Technological Poetry: Interconnections between Impegno, Media and Gender in Gruppo 70 (1963–1968)

Gruppo 70 was an Italian neo-avant-gardist group of artists and critics, including Lamberto Pignotti, Eugenio Miccini, Lucia Marcucci, Luciano Ori, Ketty La Rocca, Giuseppe Chiari, Emilio Isgrò, Roberto Malquori, and Michele Perfetti, which opened up the genre of poetry to the performative and visual languages of mass communication. In this article we focus on some of the key debates revolving around the Gruppo 70, in order to explore what form of impegno developed in their theoretical writings and creative interventions, and how this impegno was negotiated in the works of artists such as Lamberto Pignotti and Ketty La Rocca in particular. More specifically, we are concerned to investigate the interconnections between impegno, media and gender in the shift from theory – the theory of impegno was principally developed by male artists and critics – to artistic practice, a field in which, as we shall see, the work of female artists developed a strong critique of mass society and technological culture but remained largely marginalised.