common one to each other.

On the other hand every time we have this aggregation of people we can see a tentative by all the media to draw a sort of general portrait of the movement, trying to find the common elements of all the people to describe them as a single, generalized, identity.

Media tried to put this collectivity in a predefined category, giving it adjectives, summarizing some of its aspects in a way that becomes easier to speak about it. Often, as we said, this drawing is really aproximated because is impossible to describe such a big and complex identity as a mass of protesting people, In this way all the differences composing the collective identity are just blured, and the multicolored wave of people became just a grey portrait of anyone. As Judith Ravel says in a lecture about Bio-diversity and Bio-powers, quoting from Focault, media try to put the subject aspect of everyone into an object entity, where all the different subjectivities are mixed together is not possible to see each one as individuality anymore. Everybody are the same.

Anna Adamolo was born in order to give a different imagery from how media were portraying the movement.

In our society is quite easy to find people who identify themselves in a logo.
If we think about Mac users, or even better about Harley Davidson motorcyclists, we can easily associate to the brand a very defined category of person.
This categories of people are called Brand Communities. We this term we mean a group of consumer that share values, norms and social representations, they recognize a strong feeling of membership with each other members and with the group as a whole on the basis of a common attachment to a particular brand.
Anna Adamolo's aim was quite similar. Design something in which people could identify themselves (and that would be able to represent them in front of media) could sound like a corporate identity process, but there are several differences.
First of all a commercial corporate identity is designed on values that are chosen in advance by a small group of people(brief) to reach a precise group of audience(target).
Is quite obvious how much easier is to represent a defined and limited concept, as could be for a company, than to represent a larger and abstract subject as a mass feeling.

To keep on compare our case with a common brand community, where a lot of people are gathered under the same symbol, I would like to point the attention on a simple point: usually the logo is something existent that some people who like it choose as a "favourite brand". In our case we already had a bunch of people and we need to find a solution which can work for each one of them. Exactly the reverse process.

BRAND COMMUNITY:
LOGO -> USERS

ANNA ADAMOLO:
USERS -> LOGO

Anna Adamolo: an open identity

Because the protest was about the new politics around school, in particular against the actual minister of education, we decided to design, as a symbol of the movement, an ideal new minister. In this way we could, at the same time, declared who was the aim of the protest and give the impression of a constructive movement, able to give a real alternative to the actual situation.
The movement had already a name, chosen by media: Onda Anomala (Italian for Freak Wave) so we decided to play anagramming this name calling the new minister Anna Adamolo.

What we decided to design was more than a logo, was a new single identity as a symbol of a collective one.

As we said this character should has been able to reflect in itself all the differences in between the movement, because of that we decided to don't visualize in a precise way the minister's face. Practically we drawn just the hair and the glasses of the minister leaving all the other part of the face undefined. A character without face, in this way everyone in the protest, who decide to adopt this character, could put his face instead of the logo's one.

An identity without an own identity, or better, an identity composed by thousands of different identities. I would like to introduce here the idea of "container identity", the concept we applied to this project. With "container identity" I mean an identity with no predefined characteristics but able to take, time by time, the own characteristics from who decided to "became" the logo. An useful example, taken from science fiction, could be the hero (or anti-hero) V, from the graphic novel "V for Vendetta" by Alan Moore. The mask, the symbol, or in general the logo, is an idea of a value shared by a bunch of people that can be taken from everyone in a really personal way. With this logo we wanted to give a kind of tool to do the protest, putting under the same symbol a lot of different movement and ideas.

We can try to schematize the relation in between "users" and "logo" as follow:

-The user is not Anna Adamolo
-Anna Adamolo is the user.

anna adamolo vs luther blisset

The idea of a multiple identity isn't something new, our big example of this kind of idea are, during last twenty years Monty Catsin and Luther Blisset, in particular this last one was famous during the nineties for his action against the relation in between media and information, in particular he worked hard on the diffusion of fake information. One interesting thing comparing Luther and Anna is, again, the relation in between the new single identity and all the identities who choose to be part of the first one. As Vittore Baroni clearly explain in an interview about the Luther Blisset Project, now available on youTube, all the artists who decided to take part at the project should renounce completely to their own identity to take the new one. A really well defined one. Luther Blisset was almost a real person, with his own personality, psychology, and even physical characteristics. We can say that weren't some "Luthers Blisseths" but just one composed by a lot of different entities who act in his name. A sort of Borg, if we think again about science fiction, where all the entities composing the bigger one lose completely their own independence to act, as a one person, in name of a collectivity. In the same way we can say that we don't have just one Anna Adamolo but a lot of "her" different for sex, age, occupations and lot of different more aspects.

In both of cases we have some people gathered in the name of a common aim, In both of cases we have a fake character able to do things or better we have people doing things by a fake common entity. Again the difference is really small but important, everything is about keeping or losing the identity of the parts composing the new one. We can try to semplify saying that if Luther Blisset gives his identity Anna Adamolo take the identities from the others.

Images Gallery

Press Release

Non ci sono leader. C’è Anna Adamolo, […]Questo nick nasconde centinaia di persone che, spogliandosi della propria identità, assumono lo stesso avatar e lo stesso logo, con il kit di stencil scaricabile sul blog. La faccia viola e indefinita di Anna appare sui muri delle città italiane, nelle aule universitarie, sugli striscioni e sulle lavagne virtuali di Facebook.

