Nero Magazine 28 by nero magazine

No. 28 WINTER 2012

E E all F Roriginals PARKING A project by Olaf Nicolai, 2011

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E E FR PARKING A project by Olaf Nicolai, 2011

Piazza del Plebiscito, Napoli

COm i ng SOOn – 2 012 –

MACRO Via Nizza, 138 16 marzo—6 maggio, Sala Enel

Mircea Cantor Sic Transit Gloria Mundi

ISTITUTO SVIZZERO DI ROMA 7 TH BERLIN BIENNALE FOR CONTEMPORARY ART www.istitutosvizzero.it - www.berlinbiennale.de

16 marzo—6 maggio, Sala Enel

Marcello Maloberti Blitz 16 marzo—10 giugno, Sala Bianca

Going Around the Corner Percorsi dalle collezioni Berlingieri Omaggio a Vettor Pisani

16 marzo—2 settembre Project Room 1

Christian Jankowski Casting Jesus

16 marzo—6 maggio Project Room 2

Pascale Marthine Tayou Plastic bags

16 marzo—28 ottobre Hall

Miltos Manetas Electronic Orphanage

16 marzo—23 maggio Area

16 febbraio—15 luglio, Artisti in residenza

Carola Bonfili, Graham Hudson, Luigi Presicce, Ishmael Randall-Weeks

MACRO Testaccio Piazza Giustiniani, 4 31 marzo—13 maggio, Padiglioni A e B

Marco Tirelli 31 marzo

Macro Archive 1:1 projects

telefono 060608

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Occupy Geneva, Parc des Bastions, Switzerland, 21.11.2011 photo credit: one-one.tumblr.com / © 1:1 - Adrien Guillet 2012

JULIANA CERQUEIRA LETTE JANUARY - FEBRUARY 2012

photo by Juergen Teller

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Michael E. Smith, Untitled, 2011 - photo credit: Filippo Armellin

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NERO MAGAZINE www.neromagazine.it info@neromagazine.it winter 2012 N.28

PUBLISHERS Francesco de Figueiredo Luca Lo Pinto Valerio Mannucci Lorenzo Micheli Gigotti Nicola Pecoraro EDITORS Luca Lo Pinto lucalopinto@neromagazine.it Valerio Mannucci valeriomannucci@neromagazine.it ART DIRECTOR Nicola Pecoraro nicolapecoraro@neromagazine.it PRODUCTION DIRECTOR Francesco de Figueiredo francescodf@neromagazine.it WEB DIRECTOR Lorenzo Micheli Gigotti lorenzogigotti@neromagazine.it MARKETING & COMMUNICATION Ilaria Leoni ilarialeoni@neromagazine.it marketing@neromagazine.it +39 339 7825906 DISTRIBUTION distribution@neromagazine.it

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Adriano Aymonino Carola Bonfili Rä di Martino Julia Frommel Tijana Mamula Michele Manfellotto CONTRIBUTORS IN THIS ISSUE Lupo Borgonovo Alfa Castaldi Raimond Chaves Maria Vittoria Backhaus Inti Guerrero Lucas Knipscher Tobias Madison Gilda Mantilla Piper Marshall Fabio Mauri Matteo Nasini Giacinto Scelsi Tim Small Mark Wallinger Sergio Zambon COPY EDITOR Tijana Mamula TRANSLATIONS Aurelia Di Meo Tijana Mamula Valeria Sanna Louis Baymann

INTERNS Ilaria Carvani Angelica Cayzer COVER IMAGE Dirk Braeckman, Alexia-11, 2011 Courtesy Zeno X Gallery, Antwerp PUBLISHED BY Produzioni Nero s.c.r.l. Isc. Albo Coop. N°A116843 Via dei Giuochi Istmici 28 00135, Rome Registrazione al Tribunale di Roma N°102/04 del 15-03-2004 Direttore Responsabile: Giuseppe Mohrhoff OFFICE Lungotevere degli Artigiani 8b 00153, Rome Tel-Fax +39 06 97271252 SUBMISSIONS Nero Magazine Via degli Scialoja 18 00196 Rome PRINTED BY Jimenez Godoy Ctra. de Alicante Km.3 Murcia (Spain)

INDEX BLUE IS IN FASHION THIS YEAR Commenting an old photo shoot by Maria Vittoria Backhaus, Sergio Zambon reflects on changes in fashion

THE MAN WITH TWO NAMES Young artist Lupo Borgonovo pays homage to Giovanni Anselmo

ANTI-SMITHSON Tim Small explores the limits of description and interpretation in response to the photos of Mark Wallinger

ABSTRACT A project conceived for the pages of NERO by Inti Guerrero with Raimond Chaves and Gilda Mantilla

SU ROMA The city of Rome through the words of Fabio Mauri and the eyes of Alfa Castaldi

SPECIAL PROJECT BY TOBIAS MADISON 70 THE SOUND OF SCELSI A tribute to the famous Italian composer through his own words and some conceptual counterpoints by Matteo Nasini

TOUCHABLES First part of an ongoing investigation into the sentimental properties of reproduced experiences by Michele Manfellotto

ADAPTATION A press release followed by an online exhibition. This time it’s a collaboration between American curator Piper Marshall and artist Lucas Knipscher

TROVATELLI Julia Frommel explains why in fashion, as in life, details are more important than the whole

101

WORKS THAT COULD BE MINE AND WORKS THAT I WOULD LIKE… An ongoing project by Rä di Martino compares artistic self-perception with the desire for something "other"

106

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN The thematic section of the magazine, this time dedicated to the form of the letter

113

We happened to find these pictures whilst looking through the collection of the s.t. bookshop and photo gallery in Rome. Matteo Di Castro, founder and manager of s.t., told us that they date back to 1981. They were taken by Maria Vittoria Backhaus for a fashion spread. The photographer herself confirmed the date of the photo shoot and told us that the pictures were published in Vogue Pelle, at the time when Carla Sozzani was editor-in-chief. More than this information, however, what caught our eye was the atmosphere that transpired from the pictures. This atmosphere immediately took us back in time, to a specific style and an imaginary that influenced an entire era. We decided to show the pictures to an expert who could certainly recall that era, but who is also still deeply involved in the contemporary art and fashion industry: the designer Sergio Zambon. Our interest in the pictures arose from their content, their style, their quality – atypical in the realm of fashion – and, above all, from the historical references that they contain. Though these pictures represent the spirit of the 80s in their colors, materials, and style, they do date back to 1981, and are thus fun-

BLUE IS IN FASHION THIS YEAR

damentally pre-80s. We also liked them because of the sequential and complementary quality of

photos by maria vittoria backhaus commented by sergio zambon

their subjects and shot compositions. We asked Zambon whether, given all of these aspects, the pictures could be used in a fashion spread today. No. There’s too much in them. You can tell this is the Memphis era, the Sottsass era. They’re very static. You can still see a strong connection to design. Today fashion photographs are, in a certain sense, less connected to the cultural context. They are disconnected from the design industry, for instance. I mean, you can see that there’s something in these pictures that isn’t at all “fashion.” Look at the photo with the punching ball: you would never take a picture like that today. Fashion encompasses everything in itself. It uses the object. Today’s fashion is more powerful and, of course, more commercial. For me, the main thing is that it has lost the cultural dream, which you can still pinpoint in these pictures. For instance, you can easily notice some Mendini or Sottsass in them, if you know what I mean. Sure, you can still

varied that there’s no need to look for novelty at all costs. Everything is more of a divertissement, but full of power and marketing. Think of the TV shows: at that time a TV show would have a specific set, connected to the design of that era, steeped in the cultural of the time. These pictures are exactly like that. In some way, everything in them reflects that era, and it’s not by chance. There’s the see-through shower curtain, lots of plastic, the colors: in short, the 80s. Today, everything is free, quick, and limited. Another eye-catching aspect was the staging. Not the arrangement of either the objects or the subjects so much as the point of view. We wondered if this was specific to fashion photography of that time, or if it’s still popular today. No, today you don’t see anything. The focus is on what you want to show. Like I said, there’s less of a search for new things. In the 80s, a composition that exceeds the set by thirty centimeters might have been something new, at least in the field of fashion. Now there’s the mission of the find that in fashion photographs today, but it’s all marketing, business. Come to think of it, you can see that these pictures date back to the 80s because of the woman’s proportions, because of the culotte, the shoulders. Nowadays, American Apparel might take a photo like that, but it would be done in a different way, from a completely different perspective. So the point wasn’t the unquestionable quality of this photo shoot, but the fact that it represented a specific cultural attitude, which is exactly what we understood, in an inarticulate way, the first time we saw the pictures. We then asked ourselves whether that was a peculiarity of this specific photo shoot, or whether it reflected a common tendency of that era.

photo shoot as an end in itself, even if it’s a great shoot. Today, these pictures might belong in a design magazine. It might not be contemporary art, but it’s borderline. That was also a very peculiar time for Milan, the peak of its international reputation. Milan was the center of everything, it was a rising capital, for its fashion, its design, its money, its stock exchange. It could afford to do certain things. It was really very fertile in that sense. However, I would never think that these are contemporary pictures. You can tell they belong to a specific era. You can tell from how the objects are placed. Take the picture with the punching ball for example: if it was cropped I could be misled, but as it is there’s too much set. But even though the composition is dated, it doesn’t mean that the picture isn’t pertinent, quite the contrary. It is, however, very static, very still life, and very referential in terms of 80s design. If you wanted to use a picture like that today

The subject matter, and the way it’s photo-

it would have to be as a point of inspiration, a jumping off

graphed, relates to that era, above all in terms of

point. But then it would depend on how you used it, what

composition. But also because of the still life ele-

you put next to it, it would have to be related to something

ments, the exposure, the colors, and the objects

different. But in terms of how the objects are displayed, it

used in the picture; because of the staging of a

makes me think of something certain magazines do today,

kind of modernity that was still tied to the dream

the generic ones that show accessories by putting them on

of cultural evolution. There was a tendency to give

display. Which isn’t something Vogue would do, of course.

meaning to fashion itself. Today the supply is so

Basically, I find this photo shoot dated, but still very valid.

It reflects the spirit of its time. So, in

that that’s in the background. These

ed by Versace, even though Armani

current terms, I think this could make

pictures show a certain style, but the

was there too, all grey and black.

a good starting point, something

brands are of secondary importance.

This can’t be a Moschino photo shoot:

you could re-elaborate. Think of the

It’s a trend from that time, a sort of

Moschino was something different.

picture with the cropped composition

American-style sportswear, casual

It may seem strange now but he was

that shows the legs at the top of the

and pop. There’s a certain way of us-

like the Margiela of the time. He was

staircase: it could be re-shot by The

ing the picture, there are elements

an anomalous kind of conceptual,

Gentlewoman, which is one of the

that belong to the realm of athlet-

because it wasn’t a conceptual aimed

few truly contemporary magazines

ics, that have something to do with

at a niche or an avant-garde elite,

around today. A lot of people criticize

a specific style, because they share

but at a broad, bourgeois public. This

it because it depicts a tough, harsh,

the same graphics, the same kinds of

photo shoot is not at all Moschino.

very masculine woman, but some

colors, pop and bold, the same cul-

This is an 80s sportswear trend,

women today are like that - at least,

tural references. In fashion it’s very

which proposes a certain “easiness.”

a certain kind of woman. All in all:

common to reinforce a concept by

Moschino made things that were ac-

yes, I think this photo shoot could def-

adding an element or an image that

cessible to everyone in terms of taste,

initely be re-used. Furthermore, it’s

evokes what you’ve done, whether in

but that included very sophisticated

very likely that certain contemporary

a good or a bad way. To some extent,

concepts.

design magazines could publish some

that still happens today. Maybe not at

of these pictures as they are, like the

a commercial level, but you can cer-

one with the staircase for instance.

tainly still do something like that for

Take the magazine Case per Abitare.

more sophisticated projects. But next

Or, going back to the picture with

to the picture with the tennis racket,

the legs on the stairs: it’s very intelli-

for example, you would hardly see

gent. There’s design, there’s fashion,

the picture of a romantic lace couture

there’s a conception of photography

dress. You would expect to see some-

that’s original for its time. You could

thing similar to what you are already

easily take that picture as a starting

seeing. They are hints in line with the

point. Of course, it works because of

project.

the sportswear. You couldn’t show a pair of trousers that go with an elegant stiletto heel like that, it would be ridiculous. That’s not how a lady walks down the stairs. That’s what’s changed today: everyone’s status is recognized. The lady, the boy, the avant-garde. Once upon a time, there were fewer constraints. Once, it was just “avant-garde,” or “classic,” or “money.” In this photo shoot some pictures are full of objects, garments, accessories, while other pictures are empty, sort of stripped of elements.

