On Wednesday 22 October 2020, at 18:00, Dr Fabrizio Foni, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Italian of the University of Malta, will give a talk entitled ‘Scoffing at the Apocalypse: Learning from Prof. Bad Trip’ at the Italian Cultural Institute in St George’s Square, Valletta during the 20th edition of the ‘Italian Language Week in the World’.
The talk, which will be held remotely in Italian, will focus on Gianluca Lerici (1963-2006), better known as Prof. Bad Trip, one of the most prolific countercultural artists in Italy between the 1980s and the early 2000s.
A conjurer of visual hallucinations, Lerici was among the first exponents of Italian cyberpunk. He joined the independent Milan-based international magazine ‘Decoder’ (1987-1998), to which he contributed both cover and internal illustrations, as well as highly satirical and lysergic comics.
Prof. Bad Trip’s style seems LSD-induced, expressionist, hyper-decorative, overflowing with both chaotic and painstakingly geometric elements, claustrophobically filled with extra characters, backdrops, objects, and details.
Dystopian metropolitan areas of the future, ruled by oppressive and brainwashing Orwellian dictatorships (religious and/or technocratic), swarming with eccentric musicians, extraterrestrial mutants, malfunctioning androids and robots (definitely not abiding by Isaac Asimov’s proverbial ‘Three Laws’), drug addicts and dealers, and ludicrously gross freak shows, are recurring features of Lerici’s artefacts, and of his comics in particular, in addition to the punk and techno scenes, philosophical anarchism, and psychedelia.
Fabrizio Foni is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Italian and member of the Institute of Anglo-Italian Studies at the University of Malta, with a specialisation in popular culture. His research interests and publications are in the areas of the Gothic, thriller and science fiction, comic-book series, as well as the fictional representations of sideshows and freaks.