Body – Corpo
CONDO
C O N D O Magazine N.7 Feb. 2015 Thanks to / Grazie a: Silvia Alberghina Mattia Balsamini Rona Binay Marta Corato Darkum Neik Enrico Ferrarini Vasya Kolotusha Christo Viola Thanks to Chloe Anderson and Nina Kurose for helping us with our (not professional) translations. Grazie a Chloe Anderson e Nina Kurose per averci aiutato con le nostre traduzioni (non professionali). Editors Gabriella De Domenico Lucia Del Zotto Alessandra Giro Giovanni Andrea Pamio www.condozine.org condozine@gmail.com
Note New year, new life. Condo has made its resolutions to do something new. We decided to manifest it in annual key concepts that are going to guide every issue’s topic. In 2015 we are going to talk about Systems in the following order: Body, Language, City. Somehow we are not that different from an earthworm: our lives are not only ruled by economic and anthropo-logical systems, but perhaps most of all by pre-cultural factors, by chemical interactions. In this issue you can look very closely to the components of this fascinating, and sometimes disgusting, system. With relation to disease, degeneration, death or decomposition, exploitation or anthropological perception, torture or dismemberment, the body seams to be a perfect system -- a fascinating and mysterious mechanism in ongoing mutation, perpetually running towards his own regeneration, end and dissolution. Condo #7 investigates the body as a system with a disturbing feeling. Changing from the traditional sculptural forms, the issue opens with yelling bodies that are stuck in stone, but at the same time are in an eternal tension. From showing sexuality to dead bodies, and research for immortality and perfection, no aspects of this study are uplifting. Condo #7 makes a picture of the body in its most brutal sides: with no elevation or nobility, what we show you in this issue is imperfection. We show you the twisted nature of the human being and the creepy poetry behind this system.
Nota Anno nuovo, vita nuova. Condo ha fatto i suoi buoni propositi e si rinnova. Abbiamo deciso di farlo funzionare per concetti chiave annuali che guideranno i temi di ogni numero. Nel 2015 si parlerà di Sistemi, nell'ordine Corpo, Linguaggio, Città. Per certi versi non siamo dissimili da un lombrico: la nostra esistenza non è regolata solo da un sistema economico e antropologico, ma prima di tutto da fattori preculturali, da interazioni tra sostanze chimiche. In questo numero potrete guardare da vicino le varie componenti di questo affascinante e a volte disgustoso sistema. Che si tratti di malattia, degenerazione, morte o decomposizione, di strumentalizzazione o percezione antropologica, di tortura o smembramento, il corpo sembra rimanere un meccanismo affascinante e misterioso in continua mutazione, in perpetua corsa verso la propria rigenerazione, fine e dissoluzione. Condo #7 indaga il sistema corpo con una nota di inquietudine. Muovendo dalle tradizionali forme scultoree, il numero si apre con dei corpi urlanti, fissati nella pietra, ma allo stesso tempo in un’eterna tensione. Dalla sessualità ostentata al corpo morto, soffermandosi nel mezzo sulla ricerca dell’immortalità e della perfezione, nulla di tutto ciò è celebrativo. Condo #7 ritrae il corpo nei suoi aspetti più crudi, nessuna elevazione o nobilitazione dello stesso, quello che viene presentato in questo numero è l’imperfezione, la natura finita dell’essere umano e la poesia a volte inquietante che sta dietro a questo sistema.
#7 ENRICO FERRARINI Il Corpo The Body VASYA KOLOTUSHA Folds Pieghe DARKUM NEIK Sole di stagno su Gehenna Tin sun on Gehenna CHRISTO VIOLA Drunk Green – Verde Ubriaco Hen’s shoot down – Gallina a terra SILVIA ALBERGHINA Conservazione e trattamento post-mortem dei corpi umani nell’archeologia della morte. Conservation and post-mortem treatment of human bodies in the archeology of Death. MATTIA BALSAMINI Reuben MARTA CORATO Esco dal mio corpo I go out from my body RONA BINAY Pas de mots pas de son No words no sounds – Nessuna parola nessun suono
The Body
Il Corpo
Enrico Ferrarini
Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il
corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo copro corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo
è. è contenitore. è limite. è mio. è tuo. è fragile. è resistente. è materia. è caldo. è freddo. è vita. è morte. è pieno. è vuoto. è arma. è difesa. è spazio. è tempo. uccide. cura. è teso. è rilassato. è fermo. è movimento. è sesso. è liquido. è solido. è espressione. è muto. è attimo. è eternità. è unione. è rumore. è silenzio. è colore. è profumato. è inodore. è sentire. è reale. è astratto. è compagno. è amico. è nemico. è passione. è toccare. è esplosione. è scudo. è gioia. è rabbia. è singolo. è duplice. è molteplice. è meraviglia. è potenza. è studio. è gustare.
Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il Il
corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo corpo
è immaginazione. è presenza. è assenza. è sicurezza è incertezza. è strumento. è didò. sorregge. abbandona. è mito. è storia. è guida. è prigione. è origine. è fine. è conduttore. è isolante. è paura. è coraggio. è volo. è caduta. è pesante. è leggero. è sangue. è polvere. è seta. è sabbia. è lei. è lui. è sale. è dolce. è amaro. è luce. è ombra. è condivisione. è vicino. è lontano. è solo. è insieme. è pittura. è musica. è architettura. è scultura. è arte. è evoluzione. è utile. è inutile. è pulito. è sporco. è gentile. è bestiale. è consapevolezza. è incoscio. è complesso. è semplice. è.
Italiano The body The body is. The body is container. The body is limit. The body is mine. The body is yours. The body is fragile. The body is tough. The body is matter. The body is warm. The body is cold. The body is life. The body is death. The body is full. The body is empty. The body is weapon. The body is defence. The body is space. The body is time. The body kills. The body heals. The body is tense. The body is relaxed. The body is still. The body is moving. The body is sex. The body is liquid. The body is solid. The body is expression. The body is dumb. The body is moment. The body is eternity. The body is union. The body is noise. The body is silence. The body is colour. The body is perfumed. The body is odourless.
English The body is feeling. The body is real. The body is abstract. The body is companion. The body is friend. The body is enemy. The body is passion. The body is touching. The body is explosion. The body is shield. the body is joy. The body is anger. The body is single. The body is double. The body is multiple. The body is marvel. The body is power. The body is study. The body is tasting. The body is imagination. The body is presence. The body is absence. The body is security. The body is uncertainty. The body is instrument. The body is theraputty The body supports. The body abandons. The body is myth. The body is history. The body is guide. The body is prison. The body is origin. The body is end. The body is conductor. The body is insulating. The body is fear. The body is courage.
The body is flight. The body is fall. The body is heavy. The body is light. The body is blood. The body is dust. The body is silk. The body is sand. The body is her. The body is him. The body is salt. The body is sweet. The body is bitter. The body is light. The body is shadow. The body is sharing. The body is close. The body is far. The body is alone. The body is together. The body is painting. The body is music. The body is architecture. The body is sculpture. The body is art. The body is evolution. The body is useful. The body is useless. The body is clean. The body is dirty. The body is kind. The body is beastly. The body is awareness. The body is subconscious. The body is complex. The body is easy. The body is.