Another question concerned the content of the pictures, the brands that

In the end, we asked ourselves who could be the photographer of such a picture, today. I really don’t know, I would say a photographer who has to take commercial pictures, which have to show and sell the product. But this was another level, another approach. I don’t think Vogue does this anymore. It might go over the top and show four pictures entirely void of objects, but that’s something completely different.

influenced the production of a photo shoot of this sort. Considering when they were taken, talking about 1981. At that point people were still wearing stuff from the 70s. For better or worse, fashion is always one step ahead of real life. I think plenty of people were Loden green. Here you see yellow and fuchsia. Maybe some people still wore

Sergio Zambon (1965) is an Italian fashion designer who lives and works in Rome. He has collaborated with notable brands in the international fashion scene. He also runs his namesake prêt-à-porter brand.

pointed shirts. In Italy, the imagery of

It’s not easy to tell whose garments

the 1980s – all colorful power-suits,

and accessories these are. I would

broad shouldered jackets, frizzy hair,

say Byblos or Krizia, but the point is

bold colors – is universally represent-

Abbiamo trovato queste foto sfogliando la collezione di fotografie della galleria e libreria di fotografia S.T. di Roma. Matteo Di Castro, fondatore e direttore della galleria, ci ha spiegato che erano stampe originali risalenti al 1981, scattate da Maria Vittoria Backhaus per uno shooting di moda. La stessa fotografa ci ha confermato poi la data del servizio e ci ha spiegato che erano state pubblicate su Vogue Pelle sotto la direzione di Carla Sozzani. Ma a prescindere da queste informazioni, ciò che ci aveva colpito era qualcosa che traspariva dalle foto stesse e che ci riportava ad un gusto specifico, ad un immaginario che ha fortemente influenzato un periodo. Abbiamo così deciso di sottoporle ad una persona che di quel periodo potesse avere memoria ma allo stesso tempo che fosse pienamente attiva nel contemporaneo, il designer Sergio Zambon. Queste immagini ci interessavano per una questione formale, stilistica, per la loro qualità atipica nel contesto della moda, ma anche e soprattutto per il riferimento storico che esse contenevano. Sebbene rappresentino lo spirito degli anni ‘80, per i colori, i materiali, lo stile fotografico, sono foto del 1981, quindi fondamentalmente pre-anni 80. Ci piacevano per la loro sequenzialità e complementarietà dei soggetti e delle inquadrature. E abbiamo domandato a Zambon se per tutti questi motivi potesse essere un servizio di oggi. No. Perchè è troppo pieno. Si vede che è il periodo di Memphis, di Sottsass. È un servizio molto statico. C’era ancora una relazione forte con il design. Adesso, per certi versi, gli scatti di moda sono più scollegati dal contesto culturale. Scollegati dal design per esempio. Intendo dire che si vede che qui c’è qualcosa che non è per niente “moda”. Prendi la foto col pungiball, oggi non la farebbero così. Oggi la moda ingloba gli altri dentro se stessa. L’oggetto lo usa. La moda oggi è più potente e ovviamente più commerciale. Per questo secondo me il punto fondamentale è che si è svuotata del sogno culturale, che in queste foto ancora c’è. Appunto, sembra di vederci Mendini, Sottsass, per capirci. Adesso, sì, ce lo mettono dentro, ma bene o male è marketing, business. Ora che ci penso bene, posso dire che si vede che sono anni ‘80 per le proporzioni della donna, la culotte, le spalle, (foto con la donna di spalle). Oggi la farebbe magari American Apparel, ma in un altro modo, da tutta un’altra prospettiva. Quindi i punti erano che si trattava di un servizio di indubbia qualità, ma anche un servizio che rappresentava una specifica attitudine culturale, che è quello appunto che avevamo letto senza chiare spiegazioni la prima volta che abbiamo visto le foto. Ci siamo quindi interrogati se questa qualità fosse specifica del servizio o se invece rappresentava una specie di spirito comune di quel periodo.

they strike me as very new. We’re

still dressed in rust brown, camel, or

BLUE IS IN FASHION THIS YEAR

Maria Vittoria Backhaus (1942) is an Italian fashion photographer. She has collaborated with several magazines such as Casa Vogue, L'Uomo Vogue, Abitare, Linea Italiana and Harper's Bazaar Italia.

Il tipo di materiale, com’è scattato, è figlio dell’epoca. Principalmente per questioni di composizione. Per la questione dello still-life. Per la tipologia di esposizione, di colori e di oggetti e per la messa in scena di una certa modernità che era ancora legata al sogno dell’evoluzione culturale; si voleva dare un certo significato alla moda stessa. Oggi l’offerta è talmente varia che è scaduta l’idea della ricerca della novità a tutti i costi. Tutto è un po’ più un divertissement, pieno però di potere e di marketing. Pensate agli spettacoli televisivi, nei programmi dell’epoca c’era un set ragionato, che era collegato al design dell’epoca, era calato nella cultura

del tempo. Ecco, questo servizio è così. Non è un caso che tutto, in qualche modo, richiami quel periodo. C’è la tenda trasparente nella doccia, tanta plastica, i colori, insomma: gli anni 80. Oggi è tutto, in un certo senso, libero, limitato e rapido. La messa in scena era infatti uno degli altri aspetti che ci sono sembrati interessanti. Non tanto la disposizione dei soggetti o degli oggetti, quanto il punto di vista. Ci siamo chiesti se era propria del periodo e dello stile della fotografia di moda o è tutt’ora in voga. No, oggi non vedi niente. Il focus è tutto sulla cosa che si vuole mostrare. Come ho detto, c’è meno ricerca dell’idea di novità. Forse negli anni ‘80 questa idea di mostrare un inquadratura che va trenta cm fuori dal set era una novità, almeno nell’ambito della moda. Adesso c’è la mission del servizio fine a se stesso, anche se di grande qualità. Oggi queste foto semmai, potrebbero stare in una rivista di design. Magari non è arte contemporanea, ma è borderline. Quello era anche un momento molto particolare per Milano. Era al suo apice internazionale. Milano era veramente al centro di tutto, era una capitale in ascesa. Per la moda, il design, i soldi, la borsa. Ci si potevano permettere certe cose. In questo senso era davvero molto fertile. In ogni caso non penserei mai che sono foto di oggi, si vede subito che sono figlie di un’epoca specifica. Lo si vede da come hanno disposto le cose. Magari quella col pungiball per esempio, con un diverso taglio d’inquadratura, molto più stretto mi potrebbe ingannare. Qui c’è troppo il set. La composizione della fotografia è datata, questo non significa che non è valida, anzi. Ma è molto statica, è molto still-life ed è molto referenziale rispetto al design eighties. Per utilizzarlo oggi lo si potrebbe prendere come spunto, punto di partenza. Ma poi dipenderebbe da come lo usa, cosa ci accosta, dovrebbe metterci qualcosa di diverso accanto. Però, per esempio, parlando di come sono disposti gli oggetti mi viene in mente quello che alcune riviste fanno oggi, quelle generaliste che propongono accessori e li dispongono in un set. Ma non lo fa Vogue, ovviamente. Diciamo che questo servizio lo trovo evidentemente datato, ma è molto valido e rappresenta un esempio alto dello spirito dell’epoca. Quindi, pensando all’oggi credo che potrebbe essere un punto di partenza valido per poterci rilavorare. Prendi la foto con l’inquadratura che taglia e fa vedere gambe in cima alle scale, la potrebbe rifare The Gentlewoman, che è una delle poche riviste veramente attuali oggi. Molti la critica- no perché rappresenta una donna molto dura, harsh, maschile, ma la donna oggi molto spesso è così, almeno un certo tipo di donna. Insomma sì, è completamente riprendibile questo servizio. E per certi versi, alcune riviste di design di oggi potrebbero benissimo pubblicare alcune immagini come quella della scala e basta. Prendi Case Per Abitare. Oppure ritornando alla foto con le gambe sulla scala, è una foto molto intelligente. C’è il design, c’è la moda, c’è un’idea di foto che è nuova per il periodo. Da quella si potrebbe ripartire tranquillamente. Ovviamente funziona per l’abbigliamento sportivo. Non ci potresti mettere un pantalone che va col tacco di lusso, sarebbe ridicolo. Una signora non scende in quel modo. È qui che oggi è cambiato, oggi si riconosce a tutti il loro status. La signora, il ragazzino, l’avanguardia. Un tempo si era meno costretti, un tempo era “l’avanguardia” o “il classico” o “i soldi”. Nel servizio ci sono foto piene di oggetti, capi d’abbigliamento, accessori, altre invece sono vuote, quasi svuotate.

Di chi siano i capi e gli accessori non è facile capirlo. Mi viene in mente Byblos o Krizia, ma il punto è che la cosa va in secondo piano. È una proposta di stile con le griffe in secondo piano. È un trend dell’epoca, lo sport all’americana, casual e pop. C’è un uso dell’immagine particolare, ci sono elementi che fanno parte del trend, il ginnico, che hanno a che fare con lo stile specifico perché hanno la stessa graficità, lo stesso tipo di colori pop e bold, lo stesso richiamo culturale. Nella moda spesso si cerca di rafforzare il concetto mettendo un oggetto, un’immagine, che bene o male evochi quello che hai fatto. E questo, almeno ad un certo livello, succede ancora oggi. Non a livello commerciale magari, ma per progetti un po’ più evoluti lo puoi ancora fare. Dopo questa foto con la racchetta da tennis, per esempio, sarebbe difficile vedere poi un vestito di alta moda in pizzo romantico. Ti aspetti ovviamente di vedere una cosa come quella che effettivamente vedi. Sono dei referenti in linea con il progetto. Un’altra questione era quella del contenuto specifico, della griffe che aveva stimolato la realizzazione e la produzione di un servizio del genere. Per quegli anni, mi sembrano cose molto nuove. Stiamo parlando del 1981, in quegli anni la gente ancora si vestiva anni ‘70. Nel bene o nel male, la moda è sempre temporalmente un po’ in anticipo rispetto alla realtà dei fatti. Secondo me c’era ancora tanta gente vestita in ruggine, cammello e verdone Loden. E qui invece c’è il giallo, il fucsia. Forse c’era ancora gente con le camicie a punta. In Italia l’immaginario degli anni ‘80, colorato e power-suit, con la giacca con la spalla larga, i capelli vaporosi, i colori forti, è rappresentato universalmente da Versace, anche se c’era Armani che era tutto grigio e nero. Non può essere Moschino perchè Moschino era un’altra cosa. Sembra strano ma era un po’ come un Margiela dell’epoca. È stato un concettuale anomalo, perché non era concettuale per la nicchia o per l’elite d’avanguardia, ma per un pubblico di massa, borghese. Quindi no, questo servizio non è Moschino per niente. Questo è un trend degli anni ottanta sullo sport, che propone una certa “easyness”. Moschino faceva cose che per il gusto erano accessibili a tutti, ma dove c’erano dei concetti molto sofisticati. Ci siamo infine chiesti chi potrebbe essere il corrispettivo oggi, come fotografo. Non so, direi quei fotografi che devono fare delle cose di impostazione commerciale in cui far vedere il prodotto. ma qui era un altro livello, un’altra impostazione. Oggi non credo che Vogue faccia più questa cosa. magari oggi esagerano e mettono quattro foto vuote senza oggetti, però è una cosa diversa.

Sergio Zambon (1965) è uno stilista italiano. Ha collaborato con grandi firme della moda internazionale e dirige il suo omonimo marchio prêtà-porter donna. Vive e lavora a Roma. Maria Vittoria Backhaus (1942) è una fotografa di moda italiana. Ha collaborato con numerose riviste tra le quali Casa Vogue, L'Uomo Vogue, Abitare, Linea Italiana e Harper's Bazaar Italia.

THE MAN

We have thrown you our funnels of shadow and you have turned them into streams of light.