Max magazine, December 2008.
http://max.rcs.it/news/0812_12news_Universita.shtml?utm_source=newsletter11dic08&utm_medium=email&utm_content=universita&utm_campaign=nl11dic08

Oggi pomeriggio, in piazza Duomo a Milano, entrerà in scena un nuovo personaggio, Anna Adamolo, impegnato nella lotta alla legge 133.

L’Unità, 11 November 2008

Sbaglieremo forse, ma il fenomeno più interessante è ancora più recente, e questa volta è indubbiamente legato agli ambienti del movimento. Si tratta di una misteriosa signora il cui nome, Anna Adamolo, ricorda troppo letteralmente l’Onda Anomala. Il suo volto arguto e un logo veramente accattivante compaiono su un blog (http://annaadamolo.noblogs.org/) e su diversi gruppi di Facebook.[…]
E non si limita a una presenza su Internet: è comparsa su uno striscione alla manifestazione di ieri a Milano, e ha diffuso un appello per facilitare i viaggi degli studenti alla volta di Roma per la manifestazione del 14. C’è da supporre che sentiremo ancora parlare di lei.

L’Unità, 11 November 2008

Decine di volti di Anna Adamolo, il personaggio virtuale diventato simbolo della protesta degli studenti che l'hanno eletta "ministro" al posto di Mariastella Gelmini, sono stati disegnati sui muri durante la manifestazione contro la riforma della scuola, oggi pomeriggio a Milano. In particolare, da uno dei tre cortei, quello partito da piazza Medaglie d'Oro, si sono staccati più volte studenti, sul viso grossi occhiali di cartone, per disegnare sui muri con vernice spray il volto di Adamolo. I giovani rischiano una multa di 500 euro, prevista per chi scrive sugli edifici.

Il Messaggero, 12 November 2008
http://www.ilmessaggero.it/articolo.php?id=36275&sez=

L´Onda ha la sua eroina virtuale. […]
Sul blog di Anna Adamolo da giorni si danno appuntamento liceali, universitari e insegnanti che, attraverso la voce dell´eroina virtuale, raccontano la loro storia e fanno proposte su come migliorare la scuola italiana. E l´invito a diventare tutti Anna Adamolo passa anche attraverso il social network Facebook: dal blog è possibile infatti scaricare il kit completo di foto, adesivi, timbro e occhiali simili a quelli indossati dal ministro Gelmini.

L’Espresso (Roma), 15 November 2008
http://espresso.repubblica.it/dettaglio-local//2049158

Da qualche giorno è online il blog di una giovane signora, magra, con gli occhiali e un volto spigoloso e appuntito - nel complesso una bella donna - scesa in campo per raccontare le proteste che da più di un mese scuotono il mondo dell’istruzione.[…]
Dalla diffusione di una campagna indirizzata alla FS (una carta da viaggio Trenitalia a 15 euro valida per raggiungere la manifestazione) fino all’occupazione virtuale del MIUR. Da ieri è infatti in circolazione il sito www.ministeroistruzione.net: aprendolo si arriva su una home del tutto identica a quella originale, che dopo qualche secondo viene sostituita da un video, un ondosa distesa di teste, le stesse che si sono riversate nelle strade e nelle piazze. Sulle immagini, una voce: è la stessa Anna che presentandosi racconta frammenti di storie (studenti, insegnanti, ricercatori) dichiarando che “Voglio portare tutte queste voci dentro il palazzo. Dentro tutti i palazzi…“.

Artsblog 13 November 2008
http://www.artsblog.it/post/2570/anna-adamolo-la-donna-che-racconto-londa

Al Piccolo Teatro Studio, dove era attesa il ministro Mariastella Gelmini per il Premio nazionale dell'Innovazione. Al suo posto si è presentata Anna Adamolo, personaggio creato dai ragazzi del movimento dell'Onda Anomala, e «vero ministro dell'Istruzione. Eletta il 14 novembre al corteo degli studenti». Un divertito Paolo Rossi («Questa non me l'aspettavo») ha prestato il microfono alla ragazza con la maschera blu. «La vera innovazione sarebbe dare i fondi alla scuola. E non tagliarli».

Corriere Della Sera, 28 November 2008
http://milano.corriere.it/cronache/articoli/2008/11_Novembre/28/blitz_studenti_piccolo_magritte_anna_adamolo.shtml

Riappare tra la folla anche Anna Adamolo, personaggio virtuale, simbolo della contestazione alla riforma per aver "sostituito" il ministro Mariastella Gelmini. La si vede in piazza, con una maschera di paillette blu, e la si rintraccia anche sui muri di corso di Porta Romana, graffitata con lo spray sfidando i 500 euro di multa, da alcuni studenti del corteo aperto dallo striscione «No alla divisione tra bambini immigrati e italiani».

La Repubblica, 30 November 2008
http://ricerca.repubblica.it/repubblica/archivio/repubblica/2008/11/30/tre-cortei-10mila-in-duomo-cosi.html

Comunque sia «è un modo per far sentire la nostra voce», con slogan, fischietti, canzoni. E per farsi vedere, con girotondi, striscioni. Ma anche con fumogeni. Senza tensioni. Piuttosto con un pizzico di ironia, quando si infilano gli occhiali di cartone realizzati dai ragazzi dell' Accademia di Brera, «perché siamo tutti Anna Adamolo (il ministro dell' istruzione eletto degli studenti, ndr)». E con i pennarelli in mano disegnano il volto del «loro» ministro sui muri.

Corriere Della Sera, 30 November 2008
http://ricerca.repubblica.it/repubblica/archivio/repubblica/2008/11/30/tre-cortei-10mila-in-duomo-cosi.html