- Vasya Kolotusha PIEGHE
L
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Non è libero chi è schiavo del proprio corpo Lucio Anneo Seneca
Italiano One who is a slave of his own body is not free. Lucio Anneo Seneca Caleb was running like a man possessed. His t-shirt was drenched with sweat, his heart was in his throat, he couldn’t stop panting. His legs were powerful plates of titanium, they were shining and strong, as if they had just been manufactured. He pulled loose the finish line with his chest. He won. The crowd was beside itself. Thousands of exultant people, overflowing smiles, screaming soars of joy. The crowd stood to honour their champion. An thunderous roar of clapping flooded him with pride. The stadium screen flashed intermittently, spreading a subliminal message through the atmosphere. 28 miles per hour. A record. He had written a new page of history, witnessed by his exhausted and smoking shoes. He had won the world record. He was incredulous, crying. Tears moulded by a pride never felt before, shining dew melting under the sun. But suddenly everything changed. An irritating sound resonated in his head, an intense cold filled his skullcap. He closed his eyes, opening them a few seconds later. A badly furnished room. A mundane chair, grey dust spread on filthy furniture. A burdened existence, fucking true. The pause was over, he switched the life simulator off with his left finger. He was back to gloomy reality. A painful cramp assaulted his flesh, the decomposed mass that was now his calf. The pills. He had to take a dozen of them per day. Always. He had to swallow small cherry-flavoured anthrax pills. He moved his hand along the built-in keyboard, slowly. The wheelchair reached the table. Damned dystrophy. It was near impossible for Caleb to pick up the packaging, he held out his arm with huge effort. But he made it, as always, as always. Doctors told him that his muscular degeneration had stopped. He couldn’t get worse: even though he couldn’t get better, it was something. One of the white-coated dandies had once passionately proclaimed that he was a unique case. Then, the other immediately stopped him, saying that he knew at least two or three similar cases. He couldn’t even be first with regards
English to his disease. His life expectancy increased by forty years. Forty years of corn in the ass, a diet for the sick with no appetite. What satisfaction! Caleb thought back, remembering the specialist’s sentences, about the heirs to Duchenne. The green alarm switched on. An intermittent emerald ray lit his face. The break was just starting for the slaves of the mine of Gehenna. He switched on the wall-mounted screen. Gehenna was a grey, arid desert, plagued by molybdenum fogs. A glimpse of hell lit seventeen hours per day by a small, numb sun. Caleb adjusted the image on the screen, with the help of a remote control. Deep shafts penetrated cold, endless, dark recondite places. It was difficult for him to see the tiny pickaxe going up and down. He vigorously pushed the pause button. It looked like a huge placenta. Hundreds of miners climbing to reach the big, secluded room, coming out of the dark with their faces and overalls stained with black sperm from that forgotten planet. The slaves, the colonists’ kids. People who lived in the wild. Caleb was lying on his back on the wheelchair. Lately he was very much at ease. He could move his knees, turn his head both ways and bend his arm at the elbow. Within Duchenne’s limits. And in that position he used to observe them, looking as though they were drawn, fucking obscene. He was scrutinizing them, deeply envious. Aesop, the foreman, emerged from the darkness like a turd able to float along the toilet bowl. He had a spring in his step, with robust, resistant legs and arms gesticulating in the throes of uncontrollable excitement. Caleb wanted to flush the toilet, though unfortunately wasn’t able to. Aesop got close to Linda, showing off. It seemed as though the woman was laughing. Zooming the lens Caleb discovered that she was smiling. “Damned bitch.” Caleb said loudly. “Now I’m going to make you swallow all Gehenna’s dust, fucking hero.” He smiled, he was not used to doing it and he seemed to notice a tickle in his cheeks. The miners were colonists’ kids, kids of a criminal gang, sentenced to life imprisonment, sent
Italiano over there to flail around in the bowels of a sick planet. Gehenna was a glint in the shrewd businessman’s eyes, a planet jam-packed with mining riches. A prison without bars, without God and law. Team-47 literally stormed the food reserves. “What filthy men!” Caleb cried out, in a tone of voice scratched by latent bile. Some possessed by the heat, ate their rations standing, or worse, on the floor. Hungry slaves that ripped thin, white slabs to shreds with their teeth, slabs rich in rehydratable condensed proteins and vitamins, without smell, without taste. The slaves under the most intense control were sitting at the tables quickly devouring their rations, almost choking. But not Aesop, he was still standing, stiff as a ramrod, showing off to Linda. Caleb watched the scene with a sinister, sardonic sneer. Caleb observed with amazement the different, coloured drawings that covered the walls of the room. There were continuous optical illusions, pictures portraying objects and if you moved a little further, showing different ones. The cathode tube, switched on, was bothering him. A ruin. Non three-dimensional moving pictures were streaming. Pathetic pictures of home. It was broadcasting one of those ancient shows: entertainment shows for the working class. Made in order not to have to think, or better still, not to make people think. A sort of comedy built behind the scenes, where people scream randomly, nothing is solved and, who knows why, the audience gets louder. Caleb, overwhelmed by twitting screams, tried to concentrate on the screen. A woman, well, a plastic and silicone thing that looked like a woman, was rattling off weird and nonsensical epithets, with a marked guttural pronunciation. Revolting! Revolting also was the way she was made up: completely fake, a plastic-hearted duck acting like a goose. Eventually Eunus made up his mind to come in. He was chewing a red fruit-flavoured KAMUT bar. “Caleb, what are you doing here?” He was looking at him incredulous, while he kept on chewing the mass of food in his mouth. “You told me to come to see you?” Eunus touched his chin with his fingers, he
English thought. Behind the thick lenses you could see the thin pupils craving. “Yes, right. Sit down.” “I’m already sitting down.” Caleb’s tone was rough. “Yes, right. I meant come closer.” Eunus sat down on the chair at his working spot. “You know, I think I’m high. I had a trip.” He was laughing scornfully while Caleb blocked the wheels of his chair. “You should give up with that, Eunus. That stuff carries your brain away.” “Bullshit. They say so just for the sake of talking.” “Excuse me, but there is the life simulator. Isn’t that better?” Eunus was stalling, his head and his chest were lopsided, he was moving like an addict and he was getting upset. “It is not. They want to make you believe that it is better. It sucks, starting from the fact that you have a hole in your back connected by a wire to a power outlet.” “But you can choose what to watch, how long. You are the master.” Eunus was shaking his head with too much animosity. “That’s exactly the thing. I don’t want to be a master. Where is the adventure if I already know everything? They decide what you watch, you only have to choose which you like better. Have you ever seen a white rabbit smoking pot in laboratory and taking you by the hand into an expanse of pink sand populated by sick vaginas? I bet you didn’t. You have never had a tour in your own unconscious, you have never even gone to the suburbs. All you did was wander around someone else’s imagination.” He took the full glass, that was placed on the table and started drinking it in small sips. Caleb was staring at him. When he put the glass down, he talked again and his eyes were wide open. “You know, I have always thought that you have been blessed by Cheyenne dystrophy.” “Duchenne” Caleb specified, he was bored. “Exactly, Cheyenne. Think about it, you would be better off using hallucinogenic drugs. You would feel your body fly. There are several rumours that those who can’t move have the best trips. They are less attached to the body. They let more of their imagination go.”
Italiano He took a small bag out of his pockets. He put it on the table. “Eunus, what are you doing?” “I’m giving you Yerviba. The new hallucinogenic drug. This is what you asked me for.” Caleb was getting fed up. “No, this is not what I asked you for.” Eunus was taken aback: “Isn’t it?” “No, it is not. I came here to give you the name of the miner that I chose to go with your team during the extraction of the pink diamonds.” “Fuck, the pink diamonds! What a blast merely pronouncing the word. A mountain of money will wait for us when we extract them. They could pay our dues… small insignificant stones could let us go back home.” “Right.” Caleb sighed. “I need some expertise. The operation is very risky. If someone slips on the wrong stone, the miners could get badly injured. Give me Jackson, he is good.” “Well, now we are getting down to the nitty gritty. I want to give you Aesop instead.” Eunus started shaking his head again, the movement was more controlled now. “No, not Aesop. He is a foreman, he would conflict with my workers. You know how they are these slaves, giving them little importance it is enough to make them always want more. They would be at each other’s throats, my men would work badly. And I don’t understand, he is the least experienced foreman of the mine.” “Exactly for this reason, it would stabilise my team’s moral. He has to earn his title on the field.” “I even prefer that mincer, Nina, to Aesop. Anyway, if you really insist. But you have to tell me where to place him, otherwise we risk bringing everything down before we’ve even started.” Caleb’s gaze was fixed, he didn’t even blink. “In the front line. Yes, before everybody. That way he will be alone and won’t compete with Herbert. You will see how this will make him want to stop commanding.” The blue neon light, placed at the highest point of the front wall, started switching on. It was probably a sort of alarm clock, you couldn’t tell exactly, the fact is that when it radiated fully, it seemed to wake Eunus up from his not particularly lucid condition.