WITH TWO NAMES words by lupo borgonovo

AS IS NOW CUSTOMARY, WE HAVE ONCE AGAIN DECIDED TO INVITE A YOUNG ARTIST TO WRITE ABOUT AN ARTIST FROM A PRECEDING GENERATION WHO HAS HAD A PERSONAL INFLUENCE ON HIM. NOWADAYS, ESPECIALLY IN ITALY, ARTISTS ARE OFTEN ACCUSED OF HAVING LIMITED CAPACITIES OF REFLECTION AND OF NOT PARTICIPATING ENOUGH IN CULTURAL DEBATE, AND THIS SECTION HOPES TO PROVE SUCH ACCUSATIONS WRONG. FOR THIS ISSUE OF THE MAGAZINE THE YOUNG ARTIST LUPO BORGONOVO HAS CHOSEN TO WRITE ABOUT GIOVANNI ANSELMO, ONE OF THE PROTAGONISTS OF THE ARTE POVERA MOVEMENT. MORE THAN A PIECE OF WRITING, IT IS A ROMANTIC AND VICARIOUS HYMN IN WHICH THE SUBJECT IS NEVER DIRECTLY NAMED BUT EMERGES THROUGH THE MANY REFERENCES TO HIS WORK, ONE PER SENTENCE. LIKE ANSELMO, LUPO REACTED TO A BURDENSOME CHALLENGE WITH A POETIC LIGHTNESS.

created balance. You have rendered the fluidity of the relation between thinking and doing. You have connected ideas Guido Ceronetti, La Lanterna Del Filosofo, to time, with copper wire. You have shown the emptiness Ricordaci, Filosofia, Adelphi, 2005 of every border. You have treated distance like a space that unites. You have made things wide. You have done somerIt is said that time and space are part of our intuition. And that may saults wiathin the work. You have created sensations without be so. Yet isn’t it strange that within our intuition so many things sensationalism. You have aligned things. You have used the remain inexplicable and mysterious! finite to talk about the infinite. You have used the visible to Giuseppe Rensi, Lettere Spirituali, Adelphi, 1987 move into the invisible. You have shown the tensions in the physical. You have let oxymorons speak. You have waited for What I love about the present perfect is the oxymobirds in New York. You have given a drink to cotton, which ron in the name.1 is always thirsty2. You have worked in Germany. You have invited people to go beyond the threshold of the work, the You have turned the stones northwards. You have graphite hand points outwards and invites within. You have pointed out a direction. You have mixed up your left transmitted energy. You have put things on the same level. with your right. You have created an unlimited picYou have shown vitality in the processes of dissolution. You ture. You have included. You have moved elsewhere. have looked at the sky. You have applied dialectics to matter. You have measured space with time. You have disYou have brought distant materials into dialogue. You have solved your own identity into the work. You have created works which create ways of being looked at. You walked without losing your breath. You have shown have recalled the Orient with wordless haikus. You have fed the fluctuations that traverse matter. You have wathe void. You have used the five elements, the fifth being vered between two poles. You have questioned the space. You have broadened the five senses. You have shown relationship between art and representation. You the colors of things. You have used the soft and the hard. have woven forces together. You have wondered how You have shown the erotic charge from which matter is also a sponge breathes out of water. You have suspended born. You have lifted things, making them lighter. You have your movements. You have sharpened your wits, and purified the image. You have moved things further. You have continued to enliven them. You have used your pobrought them closer. You have removed the sound around tential to get to your strength. You have opened up the image. You have remembered. You have given body to your perspective to other points of view. You have the invisible. You have brought reality into the realms of talked with great energy about energetic situations. fiction. You have colored ultramarine. You have lightened You have had effects in the form of a work. You have grays. You have unfolded sails of graphite. You have put the built bridges of metaphors. You have looked at the ground on the ground. You have condensed the air around macrocosm through a microscope. You have looked things. You have annulled the classifications with your titles. for a road and you have walked down it since 1966. You have created vital works. You have made simple gesYou have built roads out of earth that lead beyond tures. You have taken things from time, which float on it. the sea. You have created vital processes. You have You have shown things for the first time. You have reached used few and any materials. You have stripped to the summit of Stromboli, orphan of shadow, the morning the bare minimum. You have created tension. You of August 16, 1965. You have made a monument to salad, have broadened the concept of nature. You have no joke. You have always made the same work. You have used geometry. You have followed a vision. You have built with fragments. You have created a universe of details. looked for a delicate balance in verticality. You have You have shown the effects of time on the work. You have offered the horizon new horizons. You have pointed trimmed the sky. You have brought slowness into speed. north, south, east and west at the same time. You You have covered sound with silence. You have undressed have sought ubiquity obliquely. You have worked reality, and uncovered a new one under it. You have sought with the centre of the earth and the forces of gravity. essence on the way to absence. You have shown that few You have confronted still life with vitality. You have ideas exist, and you have repeated them. You have the face recalled the apocalypse in the death of nature. You of a predator, a good person. You have made heavy things have indicated infinity. You have used the word EVlight. You have placed a mirror between different concepts. ERYTHING, as if it were made of feathers. You have You have made people doubt their eyes. You have leant put the light on with projectors. You have expanded things against space. You have put things on the ground. the space within the work. You have enlarged the You have thought about the colors of leaves in the wind. You space inside the work. You have solidified, all of a have set fire to things. You have mixed up the waters. You sudden. You have abstracted from the concrete. You have gestured to the Moon, your works are the fingers that have destabilized. You have stopped time. You have point at it. connected ideas, shapes, and materials with metal wire. You have invented perceptions. You have made 1 The original Italian makes an untranslatable play on the term “passato prossimo,” literally “next past.” the colors of reality more vivid. You have steered and 2 Here the author makes a play on the word “sete,” meaning both cotton and thirst. directed. You have brought things closer. You have Lupo Borgonovo (1985) is an artist based in Milan. His work investigates the limits and contradictions of sculpture.

THE MAN WITH TWO NAMES Ti abbiamo gettato i nostri imbuti d’ombra e tu vi hai fatto scorrere rigagnoli di luce. Guido Ceronetti, La Lanterna Del Filosofo, Ricordaci, Filosofia, Adelphi, 2005 Il tempo e lo spazio sono forme del nostro intuito, dicono. E può essere. Ma come è singolare che in forme intuitive che sono nostre restino tante cose per noi inesplicabili e misteriose! Giuseppe Rensi, Lettere Spirituali, Adelphi, 1987 Del passato prossimo amo l’ossimoro nel nome. Hai puntato le pietre verso Nord. Hai indicato una direzione. Hai confuso la destra con la sinistra. Hai inventato una pittura senza limiti. Hai incluso. Hai spostato altrove. Hai misurato lo spazio con il tempo. Hai dissolto la tua identità nell’opera. Hai camminato senza perdere il respiro. Hai mostrato l’oscillazione che attraversa la materia. Hai oscillato tra due poli. Hai messo in discussione la relazione tra arte e rappresentazione. Hai creato intrecci di forze. Hai contemplato l’apnea di una spugna lontana dal mare. Hai sospeso i movimenti. Hai affinato l’intuito, ravvivandolo sempre. Hai usato la potenzialità per arrivare alla potenza. Hai accolto nel tuo punto di vista, facendo spazio. Hai parlato di situazioni d’energia con grande energia. Hai fatto azioni in forma d’opera. Hai costruito ponti di metafore. Hai guardato il macrocosmo da un microscopio. Hai cercato una strada, la percorri dal 1966. Hai costruito delle strade di terra che portano al di là del mare. Hai creato processi vitali. Hai utilizzato pochi materiali, qualsiasi. Hai ridotto al minimo. Hai creato tensioni. Hai esteso il concetto di natura. Hai usato la geometria. Hai seguito una visione. Hai cercato l’equilibrio precario nella verticalità. Hai offerto orizzonti all’orizzonte. Hai indicato il Nord, il Sud, l’Est e l’Ovest nello stesso momento. Hai cercato l’ubiquità con l’obliquità. Hai collaborato con il centro della terra e la forza di gravità. Hai opposto la vitalità alla natura morta. Hai ricordato l’apocalisse nella morte della natura. Hai indicato l’infinito. Hai usato la parola TUTTO, come se fosse fatta di piume. Hai illuminato, con dei proiettori. Hai mostrato lo spazio intorno all’opera. Hai ingrandito lo spazio interno all’opera. Hai solidificato, provvisoriamente. Hai astratto dal concreto. Hai destabilizzato. Hai bloccato il tempo. Hai connesso idee, forme e materiali col fil di ferro. Hai inventato percezioni. Hai enfatizzato i colori della realtà. Hai orientato e diretto. Hai avvicinato le cose. Hai creato degli equilibri. Hai reso la fluidità della relazione tra il fare e il pensare. Hai legato le idee al tempo, con filo di rame. Hai mostrato la vacuità di ogni confine. Hai trattato la distanza come uno spazio che unisce. Hai reso ampio. Hai fatto delle capriole in forma d’opera. Hai creato sensazioni evitando sensazionalismi. Hai allineato. Hai usato il finito per parlare dell’infinito. Hai usato il visibile per andare nell’invisibile. Hai mostrato le tensioni del fisico. Hai lasciato parlare gli ossimori. Hai aspettato gli uccelli a New York. Hai dato da bere al cotone che ha sempre sete. Hai lavorato in Germania. Hai invitato ad oltrepassare la soglia dell’opera, la mano di grafite indica l’esterno e invita all’interno. Hai trasmesso l’energia. Hai messo le cose sullo stesso piano. Hai mostrato la vitalità nei processi di dissoluzione. Hai guardato il cielo. Hai applicato la dialettica alla materia. Hai fatto dialogare materiali lontani. Hai creato opere che creano modi di guardarle. Hai ricordato l’oriente con haiku senza parole. Hai alimentato il vuoto. Hai usato i cinque elementi, il quinto è lo spazio. Hai allargato i cinque sensi. Hai mostrato i colori che hanno le cose. Hai utilizzato il molle e il duro. Hai mostrato la carica erotica da cui nasce anche la materia. Hai sollevato le cose, allegerendole. Hai purificato l’immagine. Hai spostato in là. Hai portato in qua. Hai tolto il rumore intorno all’immagine. Hai ricordato. Hai dato corpo

all’invisibile. Hai portato la realtà nel territorio della finzione. Hai colorato di blu oltremare. Hai alleggerito i grigi. Hai steso veli di grafite. Hai messo la terra a terra. Hai addensato l’aria intorno alle cose. Hai vanificato le classificazioni con i tuoi titoli. Hai creato opere vitali. Hai compiuto gesti, semplici. Hai tolto le cose dal tempo, vi galleggiano sopra. Hai mostrato le cose, per la prima volta. Hai raggiunto la cima dello Stromboli, orfano di ombra, la mattina del 16 Agosto 1965. Hai fatto un monumento all’insalata, non è uno scherzo. Hai fatto sempre la stessa opera. Hai costruito con i frammenti. Hai creato un universo di particolari. Hai mostrato l’azione del tempo sull’opera. Hai accorciato il cielo. Hai portato la lentezza nella velocità. Hai ammantato di silenzio il rumore. Hai spogliato la realtà, scoprendone un’altra. Hai cercato l’essenza sulla via dell’assenza. Hai mostrato che esistono poche idee, le hai ripetute. Hai il viso da rapace, buono. Hai reso leggere le cose pesanti. Hai reso pesanti le cose leggere. Hai messo uno specchio tra concetti diversi. Hai fatto dubitare gli occhi. Hai appoggiato le cose nello spazio. Hai messo le cose a terra. Hai pensato al colore delle foglie al vento. Hai messo a fuoco. Hai confuso le acque. Hai indicato la Luna, le tue opere sono gli indici che la puntano.

Lupo Borgonovo (1985) è un artista che vive e lavora a Milano. Nel suo lavoro indaga i limiti e le contraddizioni della scultura.

