In January of 1980, moving in New York from Rome, Sandro Dernini with Luigi Ballerini, director of the NYU Italian Studies Program, conceived the new Center for Italian Contemporary Culture of New York University. The Center's activities started in the fall 1980 with a multidisciplinary program, called The Artist in the First Person, presented as an “open window” for contemporary Italian artists to be directly in contact with NYU theatre, cinema, dance, visual arts departments as well as with the New York art community. Each event was produced with by participation of the artist as coproducer of it. The program was opened by Massimo Sarchielli, who performed in a NYU class the cooking of a “pappa al pomodoro”, to introduce to the American audience the Italian cultural flavour through which to view his videotape Anna, the first Italian reality video made in the early 70s with Alberto Griffi. At the end of 1981, the contemporay music trio, made by Giancarlo Schiaffini, Antonello Neri and Massimo Cohen, performed within the NYU Italian Center's program and with long night conversations with them Sandro Dernini started to develop the seminal idea of what was called after “plexus”.