English “All right, as you want Caleb. But remember that this has a price. Not excessively high, but substantial in part.” Caleb pulled back his head, laying it back on the small pillow anchored to the rest of the chair. “It seems more than right to me.” Eunus started pressing keys, focused on communicating the order to his team. Caleb was attracted by palpitating music, music coming from the television. It was set on a commercial channel. That ancient cathodic tube, that was only working by now in muddy, forgotten ghettos, was a real object from the past. Caleb was observing it, yet he didn’t remember much about it. He was enraptured by the footage. A dense crowd of men and women was moving toward the camera. They had their own bearing, a singular posture, even if they were not exactly human beings. Everyone was different. Some had pieces of steel instead of legs, others thin photo-chromic strips instead of eyes. The footage was showing that they could run at amazing speed and resist high temperatures, see things that others couldn’t thanks to artificially developed bionic sensors. The transhumanists, the latest Eugenic’s invention. Caleb was enraptured, he was watching the close-up of the only human being of the group. A charismatic man, marked by a deep scar passing through the right side of his face, from forehead to chin. “Knock on the doors and they will be opened for you.” Hushed, he was playing. “Come to me and I will turn your bad into good.” “The message was clear: he looked like a sort of messiah, a new Christ, and maybe he let his hair grow on purpose. He also posed with his hands like he was in a holy portrait, like he was depicted in the holy pictures in the 20th century. “We are transhumanist. Those who decided to appear as they want, not as nature wanted.” Men and women paraded, they had perfect aluminium bodies. “I can make those unable to walk, walk, I can make blind people see, I can make deaf people hear their own voice. I can make you cross any limit. Everything is real, it is not a life simulation, everything is real.”
Italiano Caleb couldn’t take his eyes off the television. “If you too, you want to be better, address Mahdi Hawkmoorland. I’ll be waiting for you here in Shangrilla and we will discuss together who or what you wish to be. Remember, honest tariffs, based on your budget.” Strong aluminium men and women threw discs that reached impressive distances. Then they shot up where a hundred naked bodies created pictures on a landscape showing an artificial mountain made of reinforced cement. A voice-over planted a heavy fist in eye of the show with its contrast with the shots. “Remember, advance payment. We don’t accept instalments, nor credit cards, not even with the fibre optic system.” “Caleb…” Eunus had just finished communicating orders to the team. “Caleb!” He called him again. Caleb turned towards him. “You shouldn’t watch that rubbish. I only switch the television on because sometimes I feel lonely in this room. But it’s just rubbish.” Caleb was taken aback, drops of sweat were falling from his forehead. He barely managed to move his right hand towards his pocket to swallow another pill. They let him pass through the mine’s big gate. He entered in small steps, as if he had just learned how to walk. He made it. The first free man in Gehenna’s mine. He went to the bare offices on Copper Mountain. They laughed in his face and told him that it seemed absurd that a man made such a long journey to become a slave. Constantine Mtumwa, that was his name, the mine’s most recent purchase. He wasn’t an ordinary person. He had two iron arms able to turn and crumble stones. He could walk for days and days without stopping, not even for a second, with two legs lined with brass. He convinced the people working in the office and he got what he wanted. The businessmen of the mining planet too showed him some humanity, paying a high salary to an ‘employed’, a special worker. The amount was good, but nobody ever told him what the Gehenna mine was like, nor that what he would see wouldn’t
English be worth the money, even for a quadruple salary. The damned people’s hideout. “Don’t tell anybody that you are paid.” A sinister man, covered in a trench made of Orion cashmere metal sheets, told him. “Don’t tell any of those boors what there is on the other side of the shit that they shovel everyday, otherwise they would leave.” Somebody also told him that he should have got vaccinated against rabies if he wanted to talk to his future colleagues, but it was a joke, because there was a weird atmosphere of hysterical laughs, a little grotesque and extremely cynical. Constantine joined team 47 which was, for the moment, the only team that had one of its employees at the hospital because his bones were smashed; team 47 was also the only one that had recently changed its foreman. Nobody told him what he had to do. Nevertheless, Constantine turned out to be a prodigy. He knew where to put his hands, he knew the stone and limestone bowel perfectly and it was easy for him to move in deep darkness. He became very popular. Especially when he was tinkering with the hoe destroying the stone walls in a second. “Fuck, I bet you do this to show off to chicks.” That was the first thing Jackson said as soon as he saw him. Constantine was privileged from the first day. He didn’t use the communal showers, nor did he sleep in the smelly pigsty of beds piled one on top of the other. He had a whole room to himself outside the mine, close to the control areas. An authentic eugenics prodigy used for the most intense work. Constantine used his hands to dig quickly in huge tunnels. The only critical point was breaktime, when he was compelled to eat the slabs without taste. An absurd scenario for the teams’ control agents. They watched the mountain of flesh and iron sitting upright eating his ration, upset in front of the riff-raff of voracious animals. His dynamic attitude and the different service that the chiefs were reserving for him made Constantine a sort of naked king. At lunch time the women stared at him ceaselessly. His muscles and skin seemed shoddy compared to
Italiano the metal. Constantine was fixated on Linda in particular, and she was reciprocating. She fancied him badly. Constantine was sure of the conquest. Once he joined her at her table and stared at her with his icy eyes. “Have you been eating alimentary tables all your life?” Linda took her time to answer, then emitted a hoarse and guttural sound. That was a yes, Constantine assumed. “Come over to my place and I will let you eat like you never did before in your life.” The sentence was spontaneous. He couldn’t have even imagined saying something like that before. The thing is that he didn’t like Linda’s attitude: too boorish and aggressive. In the moment it seemed to him a positive thing, a good way to break the ice and successfully make a pass at her. Linda was upset. She had never once been out of the pigsty which imprisoned her, she did not even know if she could do it. Eventually she answered with another sound, similar to the first one. Gehenna was hell. Nothing else. Its damned ego resounded everywhere and seemed to change the people. It turned the miners into hairless monkeys. The alarm rang: work had to go on. Constantine took the hoe and disappeared into the womb of the earth. He kept on thinking about his date with Linda. Some smuggling and negotiation was enough to get a visa to allow Linda to leave. Finally it was time and Linda was so shocked that she got confused. The sumptuously laid table, complete with refined tablecloth, gold dishes and cutlery awoke her curiosity. She devoured succulent food like an animal coming from the upper class of Gehenna. Constantine, who was observing her, re-experienced the lunch break. She literally dismembered an Alpha Dragonis rabbit. A starved, disgusting beast, that is what she looked like. Constantine lost his appetite and he stopped fixing his eyes on Linda’s thighs, he also stopped scrutinizing her chest and the rest of her sinuous body, shredded by hard work. A few minutes earlier he thought her body was a dream. And yet her face started to seem a disgrace. Too square, her eyes
English were tiny cracks and her mouth was too thin. Overall, he blundered. She was a big woman with a toned body, maybe too toned, with muscles which he found not particularly feminine. She wasn’t talking, she seemed in pain when he tried to get some disgraced sound out of her mouth and she was boorish, an animal. Constantine couldn’t stand the way that the closed and perverted system reset their minds. He threw a couple of roasted potatoes on the floor. Linda threw herself headlong, licking the fried oil-drenched carpet too. “Get out. Animal.” He yelled at her with an anger that he didn’t know, that he didn’t think he felt for anybody on earth. Linda was disenchanted, she didn’t understand. Constantine opened the door and indicated with his finger which way she was to go. Gehenna was a nightmare, a cage full of beasts. That is what it was. A planet full of smoking shit drenched with all the wretchedness of human kind. The silicon surgery was really cheap and Caleb observed this when Constantine’s mask fell off in the middle of a pile of stones. “Mahdi Hawkmoorland, damned son of a bitch.” Every day he had to take two showers, one for the body and then an oil one for the artificial joints. He couldn’t stand it anymore. He breathed in toxic metal fogs deeply. He stood in the middle of the desert, he wanted to kill himself. He waited for Gehenna to finish him. Hawkmoorland thought he had managed to trick death, he told him that the transhumanists couldn’t die. Bullshit, extraordinary bullshit made up by a swindler. Working as a slave to enjoy his own frustrated fantasies about the body was pure damnation. Life didn’t make sense anymore for Caleb. His chest was coming off, his legs and arms, as if the mephitic emanations of Gehenna were pulling them out. He was happily coughing. “Mahdi Hawkmoorland you are an asshole…” He was yelling at the top of his voice. “You can’t compete with death, asshole! It is going to carry us away, sooner or later.” A swelling grew on his neck. An horrible sensa-
Italiano tion surprised him. He thought he was breathing fire. Blackish spots covered his skin. Rotten blood, almost solid, and threads of petrified organs were coming out of the breaches in the swelling. Caleb was in pieces, but still he could think. He lost consciousness, but somehow he could see from the outside what he became. A pulp made of ash and stone. The sky was orange. The first morning light revealed the darkness and blurry shape of his terrible remains that were about to become dust. Finally Caleb’s glance lingered on his sparkling arms and legs. They weren’t compromised. A dim sun was shining on Gehenna, it was covered by clouds
English fraught with sulphur. Caleb observed the terrible state of his body spread in the infernal desert of the planet, but, before annihilating himself in a white tunnel, he saw, through ethereal eyes, that his legs and arms were still intact. Apparently, Mahdi Hawkmoorland, that bastard, had told the truth about death. The transhumanist remains were challenging time and space, they were resisting death. A breath of wind dragged Caleb’s remains to the stones of hell. The alarm clock rang in the slaves’ dorms, along the control agents’ rooms. A new day was beginning, it was lit by the placid tin sun of Gehenna.