2009 2011

ANTI-SMITHSON is what I not-so randomly decided to call this article

words by tim small images by mark wallinger

all images: Mark Wallinger The Unconscious (detail) 2010 digital archival prints on Dibond 24 parts dimensions variable Copyright the artist, Courtesy Anthony Reynolds Gallery, London

This is how it happened. A couple of months ago

of an asshole, I replied like an asshole would.

tographs. I’ve never done it before. I don’t

I never seem to dream regular dream stuff like

have the tools. In a different situation, I’d

walking on a beach with a dead uncle or having

write the artist and ask him some questions.

to give a speech and then realizing you have no

However, the constraints that Valerio imposed

pants. My dreams generally include space travel

on me forbade me from doing that. Which raises

and Hindu deities and executions and purple

the not-so-simple problem that I’m not an art

mountains and eagles and lions. Also, lots of

critic and I don’t know the language of art

sex. Anyway, I instantly dismissed the idea of

criticism. Furthermore, in what some pernicious

writing about dreams and dreaming, because it’s

minds might define as a textbook example of the

possibly the most soul-devastatingly tedious

fox-and-grapes situation, I have no interest in

subject one can talk or write about. I already

learning it. I also have no interest in explor-

have enough trouble in looking interested when

ing what can and what cannot be said about im-

people talk about what actually happened to

ages. I’m sure you could care less about my

them, how am I supposed to listen when they

opinions on some pictures, but I’m sure you’d

talk about shit they just saw inside their head

care even less about what I have to say about

as a linear representation of what their brain

what I can’t say about them. Writing about how

is processing while it rests? I mean, it’s re-

you can’t write about something is one of the

ally hard to talk about that in an interesting

most boring, overused gimmicks we’ve had to en-

way. I can forgive people telling me about

dure in the past few centuries. So, I spent

dreams only if they are insanely gifted story-

around two weeks damning my own name for agree-

tellers. Examples: the dream episodes in The

ing to do this, and trying to find a way to

Sopranos, and the way Roberto Bolaño writes

crack it. And that’s when I thought about the

about the dreams of the critics in The Part

path of least resistance. I love the path of

About The Critics, the first part of 2666. So,

least resistance: it’s a lofty justification

no writing about dreams. There’s no way on

for laziness and for not doing what you don’t

earth I can pull that off. On to the next idea.

want to do. And that’s how come I decided not

While I was on the dreams track, I thought

to write about these images at all. I decided,

about how when I was a kid I had one of my

instead, to think about what movie, or what

first deep (or “hippy”) thoughts when I first

book, these images made me think of, and to

realized that maybe we were all living a dream

write about that instead. Movies and books, I

and that what everybody considered the real

can write about. They have interiority. They

world might be a dream itself and that maybe

have plots. They have words in them.Here’s how

the dream world was the real one or maybe it

my thought process worked. First, as usually

was all just a dream inside our heads (a suspi-

magazine, and I were at an art show opening in

have no regard for the reader whatsoever and

happens when I see people sleeping, I envied

cion that was then confirmed when, in this or-

a very unlikely setting: a luxury hotel in Apu-

mention Robert Smithson,” I told him. He

them and thought about how tired I was and

der, a) I first took psychedelic drugs and, b)

lia. We drank some whisky with the nice ladies

laughed – that’s why we’re friends. I agreed.

about how nobody gets a good night’s sleep any-

I read pretty much all of Philip K. Dick and

Valerio Mannucci, one of the editors of this

“So you’re asking me to be as obscure as I can,

who had invited us there, and when they left

Valerio told me he’d send me the pictures –

more. I like sleeping. I like dreaming. In gen- finally, c) I studied philosophy) and I thought,

he told me about a section in NERO which he

which turned out to be a portfolio of photos

eral, I really like it when I can feel the un-

Hey, there you go, I could write about The

thought I’d be good for. “It’s in the front of

by Mark Wallinger of people sleeping on public

canny, and dreaming has always felt somewhat

Three Stigmata Of Palmer Eldritch. It’s one of

the mag,” he said. “Basically we pair up a

transport – and just write about what those im-

supernatural to me. It’s the same reason for

my favorite Phil Dick books, and I know it very

portfolio by an artist and a specially commis-

ages made me think about. A couple of months

which I like reading: I like that weird feeling

well, and it’s kind of about dreams2 and it’s

sioned text by a writer. We ask the writer to

later, and here I am, looking at these images,

you get when you’re reading and it’s really

true that these pictures made me think of peo-

write something that’s “inspired by” the imag-

and the first thing they make me think about is

good and you stop realizing where you are and

ple dreaming, so that’d work. Or Ubik! Ubik’s

es, without writing directly about them.” He

that I can’t write about pictures. I like look-

it’s like the back of your head’s opening up. I

even better. Ubik is actually about a group of

told me he thought it’d be funny if I tried do-

ing at pictures – I do – but I don’t know how

find that feeling very enjoyable. But I digress. people who all share something like a group

ing their next one. Now, because I’m somewhat

to write 2,000 words about a portfolio of pho-

The thing is, I have really messed up dreams –

dream state – so it’s got that angle – and then

humans have developed ESP. The protagonist is deadbeat anti-telepath (someone who can shield others from telepaths, duh) Joe Chip, who accepts an assignment to the moon where he must protect a factory or something from attack by other psi agents. He goes there with a weird attractive lady with a strange, heretofore unseen power that allows her to undo what’s happening by rapidly going back in time and altering it and then coming back to the present (I told you it’s awesome). Then, when they get to the moon, a bomb goes off, killing the guy who first gave them the job, Runciter. From then on, things get really weird. Stuff starts coming apart really fast. They see adverts for a product called Ubik everywhere they go, as soon as one of them leaves the rest of the group they find him in an advanced state of decomposition, and they start getting cryptic messages from it turns out they’re all dead, or semi-dead, which is

Runciter in writing, on the radio, on

pretty much the second thought that came to my mind

television. They see his face on coins

when I looked at all those poor, tired souls who ended

and on billboards. At one point, a guy

up squeezing in a quick rest by sleeping on buses:

takes a cigarette out of a pack and

death or semi-death. Firstly, because the very idea of

it’s already made of ash. It’s like the

cramming a few minutes of shut-eye while riding public

fabric of the world around them is

transport is really sad in and of itself, and secondly,

slowly disintegrating. My favorite part

because it brought to mind a whole chain of consider-

is when Joe goes to a public restroom

ations that began with “these people are on the grind,

and finds a message from Runciter on

they’re tired”, proceeded on to “they probably take

the mirrors above the sink that says

that bus every day on the way back home from work” and

JUMP IN THE URINAL AND STAND ON YOUR

then “every day is the same, it’s like purgatory” and

HEAD, I AM ALIVE AND YOU ARE ALL DEAD.

then “it’s like that until we die” and there they were,

There’s also another very cool line in

the two themes I was circling around, semi-death and

the book, which is about how, in

death.Anyway, I was very excited to write about Ubik

dreams, we can remember lines of poetry

because, well, it’s my absolute favorite Philip K. Dick

we never read. Or something like that.

book. Written in the late sixties, at the height of

Anyway, it turns out that Runciter was

Dick’s flirtation with hippy culture, before it turned

actually the only guy who survived the

into the very paranoid comedown that produced many of

explosion, and all the other characters

his later works, and long held as one of the purest ex-

were in half-life, a sort of coma, and

amples of the psychedelic science fiction novel , Ubik

Runciter was trying to enter their

is set in a dystopic future in which humanity can trav- “collective dream.” Then some other el relatively easily to the moon, and a select group of awesome stuff happens, but I won’t give 4

away the ending, in case you might want to read it (you should). But do take my word: it’s very very awesome. And then while I was thinking about maybe writing about Ubik I thought, It’s a real shame that they never made it into a great movie, so then I thought that maybe it would be better to write about movies. Nobody reads anymore, anyway, so what’s the point? So I thought about movies about dreams and the first one that came to mind was The Saragossa Manuscript, which is one of my favorite films, and it fits the Wallinger pictures, too. It’s a picaresque narrative which consists entirely of stories-within-stories and endless dreams-within-dreams, a bit like Sadegh Hedayat’s The Blind Owl. That’s also a good one, I thought. Maybe that’s what I could write about. A great novella by a Persian student of Sartre’s who committed suicide after writing the book, The Blind Owl was banned in Persia under the rule of the Shah. Essentially, it’s a long firstperson monologue by a crazy painter who’s also an incredibly unreliable narrator because he’s always fucked off his head on opium, and I love unreliable narrators. Anyway, this guy says he’s locked in his own room (but we don’t know

There are certain diseases that rot you from

Polish Nouvelle Vague movies set in the Sixteen

if this is true) and taking massive amounts of

the inside like a canker in the soul. Not a bad

Hundreds don’t lend themselves to jokes very

opium because he’s obsessed with one particular

start. Anyway, I thought about The Saragossa

well. So I had to find another one. At first, I

image that he can’t stop visualizing or paint-

Manuscript but it immediately tasted a bit

couldn’t think of any movies that had to do

ing. Said image represents an old man with a

sour. It seemed far too pretentious to write

with dreams and a suspended, purgatory-like

turban (who might or might not be his uncle)

about a movie from the Polish Nouvelle Vague in

existence and death or semi-death, and then the

sitting under a tree and raising a finger of

an art magazine. Then, the other night, I was

words GROUNDHOG DAY lit up in my brain like a

his left hand to his mouth in a sign of sur-

reading through the first issue of the Grant-

Broadway sign. There, it’s perfect! I could

prise while a beautiful girl in a long black

land Quarterly and there’s a fantastic article

write about all the awesome facial expressions

dress (who the narrator might or might not

in it by Bill Simmons about Hoosiers. Nothing

Bill Murray pulls off in the movie, all his

know, but who he certainly loves and whose vi-

more than an incredibly detailed scene-by-

little quirks and mannerisms, from the begin-

sion first started loosening his screws) bends

scene companion to the movie, what set it apart

ning, when he’s a meteorologist from Pitts-

over and hands him a white lily from across a

was the evident love it was made with, the de-

burgh who goes to Punxsutawney to attend

shallow creek. He paints this image compulsive-

tail only a real fan can get into. It was hi-

Groundhog Day and they establish he’s funny

ly and talks about it and thinks about it and

larious. So, I thought, Hey, maybe I could do

from that part at the start when he says, “Up

he remembers it in many different occasions and

that with The Saragossa Manuscript. But then I

in the Pacific Northwest, as you can see,

can’t really place when or where it happened or

scrapped that, too. It never would have worked:

they’re going to have some very, very tall

how many times he saw it and we don’t know if

that kind of thing only works with movies that

trees,” and, “Front coming our way! Look out!

he’s dying or not and it’s really, really good.

most people have already seen, and it doesn’t

What’s that gonna mean for us in the Three

It also starts with a knock-out first line. If

work if the movie doesn’t lend itself to jokes.

Rivers Area? [points at cold front on screen]

I remember it correctly, it’s something like

For the record: circular, story-within-a-story

One of these BIG BLUE THINGS!” Or the part

when he makes the impression of Andie MacDowell’s face when she imitates the groundhog in

ANTI-SMITHSON Ecco come ho deciso - non troppo casualmente - di intitolare questo articolo

the car, or when he sticks his hand in his mouth to tell Andie MacDowell he’s already seen

their cameraman eat. And then, later, when he’s stuck during the same day, stuck in a time loop, much like the subjects of Wallinger’s photos, and he’s starting to realize this, and he’s starting to doubt he’ll ever be able to leave, and the lady at his bed & breakfast asks him if he’ll be checking out the next day, and he says, his voice trembling, “Chance of departure today... eighty percent.” Then he starts to walk out, does a double back, spins, and says “Seventy-five, eighty.” Or later, when he’s still Evil Bill Murray, before he realizes he has to spend his extra time on earth5 to do good for others (it’s a massively Buddhist movie, this one), and he’s still trying to get into Andie MacDowell’s pants for all the wrong reasons, and she tells him she studied6 French Poetry in college, and he laughs his ass off, and the next day, he comes back, and when she repeats what she studied, he starts reciting a ridiculously romantic poem in French while resting the side of his face on his left hand. It’s an amazing performance. It carries the movie. So there, decided. Bill Murray’s performance in Groundhog Day. That’s what I’ll write about. It’s perfect.

1 None of this is meant as a lack of respect to you, Mr. Wallinger. 2 To be more precise, it’s actually about Gnosticism, but whatever, it ‘s also kind of about the nature of the shared dream we call consciousness, and other Dickian stuff like that. 3 In reality, Dick only took LSD once. He wrote most of his books while high on massive amounts of speed. 4 Relatively to the time of writing. It’s actually set in the nineties.

