Where was the horde of necromancers who had opposed for decades their black liturgies to the attempts to recover the city centre? Where was that ethics of the margin that had schizophrenically held together the youth proletariat and bumpkins, punks and squatters and rave party people. In the semi-central Testaccio area already touched by tourists in search of monuments, Cichitone invented an event called Phag Off that, more or less monthly, was held in the tiny rooms of the Metaverso venue. It was a party attended by a cross audience that put together fag communities, old school squatters and regretful ravers. There was a good atmosphere at Phag Off: sexuality that had been kept under control for years by the abuse of ecstasy and other chemical slops exploded into an enjoying orgy made by undressed, sweated and rubbed bodies, in the name of a festive, joyful, gleefully uninhibited depravity. People exchanging fist fucking in the middle of a dancing audience under the startled eyes of some off-campus schoolgirls, fucks in the bathrooms, snogging with the first you see, MDMA strips snorted illegaly behind the bar counter. It was probably the most talked-about party in Rome at least until 2005. It was all so… liberating. Yet it was all so reassuring. Closed in a licensed club a stone's throw from the centre town, there was no more the thrill to which the practice of the limit had accustomed you. The erotic explosion that radiantly exploded inside acquired the ambiguous contours of the performance.
Valerio Mattioli Remoria Minimum Fax, 2019