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Silvia Alberghina CORPO
Ʃῶμα BODY
Conservazione e trattamento post-mortem dei corpi umani nell’archeologia della morte. Conservation and post-mortem treatment of human bodies in the archeology of Death.
2000 d.C. Soma
Quello che avviene dopo la morte di un essere umano non si limita ad essere un solo fatto fisico ma si compone di un misto di fattori biologici e di pratiche culturali. Il trattamento e la cura dei resti umani dei membri del gruppo è una delle prime pratiche che permette di rendere evidente il passaggio evoluzionistico tra le scimmie antropomorfe e il genere Homo Sapiens, nel Paleolitico Medio (le prime sepolture intenzionali sono databili a 115.000 - 90.000 anni fa). Probabilmente nata come esigenza igienico-pratica di rivestire i corpi dei morti in modo tale da non rendere il gruppo facile preda di animali predatori, l'atto sepolcrale viene successivamente ed inevitabilmente a caricarsi di valore simbolico, come proiezione della propria ed inevitabile fine (una sorta di: “il trattamento che io riservo a te, spero che sarĂ riservato anche a meâ€?), e contemporaneamente di senso religioso, che si manifesta in ogni cultura antica con una vasta e spesso complessa gamma di atti rituali e di credenze legate alla vita ultraterrena, per la quale il defunto viene preparato. E questa preparazione comprende principalmente due esiti: la conservazione o la distruzione del corpo del morto. Lo studio dei corpi conservati (anche detto mummiologia) prevede la conservazione dei tessuti molli dell'individuo. Si compone di due principali tipologie di resti: le mummie naturali, conservatesi accidentalmente in condizioni anaerobiche che ne hanno impedito la naturale decomposizione
3500 a.C.
Silvia Alberghina
(solitamente in ghiacciai o torbiere) (1- Ötzi, l'Uomo del Similaun), e le imbalsamazioni artificiali, che per la loro conservazione in lunghi periodi di tempo necessitano di un clima arido o molto caldo (come le famose mummie dell'Antico Egitto) o molto freddo (come le meno note mummie naturali prodotte dalle culture precolombiane) (2- La Doncella di Llullaillaco, Argentina). In particolare il fascino delle mummie egizie, che con la loro presenza percorrono l'intera storia di questo affascinante popolo (dal 3000 a.C. all'epoca ellenistica) erano realizzate attraverso una complessa serie di atti rituali e conservativi che prevedevano l'eviscerazione (gli organi erano poi conservati nei vasi canopi, divisi in settori ed ognuno protetto da una divinità) e l'essiccamento racchiudendo il corpo entro bende intrise di olii aromatici. Solo questo trattamento di conservazione del corpo avrebbe permesso allo spirito del defunto di sopravvivere anche nell'aldilà (3- La regina Tiye). Le pratiche funerarie più utilizzate nel mondo antico sono però l'inumazione e la cremazione. Entrambe furono utilizzate anche simultaneamente dalla Preistoria fino all'età cristiana, quando l'ideologia della resurrezione della carne renderà obbligatoria la sola inumazione. Anche in questo caso i rituali sono moltissimi e differenziati così come i 'contenitori' sia materiali (sarcofagi, urne, ossuari di vetro, banchine, ecc.) (4- Canopo chiusino) che architettonici (tombe a camera, a fossa semplice, mausolei, tumuli, navi, recinti e così via) atti a contenere
2000 d.C. Soma
fisicamente e a conservare la memoria del defunto nel tempo. Queste tipologie di monumenti variano moltissimo a seconda della cultura e dell'epoca storica di riferimento. Alcune culture praticavano la sola incinerazione, altre solo l'inumazione (5Guerriero Goto), altre ancora entrambe contemporaneamente o alternativamente a seconda dei periodi storici. Possono inoltre incontrarsi sepolture singole, multiple (solitamente riservate a membri della stessa gens/famiglia) o bisome ('doppie', ad uso esclusivo delle coppie coniugali o di persone legate da strettissima affinità parentale, come genitore/ figlio o fratelli/sorelle) nella stessa necropoli o addirittura nella stessa tomba o urna cineraria. La trattazione del corpo del defunto è sempre connessa con l'ideologia funeraria e con le credenze religiose della cultura di riferimento, sia che si tratti di 'conservazione' dell'intero corpo, che di 'distruzione' dello stesso. In alcune culture in cui era previsto un banchetto eterno ultramondano, al quale il defunto prendeva parte con i suoi antenati e per il quale doveva essere adeguatamente fornito di corredo (in particolare nel mondo antico 'classico', quello dei greci, dei romani e delle popolazioni italiche e del Vicino Oriente antico). Il corredo doveva ricordare la classe sociale, il genere e l'età del trapassato e accompagnarlo per essere utilizzato nell'aldilà . Spesso era composto da oggetti, utensili, armi, giocattoli, vestiti, gioielli e altri elementi di uso comune e realmente utilizzati dal defunto oppure molto sfarzosi, se si trattava di un aristocratico (navi,
3500 a.C.
Silvia Alberghina
carri da guerra, animali domestici sacrificati, ecc.). Per l'occasione venivano defunzionalizzati mediante rottura o piegatura o altra 'mutilazione' rituale al fine di renderli inutilizzabili nell'uso quotidiano e di dedicarli esclusivamente al mondo dei morti. Altri rituali prevedevano, invece, la realizzazione di un corredo dedicato appositamente all'ambito funerario e spesso di piccole dimensioni (miniaturistico), anche questa caratteristica lo rendeva 'esclusivo' del defunto e non utilizzabile dai vivi. Purtroppo, nonostante l'avanzamento delle tecniche d'indagine scientifica e metodologica, l'archeologia non sempre permette di ricostruire per intero l'ideologia religiosa ultramondana espressa dalla complessitĂ dei riti funerari che i viventi praticavano per accompagnare i cari estinti nel mondo oltre la vita, a causa della labilitĂ delle tracce prodotte da tali rituali. Le uniche letture che permettono di dare un'idea, ancorchĂŠ sbiadita, di questi mondi e della speranza che gli antichi vi riponevano proviene dall'interpretazione dei resti in nostro possesso: i monumenti funerari, i manufatti di corredo e, qualora conservati, i corpi dei morti.
ÖTZI, L’UOMO DEL SIMILAUN (3300 a.C.)
Il corpo di un cacciatore neolitico, travolto da una valanga e conservatosi all’interno di un ghiacciaio tra Italia e Austria. Rinvenuto nel 1991, attualmente conservato nel South Tyrol Museum of Archeology di Bolzano. Grazie alle straordinarie condizioni di conservazione è stato possibile conoscere nel dettaglio il suo abbigliamento e gli utensili che aveva con sé (tra cui arco, frecce, faretra, un giavellotto, una bisaccia e molto altro). Tra le recenti indagini biologiche effettuate sul corpo di Ötzi, in particolare lo studio dei pollini contenuti nei resti di pasto (ingesta) ancora all’interno del suo intestino hanno permesso di conoscere tutte le tappe del suo ultimo viaggio, ricostruibile grazie alle tipologie di alimenti consumati.