Tim Small is editor-in-chief of the Italian edition of Vice and fiction editor at Vice USA. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Rolling Stone, L'Uomo Vogue, Rivista Studio, NERO, Kaleidoscope, The Observer. He is also the founder and editor of The Milan Review, an independent publishing house based in Milan.

andata così. Qualche mese fa Valerio Mannucci, uno degli editor di questa rivista, e io eravamo a un vernissage organizzato in uno scenario piuttosto improbabile: un hotel extralusso in Puglia. Rimasti soli, dopo aver bevuto del whisky con le gentili signore che ci avevano invitato, mi ha parlato di una sezione di NERO per cui pensava sarei stato perfetto. “È all’inizio del giornale”, mi ha spiegato. “In sostanza, abbiniamo il portfolio di un artista a un pezzo scritto appositamente da un autore. All’autore chiediamo di scrivere qualcosa che si ‘ispiri’ alle immagini, senza però parlarne direttamente.” Mi ha detto che sarebbe stato divertente se avessi provato a scrivere il prossimo. Ora, siccome sono un po’ stronzo, ho risposto come uno stronzo avrebbe fatto: “Quindi mi stai chiedendo di essere il più possibile vago, senza alcun rispetto per il lettore, e di citare Robert Smithson”. Ha riso; ecco perché siamo amici. Ho accettato. Valerio mi ha detto che mi avrebbe mandato le foto - un portfolio di foto raccolte da Mark Wallinger1 che immortalano gente che dorme sui mezzi pubblici - e di scrivere di che cosa avessi pensato guardandole. Un paio di mesi dopo, eccomi qui. Guardo le immagini, e la prima cosa che mi viene in mente è che non so scrivere di fotografie. Mi piace guardarle, davvero, ma non so come mettere giù duemila parole su un portfolio di fotografie. Non l’ho mai fatto prima. Non ho gli strumenti adatti. In altre circostanze, contatterei l’artista e gli farei qualche domanda. Ma le regole che Valerio mi ha imposto me lo impediscono. Il che solleva l’affatto semplice questione: non sono un critico d’arte, e non conosco il linguaggio della critica d’arte. Inoltre - e qualche mente perniciosa potrebbe definirlo un caso da manuale di una situazione in stile La volpe e l’uva -, non ho nessuna intenzione di impararlo. Non mi interessa nemmeno indagare che cosa si può e che cosa non si può dire sulle immagini. Di sicuro non potrebbe fregarvene di meno delle mie opinioni su una qualche fotografia, ma di sicuro vi frega ancora meno di quello che ho da dire su ciò che non so dire di quella fotografia. Scrivere di come non si riesca a scrivere di qualcosa è uno dei trucchi più noiosi e abusati che abbiamo subito negli ultimi secoli. Insomma, ho passato due settimane a maledirmi per aver accettato l’incarico, cercando un modo per uscirne. Ed è allora che mi è venuta in mente la strada più facile. Adoro la strada più facile: è una giustificazione snob per la pigrizia e per non fare ciò che non si ha voglia di fare. Ed ecco come ho deciso di non scrivere di queste immagini. Ho deciso, invece, di pensare al film, o al libro, a cui queste immagini mi hanno fatto pensare. Di film e libri posso scrivere. Hanno un’interiorità. Hanno una trama. Sono fatti di parole. Di seguito, il mio processo mentale. Sulle prime, come mi capita quando vedo qualcuno dormire, ho provato invidia per i soggetti delle fotografie e realizzato quanto fossi stanco e come sia sempre più difficile per chiunque farsi una bella dormita. Mi piace dormire. Mi piace sognare. In linea generale, mi piace provare sensazioni strane, e sognare per me ha sempre avuto un che di soprannaturale. È la stessa ragione per cui mi piace leggere: adoro la strana sensazione che si prova leggendo qualcosa di davvero valido e si dimentica dove ci si trova, ed è come se il retro della tua testa si spalancasse. Trovo che quella sensazione sia molto piacevole. Ma sto divagando. Il punto è che faccio dei sogni davvero incasinati - non faccio mai sogni normali, come passeggiare sulla spiaggia con uno zio morto o tenere un discorso e accorgersi di non indossare i pantaloni. I miei sogni di solito prevedono viaggi nel tempo e divinità indù ed esecuzioni e montagne violacee e aquile e leoni. E un sacco di sesso. Comunque, ho abbandonato subito l’idea di scrivere di sogni, perché con tutta probabilità è l’argomento più mortalmente noioso di cui si possa parlare o scrivere. Faccio già abbastanza fatica a fingermi interessato quando le persone raccontano ciò che succede nella vita vera, perché mai dovrei ascoltarle mentre parlano di roba che hanno visto nella loro testa come rappresentazione lineare di ciò che il loro cervello sta elaborando mentre riposa? Voglio dire, è davvero difficile parlare di sogni in modo interessante. Tollero chi parla di sogni a patto che sia un narratore assolutamente dotato. Tipo: gli episodi onirici dei Sopranos, e il modo in cui Roberto Bolaño scrive dei sogni dei critici ne La parte dei critici, la prima sezione di 2666. Insomma: non scriverò di sogni. Non ce la posso fare. Andiamo oltre. Mentre riflettevo sui sogni, mi è tornato in mente quando, da ragazzino, ho formulato i miei primi pensieri profondi (anche: “hippy”) e ho ipotizzato per la prima volta che forse stavamo tutti vivendo un sogno e quindi ciò che tutti consideravano il mondo reale era un sogno, e che forse questo mondo sognato era quello reale, o forse ancora era solo tutto un sogno nelle nostre teste (un sospetto che è stato confermato quando, in quest’ordine: a) ho assunto dro-

ghe psichedeliche, b) ho letto praticamente tutto Philip K. Dick, e, infine, c) ho studiato filosofia) e ho pensato: “Potrei scrivere de Le tre stimmate di Palmer Eldritch. È uno dei miei libri preferiti di Dick, lo conosco bene, parla un po’ di sogni2, e in fondo quelle foto mi hanno fatto pensare alla gente che sogna - è perfetto. Oppure Ubik! Ubik è ancora meglio”. Ubik racconta di un gruppo di persone che condividono una sorta di stato onirico collettivo - quindi ha la giusta prospettiva - e poi salta fuori che sono tutti morti, o semi-morti, che è la seconda cosa che ho pensato quando ho visto quelle povere anime stanche che sono finite a sonnecchiare sugli autobus: morte, o semi-morte. Innanzitutto, perché la sola idea di racimolare qualche minuto di sonno viaggiando su un mezzo pubblico è triste di per sé; e poi perché mi hanno fatto venire in mente tutta una serie di considerazioni che cominciavano con: “Questa gente si fa il culo, è stanca”, proseguivano con: “Probabilmente prendono l’autobus ogni giorno per tornare a casa dal lavoro”, e con: “Ogni giorno, sempre uguale, come in purgatorio”, e finivano con: “Così fino alla morte” - ed eccoli lì, i due temi a cui stavo girando intorno: semi-morte e morte. Comunque, ero su di giri all’idea di scrivere di Ubik, perché è in assoluto il mio libro preferito di Philip K. Dick. Scritto alla fine degli anni Sessanta - al culmine della passione di Dick per la cultura hippy, prima che scemasse nel declino paranoico che ha generato molti dei suoi ultimi lavori, e a lungo considerato uno degli esempi più puri di romanzo3 di fantascienza psichedelica -, Ubik è ambientato in un futuro distopico4 nel quale l’umanità può viaggiare abbastanza agevolmente sulla Luna, e un ristretto gruppo di umani ha sviluppato percezioni extrasensoriali. Il protagonista è Joe Chip, uno spiantato antitelepate (può schermare gli altri dai poteri dei telepati, dai), che accetta una missione sulla Luna: deve proteggere una fabbrica o qualcosa del genere dall’attacco di altri agenti psi. Parte insieme ad una donna bizzarra ma attraente, dotata di uno strano potere mai visto prima che le permette di annullare ciò che sta accadendo tornando velocemente indietro nel tempo, modificare il passato e ritornare al presente (ve l’ho detto che è fichissimo). Poi, quando arrivano sulla Luna, esplode una bomba, che uccide il tizio che ha dato loro l’incarico, Runciter. Da quel momento in poi, le cose si fanno davvero strane. La situazione precipita molto rapidamente. Vedono ovunque la pubblicità di un prodotto chiamato Ubik, appena qualcuno del gruppo si allontana viene ritrovato in avanzato stato di decomposizione, e Runciter comincia a inviare loro messaggi criptici - scritti, alla radio, in televisione. La sua faccia è su monete e cartelloni. A un certo punto, un tizio tira fuori una sigaretta dal pacchetto, e scopre che è già cenere. È come se il tessuto del mondo che li circonda si stesse lentamente disintegrando. La parte che preferisco è quella in cui Joe va in un bagno pubblico e trova un messaggio di Runciter sullo specchio sopra il lavandino: saltate nell’orinatoio e mettetevi a testa in giù, io sono vivo e voi siete tutti morti. C’è anche un altro passaggio molto bello nel libro, che parla di come, nei sogni, riusciamo a ricordare versi di poesie che non abbiamo mai letto. O qualcosa di simile. Comunque, viene fuori che Runciter è in realtà l’unico sopravvissuto all’esplosione, che tutti gli altri personaggi erano in uno stato di semi-vita, una specie di coma, e che Runciter stava cercando di penetrare il loro “sogno collettivo”. Poi succedono altre cose spettacolari, ma non svelerò il finale in caso vogliate leggerlo (dovreste proprio farlo). Però fidatevi: è davvero, davvero incredibile. E poi, mentre stavo valutando se scrivere di Ubik o meno, ho pensato che fosse davvero un peccato che non ne avessero mai tratto un film, e allora ho pensato che forse sarebbe stato meglio parlare di film. Tanto ormai nessuno legge più, e quindi. Allora ho pensato a film sui sogni e il primo che mi è venuto in mente è stato Il manoscritto trovato a Saragozza, che è uno dei miei preferiti, e inoltre è appropriato alle foto di Wallinger. Si tratta di un picaresco composto interamente da storie nelle storie e infiniti sogni nei sogni - un po’ come The Blind Owl di Sadegh Hedayat. Valido anche quello, forse potrei parlarne. Splendido romanzo breve scritto da uno studente persiano di Sartre che si è suicidato dopo averlo concluso, The Blind Owl è stato bandito in patria dallo scià. Si tratta sostanzialmente del monologo in prima persona di un pittore folle che è anche un narratore incredibilmente inattendibile perché si è sputtanato con l’oppio adoro i narratori inattendibili. Comunque, questo tizio dice di essere rinchiuso nella propria stanza (ma non sappiamo se sia vero) e assume massicce quantità di oppio perché è ossessionato da una particolare immagine che non riesce a smettere di visualizzare nella propria mente né di dipingere. L’immagine di un uomo anziano con un turbante (che forse è suo zio) seduto sotto un albero, che si porta un dito della mano sinistra alla bocca in un gesto di sorpresa, mentre una splendida ragazza con un vestito nero (che forse il narratore non conosce, ma che sicuramente ama e la cui vista ne ha compromesso lo stato mentale) si china su un ruscelletto e gli porge un giglio bianco. Lui dipinge quest’immagine

