Serge Segay, Rea Nikonova and Italy: Between Futurism and Mail Art

This essay examines the contacts between the Russian artists Rea Niko- nova and Serge Segay and Italian authors of Visual Poetry, with a special focus on the international Mail Art network in the second half of the 1980s. While Nikonova and Segay’s literary works and their rôle in the formation of the Transfurist group have already been well researched, their relationship with Italian artists interested in the Futurist tradition has not yet received much scholarly attention. Drawing on a rich spectrum of archival materials, this essay shows how this creative exchange was instrumental in the re-positioning of the Russian couple in the 1990s, focussing in particular on the case of Segay, who characterized his trip to Italy in November 1989 as “going back” to the roots of Futurism and as a means of “moving for- wards”. While Carlo Belloli’s preface for Segay’s Poèmes pour ballerines de grand théâtre de l’URSS (Poems for Ballerinas of the Great Soviet Theatre, 1990) situated his Russian colleague within the ‘family’ of Futurism, Segay’s interest in Italian art was indeed more broadly oriented. He undertook a number of collaborations with Italian authors of Visual Poetry and mail artists inspired not only by Futurist, but also Dadaist and Surrealist strategies. In this essay, particular attention will be de- voted to two books authored by Segay and Nikonova with Vittore Baroni, using the technique of the cadavre exquisite, as well as to their sound improvisation with the Turinese artists Alberto Vitacchio and Carla Bertola, Zvukovoi kvadrat (Sound Square), released as a record in 2007. Lastly, my analysis will refer to Nikonova and Segay’s collaboration with the Milan-based artist Ruggero Maggi, which led to a series of exhibitions oscillating between the idea of “a museum without walls” (pursued at that time within the Mail Art network) and the interaction with local communities in Yeysk and Milan.