Particolare della mano destra.
Particolare dei piedi e di un tatuaggio sulla caviglia destra.
3300 a.C.
LA DONCELLA DI LLULLAILLACO Argentina
Una delle mummie Inca meglio conservate è quella rinvenuta, insieme con altre mummie di bambini, nel 1999 su una catena montuosa tra Cile e Argentina, conservata nel Museum of High Altitude Archaeology in Argentina. I bambini venivano comunemente sacrificati, nelle culture precolombiane centro e sudamericane, per ottenere dagli dei salute, ricchi raccolti e bel tempo. Solitamente di trattava di bambini di alto lignaggio, drogati con foglie di coca e una bevanda alcolica di mais simile alla birra (chicha). Le analisi biologiche condotte sulla Doncella hanno rivelato che aveva 15 anni, era imparentata con atri bambini sacrificati insieme a lei e che, nonostante presentasse un'infezione batterica ai polmoni, è morta nel sonno. La mummificazione è avvenuta naturalmente, forse non intenzionalmente, per conservazione nel ghiaccio.
Foto: La Doncella, una dei 'bambini di Llullaillaco', Argentina.
1500 a.C.
LA REGINA TIYE Egitto
Grazie allo studio del DNA, effettuato nel 2010 dall’ Università di Tübingen su 15 mummie egiziane ritenute imparentate con il celebre faraone Tutankhamon (salito al trono nel 1324 a.C.), è stato possibile ricostruire l’albero genealogico del faraone e attribuire un nome ad alcune mummie finora note solo con codici o con nomi fittizi quali ‘The Elder Lady’ (rinvenuta nella valle dei Re, a Tebe, in Egitto). Proprio quest’ultima, in ottime condizioni di conservazione, è risultata appartenere alla regina Tiye, moglie e sorella di Amenhotep III, madre di Akhenaton e nonna di Tutankhamon. Insieme alle mummie reali erano state seppellite due mummie di bambine morte prima della nascita, probabilmente figlie del famoso faraone.
Mummia di feto morto, dalla tomba di Tutankhamon.
La regina Tiye, particolare del volto e dei capelli.
1398 – 1338 a.C
CANOPO CHIUSINO CON MASCHERA Chianciano Terme (SI)
Alla fine dell’età Villanoviana, a Chiusi (in Etruria Settentrionale), con l’affermarsi del rito della cremazione, di derivazione probabilmente greca, si impone un ossuario con tendenze antropomorfe: il canopo. Questo ossuario poteva essere sia in terracotta comune (rossa) che in bucchero (ceramica nera etrusca) che in metallo, possedeva una testa, a volte solo abbozzata e completata da una maschera (simile alla maschera funeraria che veniva posta sul volto del defunto prima della combustione del corpo sulla pira funebre), da degli arti plastici o applicati, corredati solitamente da qualche attributo di status o di genere. Tracce di tessuto rinvenuti all’interno delle tombe fanno inoltre pensare che i canopi fossero abbigliati. Questa peculiare forma di ossuario antropomorfo nasce dall’esigenza di restituire un corpo, anche se fittizio, al defunto (in quanto il suo gli è stato sottratto con l’incinerazione) e per divinizzare, in questo modo, il simulacro dell’antenato.
Ossuario antropomorfo in bucchero, necropoli di Tolle, Chianciano Terme (SI).
VII sec a.C.
GUERRIERO GOTO ‘T’ Collegno (TO)
A Collegno (TO) sorge una necropoli in cui è stata riscontrata la compresenza di un nucleo funerario goto e di una più estesa area funeraria longobarda, che permette di individuare i tratti tipici e distintivi fra Goti e Longobardi. Nel primo sepolcreto, la deformazione fronto-occipitale trasversa ed intenzionale del cranio è stata riconosciuta, in un individuo maschio adulto inumato nella tomba T (verosimilmente il capo del gruppo) e anche in un soggetto infantile, a riprova prosecuzione della pratica durante lo stanziamento goto in Italia. La deformazione cranica artificiale era ottenuta con bendaggi applicati fin dall’età neonatale ed è frutto di una pratica del tutto estranea in Italia (e invece diffusa nell’Europa centroorientale tra V e VI secolo) atta a far sembrare il cranio del guerriero più imponente e minaccioso. Una delle conseguenze provocate dall’applicazione di questa tecnica era l’insorgere di ritardo mentale, causato dalla compressione della massa cerebrale sulla parete del cranio.
Particolare del cranio del Guerriero della tomba T della necropoli di Collegno (TO).
VI sec d.C.
Italiano What happens after the death of a human being is not limited to the scope of physical fact, but consists of a mixture of biological and cultural practices. The treatment and care of human remains between group members is one of the first practices that exemplifies the evolutionary transition between hominoids and the Homo Sapiens of the Middle Paleolithic period (the first intentional burials started 115.000 – 90.000 years ago). This practice most likely began for hygienic purposes, as coating the bodies of the dead to mask the scent of decay prevented the group from becoming an easy target for predatory animals. The burial act is subsequently and inevitably charged with symbolic value, as a projection of one’s own and inevitable end (an act of, “do unto others as they would do unto you”), as well as in a religious sense. Religion manifests itself in every ancient culture with a vast and often complex range of ritual acts or beliefs related to the afterlife, for which the deceased is prepared. This preparation results in one of two main outcomes: the preservation or the destruction of the body of the dead man. The study of preserved bodies is called mummyology, and the act of mummification allows for the preservation of the body’s soft tissues. Mummification results in of two main types of remains: the natural mummies, accidentally surviving under anaerobic conditions that have prevented natural decomposition (usually in glaciers or bogs) (1-Ötzi, the Similaun’s Iceman); and artificial embalming, which is used for the conservation of bodies for long periods of time and requires either a hot, arid climate (such as the famous mummies of ancient Egypt) or very cold climate (as the less known natural mummies produced by lots of pre-Columbian cultures) (2- The Doncella of Llullaillaco). In particular, Egyptian mummies, which were present throughout the history of this mysterious people (from 3000 BC to the Hellenistic period), were made through a complex series of ritual and conservative acts that included evisceration (organs that were stored in canopic jars, divided into anatomical sectors and each protected by a god) and drying by enclosing the body within bandages soaked in aromatic oils.