Xing presenta

in modo compulsivo e ne parla e ci pensa e la ricorda in moltissime occasioni diverse senza riuscire a individuare precisamente quando o dove abbia avuto luogo l’incontro, o quante volte l’abbia vista e non sappiamo se stia morendo oppure no ed è davvero, davvero bello. Ha anche un incipit che è una bomba. Se ricordo bene, è qualcosa tipo: “Esistono malattie che ti fanno marcire dall’interno come un cancro dell’anima”. Non male, come inizio. Dicevo, ho pensato a Il manoscritto trovato a Saragozza, ma mi è sembrato subito un po’ fuori luogo. Mi sembrava davvero troppo pretenzioso scrivere di un film della Nouvelle Vague polacca su una rivista d’arte. Poi, l’altra notte, scorrendo il primo numero di “Grantland Quarterly”, ho trovato un fantastico articolo di Bill Simmons su Colpo vincente. Niente di più di un compendio incredibilmente dettagliato, scena per scena, del film, che salta agli occhi per l’evidente amore con cui è stato scritto, il particolare che solo un vero appassionato può cogliere. Era esilarante. Allora ho pensato: “Ehi, forse posso fare lo stesso con Il manoscritto trovato a Saragozza”. Ma poi ho lasciato perdere anche quell’idea. Non avrebbe mai funzionato: questo genere di cose funziona solo con film che la maggior parte della gente ha già visto, non se il film non si presta allo scherzo. Per la cronaca: i film circolari, storia nella storia, della Nouvelle Vague polacca ambientati nel Seicento non si prestano più di tanto allo scherzo. Dovevo trovarne un altro. All’inizio non mi veniva in mente nessun film che avesse a che fare con i sogni e con un’esistenza sospesa, da purgatorio, e morte o semi-morte. E poi le parole “Giorno della Marmotta” si sono accese nella mia testa come un cartellone di Broadway. Ecco, perfetto! Potrei scrivere di tutte le incredibili espressioni che Bill Murray mette a segno nel film Ricomincio da capo, tutti i suoi vezzi e le sue pose, dall’inizio, quand’è un meteorologo di Pittsburgh che va a Punxsutawney per fare un servizio sul Giorno della Marmotta, e si capisce che è divertente non appena dice: “Per quanto riguarda il Nord-Ovest, si registrano alberi esageratamente alti”, e “Un fronte freddo si dirige verso di noi. Che vuol dire, e soprattutto che tipo di conseguenze avrà? [indicando il fronte freddo sullo schermo] Ecco! Le puntine blu!”. O il pezzo in cui scimmiotta la faccia di Andie MacDowell mentre imita la marmotta in auto, o quando si mette una mano in bocca per spiegare a Andie MacDowell che ha già visto il loro cameraman mangiare. Oppure dopo, quando è intrappolato nel ripetersi dello stesso giorno, in un loop temporale, come i soggetti delle foto di Wallinger, e comincia a capire, e comincia a credere di non uscirne più, e la signora del bed&breakfast gli chiede quando pensa di ripartire, e lui dice, la voce che trema: “Possibilità di andare via oggi... ottanta per cento”. Poi fa per uscire, fa un passo indietro, si gira su se stesso e dice: “Anche settanta”. O ancora dopo, quand’è ancora il Bill Murray cattivo, prima che capisca che deve utilizzare il suo tempo extra sulla Terra5 per fare del bene al prossimo (è un film decisamente buddista), e sta ancora cercando di farsi Andie MacDowell per tutte le ragioni sbagliate, e lei gli dice che ha studiato poesia francese6 all’università e lui muore dal ridere, e il giorno dopo torna a quello stesso momento e, quando lei gli ripete che cos’ha studiato, lui si mette a recitare una poesia incredibilmente romantica in francese con la guancia appoggiata alla mano sinistra. È una prova d’attore straordinaria. Trascina l’intero film. Ecco, ho deciso. La performance di Bill Murray in Ricomincio da capo. Scriverò di questo. È perfetto.

LIVE ARTS WEEK

Bologna 24>29 aprile 2012

1 Nulla di tutto ciò vuole mancarle di rispetto, signor Wallinger. 2 A voler essere precisi, tratta in realtà di gnosticismo, ma pazienza, parla anche della natura del sogno condiviso che chiamiamo coscienza e altre robe del genere tipiche di Dick. 3 In realtà, Dick fece uso di lsd una sola volta. Scrisse la maggior parte dei suoi libri sotto l’effetto di massicce dosi di speed. 4 Rispetto all’epoca in cui è stato scritto: è ambientato negli anni Novanta. 5 Dei veri nerd hanno scritto un intero articolo che calcola il tempo trascorso da Bill Murray nel loop. A quanto pare, si tratta di otto anni, otto mesi e sedici giorni. In seguito, il regista Harold Ramis ha dichiarato che aveva sempre pensato fossero quasi trent’anni. 6 Il che, tra l’altro, accade dopo che lui le ha detto: “Dio, vorrei poter vivere in montagna, a grandi altezze. È là che mi vedo tra cinque anni”.

Tim Small è direttore dell’edizione italiana di Vice e editor letterario di Vice USA. Scrive su altre riviste come Rolling Stones, L’Uomo Vogue, Rivista Studio, NERO, Kaleidoscope, The Observer. È anche fondatore ed editor di The Milan Review, una casa editrice indipendente di base a Milano.

www.xing.it www.liveartsweek.it

The images, sketches and maps are based on documents compiled by Lima based artist duo Gilda Mantilla and Raimond Chaves in their years long research in the Biblioteca Amazónica of Iquitos, the largest collection of historical documents in the Amazon region of Peru. Next to this library stands the House of Iron, designed by Gustave Eiffel in 1899 for the Paris Exhibition and transported piece by piece to the jungle, likely becoming the first prefabricated house in the Americas. Iquitos was the center of Peru's highly lucrative rubber business and, together with Manaus in Brazil, it held the global monopoly on rubber during its boom years.

Manaus possesses another example of 19th century grand eclectic architecture, the Opera house known as the Amazon Theatre. Both buildings were symbols of a new wealthy tropical gentry, which was appropriating European bourgeois taste as its aesthetic paradigm and building these structures as attempts at placing their cities among the worldly centers of civilization. Both buildings can be considered archeological sites of an early stage of globalization, a dislocated modernity shipped to the core of the rainforest.

Leaping closer to our times, in 2005 MTV Brazil produced a concert of The White Stripes in the Amazon Theatre in front of a massive audience. The concert was a celebration of Jack White’s wedding, which had taken place hours before the show as an indigenous ritual on the Amazon River. The White Stripes were the first rock band ever to be allowed to play at the legendary venue, which has otherwise hosted only classical music and opera since its foundation.

ABSTRACT

e immagini, gli schizzi e le mappe si basano su documenti redatti dalla coppia di artisti formata da Gilda Mantilla e Raimond Chaves, che lavorano a Lima, negli anni di ricerche alla Biblioteca Amazónica de Iquitos - la più vasta collezione di documenti storici nella regione amazzonica del Perù. Vicino a questa biblioteca sorge la Casa de Fierro, progettata da Gustave Eiffel in occasione dell’Esposizione Universale che si tenne nel 1899 a Parigi e trasportata pezzo per pezzo nella giungla; apparentemente, si tratta della prima costruzione prefabbricata delle Americhe. Iquitos è stato il fulcro del redditizio commercio della gomma peruviano e, insieme a Manaus (Brasile), ha detenuto il monopolio globale della gomma durante gli anni del boom. Manaus vanta un altro esempio di grandiosa architettura eclettica dell’Ottocento: il teatro dell’opera conosciuto come Teatro Amazonas. Entrambe le costruzioni erano simbolo di una nuova e benestante aristocrazia che aveva assunto il gusto borghese europeo a proprio paradigma e edificava queste strutture come tentativi di inserire le rispettive città tra i centri mondiali della civiltà. Ed entrambe le costruzioni possono essere considerate siti archeologici di uno stadio iniziale della globalizzazione, una modernità dislocata e trapiantata nel centro della foresta equatoriale. Spostandoci in un’epoca a noi più vicina, nel 2005 MTV Brasile ha finanziato un concerto dei White Stripes al Teatro Amazonas, di fronte a un pubblico numerosissimo. Il concerto è stato una celebrazione del matrimonio di Jack White, officiato qualche ora prima dello spettacolo in un rito indigeno sulle acque del Rio delle Amazzoni. I White Stripes sono stati la prima rock band a suonare in questo luogo leggendario, che dalla sua fondazione in poi ha ospitato esclusivamente musica classica e concerti d’opera. Mantilla e Chaves hanno fatto proprie le immagini dell’archivio attraverso lievi interventi, creando una raccolta che tratta di pianificazione ingegneristica ai tropici, sfruttamento del territorio, architettura entropica, urbanismo informale, manifestazioni visive dei boom economici passati e presenti e i relativi investimenti in una realtà altrimenti umida e disomogenea. Forse si tratta dello stesso contrasto con cui si sono scontrati gli spettatori del concerto dei White Stripes a Manaus. L’euforia di una gioventù la cui soggettività è segnata dalla globalizzazione del gusto musicale contemporaneo era in netto contrasto con l’architettura “conservatrice” dell’opera, rendendo così evidente - come i disegni riportati in queste pagine - che l’idealistica promessa di progresso nel progetto della modernità ai tropici si è trasformata in un programma incompleto ed eterno di contraddizioni. Questi disegni sembrano radiografie soggettive dei corpi di coloro che abitano oggi l’Amazzonia, e anche delle multinazionali tecnocratiche che sfruttano il territorio. Sembrano mostrare immagini a metà tra i valori della produzione e le forme tropicali di ritrovo collettivo.

Mantilla and Chaves appropriated the images in the archive with only slight interventions, creating a body of work that discusses engineering planning in the tropics, land exploitation, entropic architecture, informal urbanism and the visual manifestations of past and present economic booms and their related investments in an otherwise humid and non-uniform reality. Perhaps it is this contrast that one encountered during the White Stripes concert in Manaus. The euphoria of a youth whose subjectivity is marked by the globalization of today’s musical taste was in sharp contrast with the pompous "conservative" architecture of the opera, making it clear, like the drawings in these pages, that the idealist promise of progress in the project of modernity in the tropics had become an uncompleted and everlasting program of contradictions. These drawings seem like subjective x-rays of the bodies of those who inhabit the Amazon today, and also of the technocratic corporations that exploit the territory. They depict imagery situated somewhere between values of production and tropical forms of hanging-out.

(Testo di Inti Guerrero. Immagini selezionate da Abstract di Gilda Mantilla & Raimond Chaves, courtesy Revolver e ProjecteSD)

Text by Inti Guerrero. Selected images from Abstract by Gilda Mantilla & Raimond Chaves, courtesy of Revolver and ProjecteSD.

Gilda Mantilla (1967) e Raimond Chaves (1963) vivono e lavorano insieme a Lima dal 2001. Nei loro progetti trovano spazio i loro vari interessi: il disegno, il contesto latino americano, e la decostruzione del sapere attraverso la ricerca su archivi specifici.

Gilda Mantilla (1967) and Raimond Chaves (1963) have lived and worked together in Lima since 2001. Their projects link their mutual interest in drawing, the Latin American context, and the (de)construction of knowledge through research in specific archives.

Inti Guerrero (1983) è un critico e curatore nato a Bogotà in Colombia. E’ stato recentemente nominato Associate Artistic Director della Fundacion Ars TEOR/éTica. Ha curato diverse mostre in America Latina e in Europa. I suoi testi sono apparsi su molte riviste internazionali.

Inti Guerrero (1983) is an art critic and curator born in Bogotá, Colombia. He has recently been appointed Associate Artistic Director of Fundacion Ars TEOR/éTica. He has curated several shows in Latina America and Europe. His texts have appeared in many international magazines.

SU ROMA words by fabio mauri images by alfa castaldi

FABIO MAURI (1926-2009) WAS ONE OF THE MOST VERSATILE PERSONALITIES ON THE ITALIAN ARTISTIC AND CULTURAL SCENE FROM THE POST-WAR PERIOD UNTIL NOW. AN ARTIST, CRITIC, EDITOR, TEACHER, FOUNDER OF AVANT-GARDE MAGAZINES (QUINDICI, LA CITTÀ DI RIGA), AND CREATOR OF FAMOUS PERFORMANCES (EBREA, CHE COS’È IL FASCISMO), HE SPENT HIS WHOLE LIFE IN DIALOGUE WITH PERSONAL AND COLLECTIVE HISTORY, WITH THE CULTURE OF HIS TIMES AND THE CONTRADICTIONS IT INVOLVED. THE TEXT WE HAVE PUBLISHED HERE IS DEDICATED TO ROME, OUR CITY. WE THOUGHT IT WAS A VERY PERSONAL PORTRAIT, BUT ONE WHOSE VALUE IS ALMOST UNIVERSAL. ACCOMPANYING THE TEXT ARE PHOTOGRAPHS OF ROME TAKE BY ONE OF HIS CONTEMPORARIES, ALFA CASTALDI (1926-1995), WHO WAS ONE OF THE MAIN ITALIAN FASHION PHOTOGRAPHERS OF HIS ERA. TOGETHER WITH MULAS AND DONDERO, CASTALDI WAS ONE OF THE ANIMATORS OF THE BAR GIAMAICA IN MILAN. HE WAS THE PARTNER OF ANNA PIAGGI IN BOTH WORK AND LIFE, AND AFTER HIS BEGINNINGS IN REPORTAGE HE WORKED AS A PHOTOGRAPHER IN THE FASHION WORLD, ENRICHING ITS LANGUAGE WITH HIS PERSONAL AND IRONIC STYLE.

