Juliet Jacques: Fiction, memoir, performance

Never humiliate or sensationalise yourself or others known to you, and do not write anything unkind about your own body, although you may test its limits: think of confessional journalism, and everything else in your life, as a form of performance art.
(Juliet Jacques)
 AlbumArte is pleased to present, for the first time in Rome, the British journalist, critic and writer Juliet Jacques (1981); the event will include a lecture, as well as a performance and a debate, curated and organized by Manuela Pacella (independent critic and curator) and chaired together with Daniele Cassandro (editor of Internazionale’s culture section). 
The evening’s program will be divided in three parts: 
Live reading
Trans: A Memoir
an extract from the book published by Verso in 2015, and the entirety of the text from The Woman in the Portrait, commissioned by Tate Modern in 2014 for the event Transpose. Duration: approx. 30min. 
Italian premiere screening
You Will Be Free (video, 2017). Duration: approx. 10 min. 
Performance
Sertraline Surrealism
2016, duration: approx. 7 min. , adapted from the text
Followed
Debate between the author, Manuela Pacella and Daniele Cassandro 
The debate will focus on the theme of the constitution of identity through the process of writing and on how to present transgender experiences as more universal than usually perceived. It will also analyze Juliet Jacques’ approach to writing, which is partly journalistic, partly fiction, partly in the style of a diary, referable to “theoretical fiction” – to quote a definition coined by Joan Hawkins for Chris Kraus’ writings.
Additionally, the author will discuss the topics of her doctoral research in Creative & Critical Writing at the University of Sussex, such as a volume of short stories focused on transgender people in Britain from the 19th century to present days. 
The two readings, the screening and the performance will be held in English; texts in the original language with the Italian translation will be available in the hall. AlbumArte will be open from 5:30pm, to allow those who are interested, to familiarize with the texts before the event begins. 
It should also be noted that the theme of sexual trauma, violence and discrimination is often addressed in Jacques’ writings. 
The event is organized in collaboration with the British School at Rome and the media partnership of NERO, who, following the event, will publish a special feature written by Juliet Jacques and Manuela Pacella.

Juliet Jacques (1981) is a writer and filmmaker based in London. As well as publishing two books (Rayner Heppenstall: A Critical Study, Dalkey Archive Press, 2007;Trans: A Memoir, Verso Books, 2015), she writes short fiction, as well as journalism on literature, film, art, music, politics, gender, sexuality and football. Her work has appeared in The Guardian, for whom she documented her gender reassignment in a series entitled A Transgender Journey, as well as The New Statesman, London Review of Books, Granta, Sight & Sound, Frieze, The Washington Post, TimeOut, New Humanist, Five Dials, New Inquiry, Berfrois, 3:AM and many other places. She has made two 16mm films – Approach/Withdraw, co-directed with artist Ker Wallwork (2016), and You Will Be Free (2017). She co-wrote NADA: Act III with Jasmina Cibic, and acted in Female Human Animal (Josh Appignanesi, 2017) and the Superflux short film Our Friends Electric (2017). She was included on The Independent on Sunday Pink List of influential LGBT people in 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015, and appeared on a panel at the PEN International Congress in 2014. Her Transgender Journey column was long-listed for the Orwell Prize for blogs in 2011, and Trans: A Memoir was runner-up in Polari LGBT Literary Salon’s First Book Award for 2016. 
Manuela Pacella was born in Rome in 1977. She completed her primary degree with a monographic dissertation on David Tremlett and continued her studies in Contemporary Art History at the University of Siena. She has worked both at public institutions such as the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea and the Istituto Nazionale per la Grafica, and at private galleries. Since 2007 she has been working as an independent curator in private and public spaces and writing as an art critic for exhibition’s catalogues and for art magazines. At the same time she carried on her fascination with the history of photography at its beginnings and she specialized in subjects like the relationship between art and photography and family photography. Following the exhibition curated in Belfast in 2012, Patria Interiore, she started to develop her interest in Northern Irish History and Art thanks to being selected in 2013 to the ICI’s Curatorial Intensive at the CCA in Derry and to the International Residency at Flax Art studios in Belfast. As a guest curator she realized the exhibition Lost in Narration. Riccardo Giacconi, Invernomuto e Luca Trevisani at the MAC in Belfast and she co-curated the second Curatorial Directions at the MAC, focused on the importance of text, narration, and story-telling in relation to exhibition making with workshops and talks in Belfast and Milan. In 2015 and 2016 was Editorial Researcher and Coordinator at NERO (Rome) and actually works as a freelance curator and writer between Italy, Austria and Ireland. 
Daniele Cassandro was born in Rome in 1970. In 1996 he graduated in History of Contemporary Art with a dissertation on Francis Bacon’ iconography. He started to work as journalist for publishing services and music magazines. He worked as a editor at GQ and Riders, he collaborated with Vogue Italia, and he was part of the group of journalists who founded the Italian edition of Wired. Since 2015 he is Culture Editor at Internazionale.
 

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