Elisabetta d'Inghilterra, Lecture-performance 37ª Biennale di Venezia, 1976

This publication brings, for the first time in book form, the complete word-for-word transcription of the lecture-performance presented by Agnetti on 21 July 1976 in the rooms of the Giudecca in Venice, as part of ATTIVO, a programme organised by Tommaso Trini during the 37th Venice Biennale.

The performance belongs to Agnetti's Teatro Statico – a theatre that unfolds, as the artist himself stated, "inside the observer". The scenic setup was conceived to draw the viewer gradually and almost imperceptibly into the work: a room with twelve photographic images, a table, a chair, a light, two microphones (A and B), and the performer-orator alternating between critical action and storytelling. Fifty years on, the video recording of that event has been transformed into a book: a pure transcription, word for word, image for image, of what happened then.

The essay by Bruno Corà situates Elisabetta d'Inghilterra within Agnetti's broader practice – from his early encounter with the Piccolo Teatro school in Milan to the development of a subtractive poetics in which performance strips away everything superfluous: actors, costumes, sets, text. What remains is the word in its irreducible ambiguity, and the object as a "reminder" around which a discourse is built. "Perception is gaining consciousness", Agnetti declared, "not celebration". A text by Germana Agnetti, daughter of the artist, reflects on what changes – and what is gained and lost – when a performance becomes a book.