Incongruent units held together randomly and habitually

Unauthorized construction takes precedence and is to

by a comprehensive piece of plastic surgery.

be found all over the city. The Roman antiquity is buried

A marshland full, as marshes are, of life.

underneath the less ancient, followed by towers which

One day when I was in Milan, Lucio Fontana confessed to

become a medieval space on the surface, amidst centuries

me that “I would never live in Rome, I don’t like broken

of displaced marble; while over here, lying underground

cities.” He saw Rome as a place that had been pulverized,

and preceding the modern flow of lava, the Temple of

covered over and destroyed. Round here, one encounters

Mithras is punctuated beneath the church of Santa Maria

a unique, improbable perception of time. An exaggerated

in Cosmedin by fifteen-meter high stone columns, and the

dawn or sunrise, looked over by its great renown, as Vil-

Mamertine Prison at the Campidoglio, with its iron portico,

lon so aptly put it (God on the Landscape). The time is out

overhangs a steep drop. The space is narrow for a single

of joint, the final reckoning is incorrect. It is either too

person, let alone two: Paul of Tarsus, Simon Peter, Sparta-

high, or it comes to zero.

cus. Subterranean Rome is a record of everyday events

An unready apocalypse.

whose historical roots are tangled. So the Renaissance,

Anyone alive can feel like they have gone through more

which continues locally up to Busiri Vici, and the insolent

than anyone else. Under low-lying clouds, turned pink by

inflations of the Baroque period, impose themselves as

the city lights, a unique time is compressed. Rome’s set-

best they can through a violent invasion of the field. De-

ting remains its greatest event. Unobjective, because it is

tailed and superimposed, the clear-cut bas-relief tells sto-

mythical, it presents itself under the historical category of

ries of death or of life curtailed, of violence perpetrated

“reality.”

As a city Rome is synonymous with good living, but I

I wonder what it is that’s wrong, what it is that doesn’t let

think that because of its size, the topics and the challeng-

Rome off the hook by being simply another fact of life;

es it sets give you a personal responsibility, like a place

what it is that creates such an unmistakable sense of con-

chosen together with destiny. In terms of lifestyle cities

fusion in this city that I look over as if it embodies a plan

are usually contrasted with the countryside, but in Rome

or a bet that hasn’t come off.

the countryside is there: medicinal herbs sprout from

and impotence suffered: one can act as if nothing’s there,

“I like life in general, it is life in Russia that I dislike,” says

stone steps. City and country bang up against each other

Uncle Vanya. But this can’t be said of Rome. Even if Rome

in little settlements where human life is made-to-measure.

isn’t Russia, it is teeming with life, a grouping of non-par-

Rome is an ordered city, it is an agglomeration of small

allel opposites, a jumble of blood cells which do not re-

towns, of villages even. Its metropolitan quality cannot be

pulse each other but which are mutually opaque. There is

defined in purely physical terms. Ravines, mazes and var-

destitution here which can’t be found begging (although

iegation give anyone who inhabits the city a sense of the

that can be found also) but is invisible, as is the power,

limitlessness of a unified whole. A sense of underlying,

which belongs not to institutions, to the Palazzo, but to

unseen disengagement. In moments of sadness, the city

houses and apartment blocks. Everything else is close

does not contradict you, it doesn’t seem to notice any-

by, unrecognized, familiar. As well as being multi-centric,

thing as it looks in its own, impersonal, direction. Amidst

Rome is, in national terms, multiethnic: Sicilians, people

such abstention, it can feel like one is swimming freely in

from Turin, Romagna, Friuli, standing next to Macedo-

the open confines of a tuna net. A finely-knit mesh that

nians, singers, Armenians… Spies, professors… Many are

sooner or later could, that just might, tighten.

the nuns and the temptresses, and both types are at work.

city has never existed, but only the backlight of memory. Rome arrives from the borders of less exposed areas, places which are undoubtedly peripheral. Travelers who may be cultured or common pour in from the provinces. Passersby are the only daytime inhabitants of Rome. The city has the ambiguous vocation of giving a deft welcome to people in a setting which is real, or like the real, like the dramatic, like the tragic. At least, that’s how it is for me. Everything else is the same as getting used to any trauma: under aerial bombardment, you light a cigarette on the fires. This historic, post-ancient Rome strikes me as the opposite of a modernity without history. It contains suggestions of modernities that have already traversed a path which is still to be taken. Fascist Rome is here, and is inhabited: Via Tasso, in part a place of organized massacres, and in part a place of stairways reverberating with the shouts of lively children. The Roman Ghetto, handsome and curly-haired in its youth, is fringed by Borgo Pio and Trastevere; here, as is well known, you can find the most Roman people of all – a bit nasal, stuck on the memory of their own street, their own corner, their own familiar enthusiasms, which humbly keep them all equal. It is no epic. With their hostile manner, they maintain a well-kept secret that cannot be taught. One can learn about Nervi,

but simply passing by such fragments as

and a bit of Sironi at university, perhaps some Piacentini

though one were in a luxury historical

(who was better than he has been remembered) as if they

dumpsite can become unbearable.

were facts without a history.

These are awkward stitches on the city’s

Which isn’t true.

face, sutures of different temporalities in

What I want to say is that one inhabits Rome in order to

full view. Scars which thermodynamics do

understand where one has lived. What history the city has

not heal.

lived through. The city’s conscience develops late, as trou-

One gets used (or I do at least) to the pro-

bled consciences do, and only at the end does it prove to

visionality that the nature of the city gives

be less arbitrary than one would expect. Caught up in its

back to existence. The citizen, legitimately

unusualness, one neither leaves Rome nor stays easily,

alive, you yourself – no one knows where

like those who arrive and depart on the same day because

or even if they are. Rome is saturated with

of old and stubborn prejudices. But...

the memory of people who have lived

But recently something has happened. For some time now,

there. From Petrolini to Pirandello, to Ama-

Rome has seemed modern. This needs to be said. Not the

lia Rosselli, to Luisa, to Pier Paolo Pasolini.

houses perhaps, but the streets and the public transport

The list never ends, and all that remains

are rather more modern.

are the doorways. Rome nicely captures

One looks around to shake off the vague anxiety that one

the well-known truth that existence is not

might have mistaken city. Even the taxi drivers have been

eternal. Rome produces unstable states

replaced by their children, who are less Abruzzese, more

of being in the face of an eternity in frag-

private, more quiet, fair, phenomenological. I don’t know

ments. Perhaps the true citizen of this

if the taxis I take (in the Piazza Navona area) offer a repre-

sentative sample. But something has happened:

is cultural invention.

a strange invention of the Heritage Board –

Need we still mention Kennedy and America?

Schirmer and the Northern Europeans having

American art confronts you from the moment

been gotten rid of, followed by the French, with

you set foot in the airport and never lets you go,

Corot and even Mafai sidelined, covered over by

giving you a key to interpreting a reality which

excessive advertising – has painted Rome white

is sufficiently modern and in no small measure

and light-blue. This effacement has destroyed

complicated, in fact notoriously abstruse. Or

various periods and styles, giving the city a new

France, with its old, slightly threadbare, but still

look with a not displeasing aspect to it. The

great Impressionism. Stalin is dead, but Maya-

past, then, can be reformatted according to the

kovsky lives, and Moscow assures us of the

present. Someone has tried to make Rome into

fact. Things which aren’t directly implicated in

a city for the living.

today’s culture still shape the path down which

On these perhaps debatable but at least origi-

we walk.

nal lines, life has been recast as something to

So I would like to venture that the reason one

be lived. What more can be done to conserve

lives in Rome is to make history. The history of

the present?

art, the history of architecture, the history of literature, history of law, history of physics, his-

One thing that can be done, perhaps, is to

tory of philosophy, history of music, history of

further consider the global monument which

politics, history of tradition. In a word, it is the

(I hope I have already shown) expresses time,

culture of time as history. The history of time

and time alone. Buildings, walls and beams are

is the only culture of this city. One needs to

monumental indices of a plan, an art, a dynam-

proceed consciously and make history. It is our

ics of existence that neither resembles nor

turn. Good history, of course. But be careful,

simulates, but results in deeds.

because here mistakes and mediocrity are im-

This has been understood for a long time by

mediately visible. We have to decide.

the political institution. Or seems to have been

You have to decide whether to stay or go.

understood. It needed to get Raphael to paint

Whether to build with care and intelligence, or

frescoes on the walls, to convince Michelangelo,

whether to oppose and take aim at your target.

even if he rebelled, to put in some effort.

“For I do not do what I want, but the very thing

It has to do so if it wants an image, if it wants

I hate” wrote Saint Paul. With a little adaptation

to be a solid point of reference. It cannot afford

this could be a perfect plan for Rome, as for

to let Masaccio die off, perhaps be killed, or to

the world’s other key places, where humanity

let Erasmus slip away on the quiet: it even has

can no longer behave superficially or unfairly

to hold on to Luther. The State, in Rome – the

without doing grave damage to itself and to the

first place where the State resided – has to un-

community.

derstand that its only mirror and its only shell

SU ROMA di Fabio Mauri Fabio Mauri (1926-2009) è stato uno dei più versatili personaggi della scena artistica e culturale italiana dal dopoguerra ad oggi. Artista, critico, editore, docente, fondatore di riviste d’avanguardia (Quindici, La città di Riga), autore di famose performances (Ebrea, Che cos’è il fascismo), per tutta la sua vita ha dialogato con la storia collettiva e personale, la cultura del suo tempo e le relative contraddizioni. Il testo che pubblichiamo è dedicato a Roma, la nostra città. Ci è sembrato un ritratto molto personale, ma con un valore quasi universale. Ad accompagnare il testo, abbiamo pensato a dalle fotografie di Roma realizzate da un suo coetaneo, Alfa Castaldi (1926-1995), uno dei principali fotografi di moda italiani del tempo. Insieme a Mulas e Dondero, Castaldi è stato uno degli animatori del bar Giamaica a Milano. Compagno di vita e di lavoro di Anna Piaggi, dopo gli inizi come reportagista, ha lavorato come fotografo nel mondo della moda arricchendone il linguaggio col suo stile personale e ironico.

uando si nomina Roma, la città è sinonimo di luogo in cui vivere bene, ma penso che per la sua ampiezza, i temi e gli sfavori che pone è equivalente di responsabilità personale, come scelta di luogo condiviso dal destino. La città si contrappone, d’abitudine, per stile di vita, alla campagna, che a Roma però c’è, rispuntano erbe medicinali su scale di pietra. E si confrontano con esigue cittadine, sinonimo di umanità su misura: Roma è in regola, è un agglomerato di paesetti, persino di borghi. La qualità di metropoli che le spetta non è puramente fisica. Anfratti, meandri e molteplicità conferiscono alla coscienza di chi la abita un sostanziale carattere d’inesauribilità di un insieme. D’implicita, recondita, estraneità. In momenti di tristezza, la città non smentisce, non sembra avvertire nulla, girata da un’altra parte, più generale e propria. In una simile astensione, ci si può percepire come uno che nuoti liberamente nell’alto mare di una tonnara già chiusa. Un confine a maglia che potrà stringersi prima o poi, minacciosamente, potrebbe farlo. Mi chiedo cosa c’è che non vada, che non sia una semplice prerogativa dell’esistenza, per cui Roma risulterebbe innocente, e che dia un senso confuso così inconfondibile a questa città, che avverto sorvolata da un sentimento di progetto o di scommessa deluso. «La vita in generale mi piace, è la vita russa che mi dispiace» dice lo Zio Vania. ma non si può dirlo di Roma. Anche se Roma non è la Russia, le vite da queste parti sono numerose, è un insieme di contrari non analoghi, miscuglio di globuli non reciprocamente repulsivi ma reciprocamente opachi. La miseria non questua (che c’è) è invisibile, come invisibile è la potenza non istituzionale, non del Palazzo, delle molte case, dei palazzi. Il resto è vicino, ignoto, familiare. Oltre che multicentrica, Roma è nazionalmente multietnica: siciliani, torinesi, romagnoli, friulani, in coda a macedoni, cantatrici, armeni… Spie, professori… Suore e sirene sono innumerevoli e attive. Nuclei non conformi che un esteso lifting tiene insieme in un’apposizione casuale ma abituale. Una palude piena, come le paludi, di vita. Lucio Fontana un giorno, ero a Milano, mi confessò «Mai vivrei a Roma, non amo le città rotte». Vedeva Roma come un solido frantumato. Già sovrapposto e distrutto. La percezione del tempo, da queste parti, si fa di frequente unica, inverosimile. Un’alba o un tramonto eccessivo, sorvolato dal gran nome, come scrive bene Villon (Dio sul paesaggio). E’ un tempo guasto, la cifra finale non

