www.phagoff.org
www.phagoff.org/asm
Graduated in Cultural Anthropology inside the Sociology department at “La Sapienza” University in Rome, Francesco WARBEAR Macarone Palmieri is an international stimulator of confrontation and deepenings in fields such as urban Anthropology, visual communication anthropology, digital anthropology, literature, art and emotions sociology, cultural studies with a specifical focus on queer culture. He is presently collaborating as assistant with the department of cultural anthropology in relationship to communication sciences at “La Sapienza” University. He is one of the four chief editors of the Cultural Studies Magazine entitled “Avatar, dislocazioni tra antropologia e comunicazione”. His publishings are rooted in a double circuit, whether academical or independent. He publishes his last book “Free Party” with Edizioni Meltemi and writes essays in magazines such as “Gomorra. Territori e culture dello spazio pubblico” produced by the Department of urban sociology at the University of Architecture in Ascoli Piceno. He collaborated with several publishers like Costa and Nolan or Castelvecchi or OGN (Non Governative Organizations) like “Transform Italia” for which he publishes a urbanistic project about countercultures in the nineties in Rome. He writes essays about queer culture on the Sunday supplement “Queer” of the newspaper “Liberazione”. He collaborates with “RomaStyle”, a portal dedicated to roman metropolitan cultures and events.
Regarding the independent side of publishing, Francesco WARBEAR Macarone Palmieri Co funds, produces and selfpublishes the most wild and politically uncorrect independent magazine of the Italian nineties: “Torazine. Capsule policrome di controcultura pop”; later adopted by the independent publishing “Venerea Edizioni” which is now publishing the bastard son of Torazine, called “Catastrophe” where Francesco WARBEAR Macarone Palmieri keeps on writing essays about “pop culture and anthropology of the black holes”. In the same area of publishing actionism, he cures a project of literature sociology published as “Letteratura Chimica Italian. Storie sotto” with the former group of Torazine and Venerea editions. He collaborates with multiple independent publishers like “Derive e Approdi” or “Shake Edizioni Underground” from Milan, publishing essays about digital countercultures on the magazine “Decoder”. In that area he gets involved in the cyberpunk movement with the first subversive bbs network called “Cybernet” where he manages the “Nomadismi” forum, which later develops into a website and in a very active newsgroup dedicated to nomadic strategy topics. Torazine become the filter through which Francesco WARBEAR Macarone Palmieri starts to be an “event designer” producing parties, concerts, exhibitions, festivals. The biggest and most important activities are held in the historical Italian squatted social center Forte Prenestino, where he co-produces three editions of “O.F.F. – Overdose Fiction Festival”: an independent movie festival dedicated to independent italian cinema, sexualities, modified states of consciousness, moving video languages between fiction, documentary and DIY culture. A new group forms itself from that scenario and gives life to and independent television project called “Candida, La tv elettrodomestica” where Francesco WARBEAR Macarone Palmieri manages two television formats such as “Sessi Estremi Mutanti” dealing with sexual drop out cultures and “I predatori dell’ansa svenduta” playing with the eighties ”That’s incredible” methodology to surf the “impossible but true” news.
The nickname “Warbear” comes out from the Italian bears scene (the term “bears” mean big hairy bearded masculine homosexuals) that Francesco Macarone Palmieri contributes to develop and grow, being the founder of the roman/Italian beargroup Epicentro URsino Romano. The focus here is a research on the gender practice of de-symbolized masculinities production and developing with the organization of bearfuck parties, international bear meetings, bear art exhibitions, writings and publishings in the academic network dedicated to masculinity like the American e-magazine called “Verisimiltudes” produced by Les Wright.
Getting Deeper inside queer studies as a tool for identity deconstruction inside the G.l.b.t. scenario, Francesco WARBEAR Macarone Palmieri starts to be promoter and antiDJ, giving life to a multilinguistic queer project called PHag OFF. This is the dawn of a new era who produces lighting designs for a post gay imaginary. Phag OFF uses its irreverence to express what lies between new sexual identities and the radical critique to power relationships inside the g.l.b.t. community (as an historified form of expression fo the sexual differences) and the radical deconstruction of identity. Phag OFF produces and rides the sexual new wave: cultural Frankenstein, freaks identities, morbid war machines. PHAG OFF deconstructs inner stereotypes of gay communities: “Another sexuality is possible” PHAG OFF has the form of a monthly bacchanal party. A dirty mail-art-like newsletter is the track to follow; the party extreme contents are driven by: Politically incorrect vjing with DIY queer porno and freewareopensource video software; Queer Music promotion – being it queer djing with a special focus on information freedom through plagiarism, bootlegs, mash ups or/and queer bands, live sets; Fanzines, Exhibitions; Spoken words and performances; Independent video presentations; Pink rallies; Participation to queer related festival and conferences.Phag OFF gives a specifical focus to the video information freedom using DIY pornography as a political incorrect tool to destroy taboos and the reforming gay moralism in the ongoing sexual gentrification process of the historified postmodern sexual cultures. Being any form of counterculture an experimentation of politically uncorrect languages, Phag OFF does connect to the industrial imaginery with tekno experimentations of red magik video. Morphing cultures is our aim. To spread the porno weapon of cultural criticisim, Phag OFF uses a free open source software called “Flxer”. The software is based on a mixer video and a video database/community who supports DIY videosharing through a huge amount of selfmade libraries. The party changes taking shape from the relationships that it creates. It focuses on the production of multiple and intense sexualities. In this orientation – besides the monthly parties – Phag OFF basically Co-produces 3 Festivals. The first is The “Queer jubilee” totally dedicated to queer culture, The second is the “Tekfestival” an independent movie festival where Phag OFF cures the queer movie section and the third is the “Lady Party” which is a fe.male gender themed festival, always concerning a gendered approach to contemporary forms of expression. Phag OFF already participated to the “Hack The Gender section” of the “AHA – Activism Hacktivism Artivism” conference in Berlin and to the “Queering Sound Festival” in Washington DC, U.S.A. as Digital Contributors.