English Only this conservation treatment of the body would have allowed the spirit of the deceased to survive even in the afterlife (3- Queen Tiye). The funeral practices most used in the ancient world, however, were burial and cremation. Both were also used simultaneously from the prehistoric time to the Christian period, when the ideology of the resurrection of the body would render burial practices mandatory. Again, there are many diverse rituals as to the materials of the ‘containers’ (sarcophagi, urns, glass ossuaries, docks, etc.) (4- Canopus from Chiusi) and the architectural embodiment (chamber tombs, a simple pit, mausoleums, mounds, ships, fences, etc.) designed to physically contain and preserve the memory of the deceased throughout time. These types of monuments vary greatly depending on the culture and the historical period of reference. Some cultures practiced cremation alone, others only burial (5Goth Warrior); still others either simultaneously or alternately using both, according to historical periods. They also had single burials, burials of a group (usually reserved for members of the same gens / family) or double burials (for the exclusive use of the marital couples or individuals linked by narrow parental affinity, as parent / child or brothers / sisters) in same necropolis or even in the same tomb or funerary urn. The treatment of the body of the deceased was always connected with the funeral ideology and religious beliefs of the culture of reference; whether it be of ‘conservation’ of the whole body or ‘destruction’ of the same. Some cultures envisaged an otherworldly eternal banquet to which the deceased took part with his ancestors, and for which they had to be adequately supplied with the garnishes upon burial (in particular in the ‘classic’ world, that of the Greeks, the Romans and Italic peoples and the Ancient Near East people). The garnishes had to elicit the social class, gender, and age of the departed, and accompany him to be used in the afterlife. These often consisted of objects, tools, weapons, toys, clothes, jewelry and other items of common use that were actually used by the deceased in his real life; or very glitzy treasures, if the deceased was an aristocrat (ships, chariots, domestic animals sacrificed,
Italiano etc.). In this occasion, the goods were defunzionalized by breaking or bending or by other ritual ‘mutilation’ in order to make them unusable in daily life and to dedicate them exclusively to the world of the dead. Other rituals predicted, however, the realization of special equipment dedicated to the funeral field, which were often small miniatures --this feature also made him ‘exclusive’ of the deceased and not used by the living. Unfortunately, despite the advancement of scientific and methodological investigation techniques, archeology does not always allow to reconstruct the entire otherworldly religious ideology expressed by the complexity of funeral rites practiced by the living to accompany the dear departed in the world beyond life , due to the lability of the tracks produced by such rituals. The only readings that allow us to have an idea --albeit faint-- of these worlds, and to hope that the ancients they placed are there, comes from the interpretation of the remains in our possession: the funerary monuments, artifacts, equipment, where they are preserved, and the bodies of the dead people. 1- Ötzi, the Similaun’s Iceman (3300 B.C.) The body of Ötzi, a Neolithic hunter overtaken by an avalanche and preserved in a glacier between Italy and Austria, was discovered in 1991. The body is currently preserved in the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzen (Italy). Thanks to the extraordinary preservation conditions, it was possible to know in detail his clothing and the utensils that were with him (including a bow, arrows, a quiver, a javelin, a bag and more). Among the recent biological surveys carried out on the body of Ötzi, in particular the study of pollen found in the remains of the meal (ingesta) still inside his intestines, have allowed us to know all the stages of his last trip, which were able to be reconstructed due to analysis of his stomach contents. 2- The Doncella of Llullaillaco, Argentina (1500 A.D.) One of the best-preserved Inca mummies, called Doncella, was found in 1999, alongside other mummies of children, in a mountain range
English between Chile and Argentina. The mummies are preserved in the Museum of High Altitude Archaeology in Argentina. Children were commonly sacrificed, in the pre-Columbian cultures of the Center and South America, to ask the gods for health, harvests and good weather. These sacrifices were usually children of high birth, doped with coca leaves and a corn alcoholic drink similar to beer (chicha). Biological analyses conducted on Doncella (the Maiden) revealed that she was 15 years old when she was sacrificed, and that she was related to other mummified children found with her. Although it was found that she had a bacterial infection in her lungs, she died in her sleep. Mummification occurred naturally, perhaps unintentionally, for storage in the ice. 3- Queen Tiye (1398 – 1338 B.C.) Thanks to the study of DNA, carried out in 2010 by University of Tübingen on 15 Egyptian mummies considered relatives of the famous pharaoh Tutankhamun (ascended the throne in 1324 BC), it was possible to reconstruct the family tree of the pharaoh and give a name to some mummies that were previously known only with codes or with fictitious names such as ‘the Elder Lady’ (found in the Valley of the Kings, Thebes, Egypt). This mummy, found in excellent condition, was discovered to be that of Queen Tiye, the wife and sister of Amenhotep III, mother of Akhenaten and grandmother of Tutankhamun. Along with the royal mummies, two little mummies of children who had died before birth were also found. They are thought to be daughters of the famous pharaoh. 4- Canopus with mask from Chiusi, Chianciano Terme (SI, Italy). (VII century B.C.) At the end of the Villanovian age in Chiusi (in Northern Etruria), due to the sprout of the ritual of cremation deriving probably by Greek, came the process of building an ossuary with anthropomorphic tendencies: the canopus. This ossuary could be created either in common pottery (red), in bucchero (black Etruscan pottery), or in metal. Usually it had a head, sometimes only sketched and completed by a mask (sim-
Italiano ilar to the death mask that was placed on the face of the deceased before the combustion of their bodies on the funeral pyre), made from embossed arms or applied, usually accompanied by some attribute of status or gender. Traces of tissue found inside the tombs makes archeologists believe that these ossuaries were dressed. This peculiar form of anthropomorphic urn arises from the need to give back a body, even if a dummy, to the deceased (since its true body was lost with the incineration) and to deify, in this way, the simulacrum of the ancestor. 5- Goth Warrior ‘T’, Collegno (TO) (VI sec A.D.) In Collegno (TO, Italy) there is a cemetery in which was found the presence of a funeral nucleus of Goths and a wider Lombards funerary area. This allows for identification of the typi-
English cal features and distinguishing between Goths and Lombards. In the first burial, fronto-occipital transverse intentional deformation of the skull was recognized in a male adult individual buried in the tomb T (probably the head of the group) and also in a child individual, reflecting the continuation of the practice during the allocation of Goths people in Italy. The artificial skull-deformation resulted from bandages being applied right from birth. This was a very unusual practice in early medieval Italy (but rather widespread in Central and Eastern Europe between fifth and sixth centuries A.D.) which would make the skull of warrior look more imposing and menacing. One of the consequences caused by the application of this technique was the onset of mental retardation, caused by the compression of the cerebral mass on the wall of the skull.
REUBEN
M AT T I A B A L S A M I N I
I miei genitori sono africani, ma io sono nato a Palermo dove ho vissuto fino a tre anni fa. Quando ero ancora bambino in Sicilia ho conosciuto R. che è l’amico di cui vado piÚ fiero. Abbiamo ancora un legame fraterno, nonostate la distanza. Mi ha aiutato a tirare fuori la parte migliore di me in momenti in cui molte cose mi sembravano irreparabili. Questa amicizia per me è uno dei rapporti piu belli che si possano avere con una persona. Grazie a lui sono riuscito a sviluppare un carattere deciso. Nel cambiamento tra il sud e il nord mi ha dato la determinazione di ricominciare da capo.
Reuben
Italiano My parents are African but I was born in Palermo where I lived up until three years ago. When I was still a kid, in Sicily, I met R. who is the friend that I’m most proud of. We are still like brothers, despite the distance. He helped me to bring out the best of myself in moments when many things seemed unfixable. To me, this friendship is one of the most beautiful relationships you can have with someone. Thanks to him I have managed to develop a strong character. Moving from South to North, he gave me the determination to start over again. Reuben
English
Marta Corato
C’
è un disco degli Elio e le Storie Tese che si intitola “Esco dal mio corpo e ho molta paura”. Mio padre lo cita spessissimo, nelle occasioni più disparate. La frase mi faceva molto ridere, fino a che non ho iniziato a uscire dal mio corpo e, beh, avere molta paura. L’ultima volta che è successo ero in un locale affollatissimo con la mia amica sedicenne A. La serata pacifica aveva preso un’improvvisa piega drammatica quando un adolescente ormonale le si era attaccato addosso come una cozza, mettendola a disagio. La mia soglia di tolleranza bassissima per i molestatori mi aveva fatto scattare e gli avevo immediatamente chiesto di allontanarsi. Lui aveva risposto dicendomi di mangiare meno, cicciona. Non rompicoglioni, non ammosciacazzi. Cicciona. Improvvisamente ero fuori dal mio corpo: c’era un divario tra la creatura che lui identificava e quello che ero. Era quello il meglio che poteva fare? Era forse la sua gioventù a renderlo incapace di elaborare un insulto più intelligente? Aveva idea del fatto che questo corpo, il mio, conteneva uno spirito a cui lui era indegno di rivolgersi? Mentre ero distratta altrove, il mio corpo aveva fatto il suo volere: la forza del mio braccio ciccione aveva spinto lo sconosciuto a vari metri di distanza da noi. Se dicessi che l’essere grassa non mi ha mai fatto soffrire, mentirei. Se dicessi che avrei voluto essere magra, mentirei - infatti non lo sono neanche adesso. Negli anni ho collezionato decine, forse centinaia di momenti in cui il mio corpo veniva piazzato nella scala che va da non particolarmente attraente a rivoltante. Per via del mio peso, io non ero più una persona - ero un corpo. Il mio corpo. Senza me dentro. Fate una lista mentale di film e libri in cui c’è un personaggio grasso. Maschio o femmina - è indifferente. La sua taglia sarà l’unica caratteristica rilevante della sua personalità. In genere dirà solo cose che si riferiscono al cibo, o al massimo ai suoi bisogni corporali. Sento ancora quella fitta nello stomaco quando rivedo Harry Potter e il Calice di Fuoco e, nella scena in cui gli studenti imparano il valzer in vista del ballo, Minerva McGranitt suggerisce che in ogni ragazza ci sia “un cigno pronto a spiccare il volo”. Ron si gira verso una ragazza mai apparsa (e che non apparirà mai più) e commenta qualcosa sulle note di: “C’è qualcosa pronto a uscire da Eloise Midgen, e non è un cigno”. Eloise Midgen è sovrappeso, quindi incapace di essere qualcosa oltre ad un corpo flatulento.
Nella vita vera, l’amico ciccione maschio viene preso in giro per via della quantità di pippe che deve spararsi davanti al computer. Per una ragazza grassa, essere attratta a qualcuno è matematicamente impossibile. L’intera saga di Bridget Jones è basata sul fatto che sembra impossibile che una donna grassa abbia dei sentimenti, agisca su quella base, e magari abbia addirittura un responso positivo. Ancora peggio Shallow Hal, basato interamente sulla premessa che nessuna donna grassa potrà mai essere attraente non solo dentro, ma anche all’esterno, quindi via a Gwyneth Paltrow con un costume di gommapiuma come esempio di persona inguardabile che non ha mai avuto una vita sentimentale o sessuale. Pitch Perfect è uno dei miei film preferiti degli ultimi anni e una delle protagoniste (interpretata da Rebel Wilson) è Fat Amy, che si è autobattezzata così perché la parola “fat” non possa essere usata contro di lei dal resto del mondo. Fat Amy non ha paura o vergogna del suo corpo; balla, canta e ha una vita sessuale attiva. Questa è un’eccezione anche per l’attrice. Rebel Wilson recita anche la parte di un personaggio secondario in The Bachelorette. Proprio come Melissa McCarthy in un altro film nuziale, Bridesmaids, il personaggio “grasso” è caratterizzato dalla sua grassezza e dalle sue funzioni biologiche. Quanto fa ridere che il personaggio di McCarthy abbia dei desideri sessuali? Troppo ridere. Avere un personaggio grasso in un film perde completamente senso se, ancora una volta, tutta la sua personalità è relegata a caratteristiche collegate alla sua taglia. È difficile poter esprimere se stessi quando i media insegnano - non tanto alla persona sovrappeso, quanto a chi la circonda - che c’è solo un tipo di personalità per una persona grassa. Quella volgare, goffa, asessuale. La comedy di MTV Faking It non ha paura di scoperchiare tabù e parlare di sesso e adolescenti, ma ha un solo personaggio sovrappeso. Interpretata da Breezy Eslin, Lisbeth è la schiavetta “inguadabile” di Lauren, caratterizzata solo come scema e ossessionata dal cibo.
Nonostante non ci sia modo di giustificare la crudeltà nei confronti delle persone grasse, penso non sia difficile vedere perché nell’immaginario collettivo ci siano delle caratteristiche ricorrenti che sono richieste a chiunque abbia l’ardire di essere sovrappeso. Avere un BMI alto è la loro unica caratteristica, o almeno quella portante nella loro vita. Hanno ambizioni? Interessi? Amori? Sono delle spie internazionali, come Melissa McCarthy in Bridesmaids? Non importa. Sono prima di tutto grasse. Vorrei dire che questa è un’attitudine circoscritta all’adolescenza, ma per alcune persone la fase del disgusto e il pregiudizio verso le persone grasse dura tutta vita. Durante le scuole medie, il mio aspetto ha iniziato a contare. Fino ad un certo punto ero una persona come tutte le altre. Il giorno dopo dovevo giustificare daccapo ogni parte della mia esistenza per via del mio peso, dal fatto che fossi dotata di un cervello pensante alle persone che continuavano a parlarmi nonostante fossi improvvisamente diventata un rigurgito della società. C’erano almeno dieci risposte che avrei dato alla domanda “Ma perché deve uscire con noi? È grassa”, che era stata chiesta in mia presenza da un ragazzo che conoscevo sin dalle elementari. Ero in prima o seconda superiore e dev’essere stata la prima volta che mi sembrava che il mio corpo ed io non fossimo la stessa cosa. Forse non è la cosa giusta, ma da allora cerco di evitare o rimuovermi dalle situazioni che mi mettono nella condizione di dover spiegare che no, non sono solo il numero sulla bilancia. Poco tempo fa mi è stato detto che non è vero che mi sento bene con il mio corpo, altrimenti non ci penserei così tanto. Sapete cos’è difficile? Non pensare a qualcosa quando è costantemente sottolineata. Quando ogni volta che vedo qualcuno dopo diversi mesi, il primo commento è sempre “Hai perso peso?” ed è un complimento. Quando io non sono Marta, la persona, ma grassa, il corpo.
Italiano There is an Elio e le Storie Tese album (a great Italian comedy rock band) with the title “I exit my body and I am very scared”. My dad quotes it very often, in the most random contexts. The sentence made me laugh a lot, until I started leaving my body and well, being very scared. The latest time it happened I was in a crammed bar with my sixteen-year-old friend A. The otherwise uneventful night had just taken a dramatic turn as a hormonal teenager had clung to her like a clam, making her uncomfortable. My very low tolerance level for harassers had made me spring to her defence and I had asked him to please piss off. He had replied telling me to ‘eat less, fattie’. Not pain in the ass, not cockblock. ‘Fattie’. Suddenly I was outside my body: there was a chasm between the creature he was identifying and what I am. Was that the best he could do? Was it his young age making him incapable to elaborate a better insult? Did he have any idea that this body, mine, contains a spirit that he was unworthy of? While I was distracted, my body had taken up arms: the strength of my fat arm had pushed the stranger several metres away from us. If I said that being fat has never made me suffer, I would be lying. If I said that I would have liked to be thin, I would be also lying – as a matter of fact, I still am not. Over the years I have collected tens, maybe hundreds of moments in which my body was put on a scale between unattractive and repulsive. Because of my weight, I lost my personhood – I was a body. My body. Without me inside it. In your mind, make a list of films and books with a fat character in them. Male or female – does not make a difference. Their size will be the only relevant personality trait. As a rule, they will only talk about food, or if we are lucky about their bodily functions. I still feel that pang in my stomach when I rewatch Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and in the dancing class scene just before the ball, Minerva McGonagall suggests that “in every girl, a secret swan slumbers”. Ron turns towards a girl that has never before appeared (and
English will never make a comeback) and comments: “Something is about to burst out of Eloise Midgen, but I don’t think it’s a swan”. Eloise Midgen is overweight, therefore incapable of being anything but her flatulent body. In real life, the male fat friend is made fun of because of his serial masturbation in front of his computer. For a fat girl, being attracted to someone is mathematically impossible. The entire Bridget Jones saga is based on the fact that it seems impossible for a fat woman to have feelings, act upon them and – shock and horror! – even have a positive reaction from her love interest. Even worse is Shallow Hal, entirely based on the premise that no fat woman will ever be attractive not only on the inside, but also on the outside. Cue to Gwyneth Paltrow in a fat suit as an example of a gross person who has never had a sentimental or sexual life. Pitch Perfect is one of my favourite movies of recent years; one of the protagonists (played by Rebel Wilson) is Fat Amy, who nicknamed herself as such so that the word “fat” could not be used against her. Fat Amy is not scared or ashamed of her body: she dances, sings and has an active sexual life. This is an exception even for the actress. Rebel Wilson also plays a secondary character in The Bachelorette. Just like Melissa McCarthy in similar nuptial film Bridesmaids, the “fat character” is characterized by her fatness and farts. How funny is it that McCarthy’s character has sexual desires? Hilarious. Featuring a fat character in a film loses any purpose if, yet again, all of his or her personality is circumscribed to features that have to do with his or her size. It is hard to express oneself when the media teach – not so much to overweight people, but rather to who surrounds them – that there is only one type of personality for a fat person. A vulgar, dorky, asexual one. One of my favourite tv shows of the past year is MTV’s Faking It. While it doesn’t hold back when it comes to fighting taboos and talking
Italiano about sex and teenagers, Faking It only has one fat character. Played by Breezy Eslin, Lisbeth is Lauren’s ugly slave-friend, only characterized as silly and obsessed with food. While there is no way of justifying violence and cruelty against fat people, I don’t think it is hard to see why in the collective unconscious there are some recurring features that are somewhat requested to anyone who has the nerve to be overweight. Having a high BMI is their only feature, or at least their key element. Do they have ambitions? Interests? Loves? Are they international spies, like Melissa McCarthy in Bridesmaids? It does not matter. They are first of all fat. I would love to say that this attitude fizzles out after adolescence, but for some the disgust and prejudice towards fat people lasts forever. During middle school, the way I looked started to count. Up to a certain point I was a person like anyone else. The following day I had to justify my entire existence from scratch because of my weight, from the fact that I was equipped with a functioning brain to the peo-
English ple who kept speaking and being friends to me despite the fact that I had suddenly become a social outcast. There were at least ten answers I would have given to the question “Why does she have to keep hanging out with us? She’s fat!” that was asked, in my presence, by a guy that I had known forever. I was a freshman in high school and that had to be the first time that it seemed to me like my body and I were not the same thing. Maybe it isn’t the brave thing to do, but since then I try to avoid or remove myself from situations that put me in the condition of having to explain that no, I am not just a number on a scale. Not too long ago I was told that it isn’t true that I feel alright about my body, otherwise I wouldn’t think about it that much. You know what’s hard? Not thinking about something when it’s constantly being commented on. When every time I see someone after several months, the first thing they say is “Have you lost weight?” and that’s a compliment. When I am not Marta, the person, but fat, the body.
Pas De Mots PAS de son
NO WORDS no sound
nessuna parola nessun suono
RONA BINAY
DIGEST: THE BLACK MARKET OF HUMAN BODY Digest: Il mercato nero del corpo umano
Organ trade is a market characterised by huge demand from people willing to invest large amounts of money (since often their lives are involved) and short supply, involving donors, relatives, altruistic individuals, or sellers; the latter of which usually faced conditions of extreme poverty. This is the nature of organ trafficking, a widespread, global phenomenon. In many countries organ trading is illegal and the donor’s only option is regulated by the state. However, with an increasing shortage of organs available for transplantation, there is an increase in organ selling on the black market. The organ trade has become international and is managed by developed, worldwide crime organisations, together with local crime groups, who build a system where potential recipients travel abroad to obtain organs through commercial transactions: so-called ‘transplant tourism’. Information about this market and its prices is scarce and uncertain but there are a few certainties: the actors of this phenomenon are the following: Buyers: they can spend huge amounts of money, have critical health conditions and take high risks. Brokers: usually doctors, transplant surgeons, or members of local, organized crime groups, often frequently changing city or region. While not necessarily locals, there is always a local facilitator. Sellers: are usually young, male, extremely poor, and living in slums or slumlike conditions. The dynamics between buyers and sellers are essentially usually the same, due to the organ transplantation being a real, life-saving operation for a great number of patients. However, in the last few decades of organ supply and demand there has been a higher point of contact in arranging price negotiations, and operation meetings through the numerous platforms offered by the internet. Buying and selling advertisements are banned on official websites, such as Ebay, Google Adwords and Facebook, but further research through the internet’s “grey” pages- like the third or fourth Google SERPs, closed Facebook Groups or coded Craiglist notices- show how commercial and specialized pages are easily findable. From kidneykidney.com/ to www.organselling.com/ there is a wide panorama of websites providing services and information which will lead to legal organ trade in countries where this is still permitted. However, the real money machine can be found in hidden forums and groups; as a British journalist realised after publishing a fake organ-selling ad on a Facebook community: in one week more than 11 offers arrived- including some from within Great Britainpromising between 2000 and 30000 pounds each.
Il traffico degli organi è caratterizzato da un’alta domanda, proveniente da individui con la vita a rischio disponibili a spendere cifre molto alte, e un’inferiore offerta, composta da donatori , o venditori, i quali spesso vivono in condizioni di indigenza. Quanto appena descritto è l’habitat naturale del traffico di organi, quello che oggi è considerato un fenomeno globale. In numerosi stati la compravendita degli organi è illegale, e solo essere “donatori” è una pratica ammessa. Essendo la scarsità d’organo sempre altissima il mercato nero è in forte crescita. Il traffico degli organi è diventato un mercato internazionale gestito dalla criminalità organizzata con influenza mondiale che si allea ai piccoli gruppi criminali locali. Questo sistema criminale facilita l’incontro tra domanda e offerta, spingendo i potenziali compratori a viaggiare per molti chilometri alla ricerca d’organi per attuare la propria operazione commerciale salva vita. Tale fenomeno viene anche chiamato turismo dei trapianti. Le informazioni disponibili riguardo al traffico degli organi sono scarse e incerte, ciò che possiamo dire per certo è che si tratta di un mercato con tre ruoli: I compratori, i quali hanno ampie capacità di accumulo di capitali, stati di salute critici al punto da renderli facilmente vulnerabili e disposti ad assumersi alti rischi durante la transazione. I mediatori, di solito identificati nei dottori, nei chirurghi di trapianti, nei membri delle organizzazioni criminali locali. I mediatori cambiano spesso città e regione, non sono necessariamente locali ma c’è sempre la presenza di un facilitatore autoctono. I venditori, di solito di sesso maschile, in una fascia di età giovane, sotto la soglia di povertà, vivono in favelas o periferie urbane. La dinamica tra compratori e venditori è essenzialmente rimasta la stessa da quando il trapianto d’organi è divenuto una vera e propriaoperazione salva vita per numerosi pazienti; ma negli ultimi decenni la domanda e l’offerta di organi hanno raggiunto il punto massimo di incontro, accordando negoziazioni, prezzi e incontri per le operazioni attraverso le numerose piattaforme che offre internet. Pubblicità di compravendita organi sono vietate su siti autorevoli quali Ebay, Google Adwords, Facebook. Tuttavia un’accurata ricerca attraverso la “zona grigia” di internet, come in terza o quarta pagina di ricerca su Google, o in gruppi Facebook chiusi, annunci criptati su Craiglist, dimostra quanto sia semplice trovare una promozione illegale o pagine specializzate. Da kidneykidney.com a organselling.com, c’è un ampio panorama di siti web che offrono servizi e informazioni che a loro volta portano ad un traffico d’organi legale, nei paesi in cui ciò è ancora permesso. Dall’altro lato la vera macchina di soldi può essere trovata in forum e gruppi nascosti, emblematico l’esperimento del giornalista britannico che ha pubblicato un annuncio di vendita organi su Facebook: in una settimana ha ricevuto più di 11 offerte, provenienti anche dalla Gran Bretagna, tra le 2000 e 30000 £ per rene.
BODY’S BLACK MARKET: PRICELIST MERCATO NERO DEL CORPO: PREZZIARIO
HEART CUORE SOUTH AFRICA [SUD AFRICA] $ 290.000 COLOMBIA $ 90.000
EGG CELL CELLULA UOVO UNITED KINGDOM [REGNO UNITO] $ 20.000 ROMANIA $ 250
PANCREAS SINGAPORE $ 140.000 CHINA [CINA] $ 110.000
Highest and lowest prices are shown below; I prezzi massimi e minimi sono mostrati di seguito.
KIDNEY RENE IRAN $ 5.700.000 INDIA $ 2.000
LIVER FEGATO SOUTH KOREA [SUD COREA] $ 290.000 PAKISTAN $ 25.000
LUNG POLMONE EUROPE [EUROPA] $ 312.650 CHINA [CINA] $ 110.000
SPERM SPERMA UNITED STATES [STATI UNITI] $ 100 ROMANIA $ 39
WOMB FOR RENT UTERO IN AFFITTO UNITED STATES [STATI UNITI] $ 150.000 INDIA $ 10.000
BLOOD SANGUE UNITED STATES [STATI UNITI] $ 337 GERMANY [GERMANIA] $ 25