giusta. O è troppo alta, o segna zero. Un’apocalisse non del tutto pronta. Chi è vivo percepisce di essere vissuto più di tutti. Sotto nuvole basse, rosa per i fari della città, vi è compressa un’unica ora. Lo scenario romano resta il maggior evento della città. Quasi inoggettivo, perché mitico, presenta sotto la specie storica di «realtà». L’abuso edilizio, dunque, ha precedenza, è dovunque. L’antico romano sepolto dal meno antico e di seguito le torri che si fanno spazio medievale in superficie, tra secoli di marmi dislocati, e sottoterra, al di qua, prima della moderna colata di lava: il tempio di Mitra, forato da colonne di quindici metro di cemento, sotto Santa Maria in Cosmedin, il carcere Mamertino al Campidoglio con la porticina in ferro su uno scroscio ripido. C’è poco spazio, non per due, per uno: Paolo di Tarso, Simone detto Pietro, Spartaco. Roma sottoterra è un intrico di radici di una cronaca quotidiana di storia. Quindi il tentativo del Rinascimento che prosegue locale fino a Busiri Vici, e l’inflazione ampia e insolente del Barocco, fanno del loro meglio per sovrapporsi, segno di una violenta occupazione di campo. Dettagliato, anche sovrapposto, il bassorilievo nitido di vicende di morte o di vita conclusa, di violenza perpetrata e d’impotenza subita: si può far finta di niente ma transitare per frammenti simili, come in una lussuosa discarica storica, può divenire insostenibile. Punto fisionomico del disagio, le suture temporali sono a vista. Cicatrici che la termodinamica non guarisce. Ci si abita, per me almeno è così, per la provvisorietà che la natura della città restituisce all’attualità dell’esistenza. Il cittadino, legittimamente vivo, tu stesso, non sa bene se e dove è. Roma è satura di persone che vi hanno abitato. Da Petrolini a Pirandello, ad Amalia Rosselli, a Luisa, a Pier Paolo Pasolini. L’elenco personale è infinito. Restano solo i portoni. Roma cattura bene la verità, a tutti nota, di un’esistenza legalmente non eterna. Produce stati d’animo instabili al cospetto di un’eternità in pezzi. Forse il suo cittadino vero non c’è mai stato, sostituito da un controluce della memoria. Giunge dai confini dai luoghi meno esposti, terre senza dubbio periferiche. Vi affluiscono dalle provincie viaggiatori colti o rozzi. I passanti sono gli unici abitanti della giornata di Roma. La città ha la vocazione ambigua di un’accoglienza agile in uno scenario vero, come vero, come drammatico, come tragico. Per me almeno è così. L’abitudine a qualsiasi trauma fa il resto: sotto il fuoco di un bombardamento, si accende e si spegne una sigaretta. Questa Roma storica, post-antica, mi sembra contraria a una modernità senza storia. Qualche cenno di moderno già stato segna il passo in attesa di un accesso. La Roma fascista è lì, abitata persino: via Tasso, metà ordinata luogo di stragi, metà di scale rincorse da grida di bambini vivaci. Il ghetto di Roma, prestante e riccioluto in giovine età, con qualche frangia di Borgo Pio e Trastevere; è noto, vi sono i più romani, un po’ nasali, intenti alla memoria di un loro selciato, di una loro nicchia, di una passione familiare loro che dimessamente li fa uguali. Nessuna epica. Di piglio ostile per la custodia di un residuo segreto, certo incomunicabile. Si può apprezzare Nervi, qualche Sironi in università, un po’ di Piacentini, migliore della sua fama, come un dato o prima o fuori di ogni storia. Che non è vero. Voglio dire che a Roma si abita per capire dove si è vissuto. In che storia ha vissuto la città. La città ha una coscienza tardiva, com’è delle coscienze turbate, solo in fine meno arbitraria del previsto. Impigliati nell’inusuale, non si va via facilmente, né vi si sosta facilmente, come chi arriva e parte il giorno stesso, per un antico e

consolidato pregiudizio. Ma… Ma ultimamente è successo qualcosa. Da qualche tempo Roma sembra moderna. Bisogna dirlo. Non le case ma i marciapiedi e i mezzi sono mezzi ragionevolmente più moderni. Ci si aggira, diminuita l’oscura ansia di avere sbagliato città. Persino i conducenti di auto pubbliche, sostituiti da figli meno abruzzesi, risultano privati, più silenziosi, equi, più fenomenologhi. Non so se i miei taxi (zona Navona) offrano un campione giusto. Ma «qualcosa» è successo: una curiosa invenzione delle Sovrintendenze, eliminato Schirmer e i nordici, e poi i francesi, messo da parte Corot, e persino Mafai, al coperto di esagerate pubblicità, ha dipinto Roma di bianco e celestino. Il massacro dei tempi e degli stili, così schiarito, crea nel nuovo aspetto un atteggiamento non sgradevole. Il passato si può ripaginare, dunque, secondo il presente. Qualcuno ha tentato di fare di Roma una città per vivi. Su questa linea forse opinabile, ma inedita, si è riconsiderata la vita come cosa da vivere. Che si può ancora fare per conservare il presente? Forse ragionare sul monumento globale che qui, penso e mi sembra di averlo indicato, esprime il tempo e solo il tempo. L’immobile, mura e travi, come segno monumentale di un progetto, di un’arte, di una dinamica dell’esistenza che non somigli, né simuli, ma risulti in atto. L’istituzione politica ha capito, dunque. Sembrerebbe aver capito. Deve cercare Raffaello per affrescare le Stanze, deve convincere Michelangelo, anche se reagisce, a sforzarsi. Deve farlo se vuole avere un volto, farsi solido punto di riferimento. Non può permettere che Masaccio vi muoia, forse ucciso, o Erasmo fili via in sordina, deve trattenere persino Lutero. Lo Stato, a Roma, primo luogo dove risiede lo Stato, deve comprendere che solo l’invenzione della cultura è il suo specchio e il suo involucro. Bisogna ancora citare Kennedy e l’America? L’arte americana ti viene incontro dagli aeroporti senza abbandonarti più, quale chiave d’interpretazione di una realtà sufficientemente moderna e non poco intricata, anzi notoriamente astrusa. O la Francia e il suo vecchio, un po’ liso, ma ancora ottimo Impressionismo. Stalin è morto, ma Majakovskij è vivo, ne ho notizie certe da Mosca. Cose che non hanno avuto collisione definitiva con la cultura del nostro tempo. Sono ancora lo scorrevole su cui si cammina. Quindi, azzardo: a Roma ci si vive per fare storia. Storia dell’arte, storia dell’architettura, storia della letteratura, storia del diritto, storia della fisica, storia della filosofia, storia della musica, storia della politica, storia del costume. In una parola, la cultura del tempo come storia. La storia del tempo è l’unica cultura di questa città. Bisogna proseguire consapevolmente e fare storia. Tocca a noi. Storia buona, intendo. Ma attenzione, gli errori e la mediocrità qui sono subito visibili. Decidiamo. Decidete se restare o andarvene. Se costruire con intelligenza, misura. O opporsi e avere mira. «Non faccio il bene che voglio, ma il male che non voglio» scrive san Paolo. Parafrasando i termini, si compone un programma perfetto per Roma, come per altri luoghi cruciali della terra, in cui l’uomo non può agire, superficialmente o iniquamente, senza produrre grave e personale danno comune.

THE SOUND OF SCELSI Giacinto Scelsi (1905-1988) is widely recognized as one of the most important composers of the twentieth century, above all for his work in microtonal music. Despite having no orthodox musical education, Scelsi contributed to a profound change in the conception of contemporary sound: his best-known work, Quattro Pezzi Per Orchestra (Four Pieces For Orchestra), is composed of four pieces on a single note. Here the musicality doesn’t lie in the organization of a melody or a sequence of notes, but in the infinite microtonal forms that the sound assumes – in the harmonics, the timbre, and the various acoustic dynamics. In a diary entry, Scelsi remembers his first childhood experiments, sitting on the beach and hitting two stones against each other: repeated many times, the sound produced an array of nuances that contained in itself the entire idea of music. We went to visit the house where he spent the last twenty years of his life, which is situated across from the Imperial Fora in Rome, along a line that he himself retained a kind of ideal border: “The East starts in the south of Rome, and the West starts in the north. This borderline runs directly above the Roman Forum. That’s where my house is: which explains both my life and my music.” In the pages that follow, we have published several photographs taken on the occasion of that visit. However, faced with such a complex figure – about whom scholars and critics of music have already written so much – we have decided to include the artist’s own words, re-printing, with kind permission from the Fondazione Scelsi, a few extracts from his personal writings. On the other hand, we have also tried to understand the concepts contained in these writings in a way that goes beyond critical analysis. In order to do so, we asked Matteo Nasini (1976), contemporary artist and musician, to create something like a mental counterpoint to Scelsi’s writings, by way of suggestions that are external, free, and detached from specific contextual or formal limits.

Giacinto Scelsi, Octologo, Roma: Edizioni Le Parole Gelate 1987

So: what is music to me? I’ll talk about my own music later, but first I have to tell you that the definition of what is and isn’t music doesn’t exist! The music and choruses of the Hottentots or of African Pygmies, the songs from China or the Japanese Nō, are certainly neither songs nor music to the ear of an opera composer or performer, or to that of most European musicians, not to mention their audiences. Until very recently, even the beautiful music of Tibet and the Japanese Imperial Gagaku weren’t considered music here in Europe. It is therefore absolutely impossible to decide and to say what music is and what it isn’t. I also think that even within the West – or to simplify, in Europe – an enthusiast of The Art of the Fugue might find it difficult to appreciate the high-pitched trills of a Verdian or Bellinian soprano, while people who love such operas might find Bach’s scholastic counterpoint dry and tedious. And this doesn’t even broach the problem of the distinction between music and noise, a problem which has had rivers of ink spilt over it. As far as I am concerned this is not the point: what is most important is that music does not produce a confusion of sound. There is much that could be said

about the notion of confusion and order, or rather of the right sound. It is certainly not about any particular European, African or Asian tonal or atonal system, but about the essence of sound itself. It is sound that counts and not its organization, which changes according to epoch, nation, and geographical position, even within Europe itself. Music can’t exist without sound. Sound exists in itself without music. Music evolves in time. Sound is atemporal. Sound is what matters. And sound is a force. This force can produce negative and often harmful effects when it is used badly or in a confused way. Just as people need a living space in order to be able to breathe and to express themselves, and no-one can breathe or survive for long squeezed into a crowd and even less so into a cramped space, so sound needs a suitable living space in order to resound, vibrate, and fulfil its creative potential. This is about treating sound as the basis of the forces that exist – the cosmic force that is inherent in sound itself. Sound is at the beginning of everything; a good way of defining it is to say that “sound is the first movement of the unmovable.” And that is the beginning of Creation. Sound is the essence of all the world’s systems of magic.

Excerpt from Aus Den Sieben Tagen (1968) by Karlheinz Stockhausen

A certain mystical belief system that goes back to ancient times maintains that Energy, or cosmic force, is actually an acoustic – that is, sonic – phenomenon. This acoustic energy is thus the cosmic creative force which ancient peoples seem to have partly succeeded in controlling and using for practical purposes, including for the construction of large buildings and for human flight; and this is why some songs still aim to strengthen the rhythms of individuals, of fighters, of warriors. Certain songs and particular rhythms increase the warrior’s power. So what I’m really interested in is trying to perceive, receive and then impart – using instruments or voice – some part, however small, of the sonic force that lies at the basis of everything, and that creates and often transforms people. In Indian traditions, for example, one finds the very interesting notion that sound has three “bodies”: the physical, the psychic, and the logical; and also that sound is contemporaneously – one could say simultaneously – spiritual and sexual, for the reason that it is creative on every level. This explains why Tantric teachings employ special songs and sounds alongside sexual practices, aiming to achieve a spiritual realization through what we could call our most physical side, since the whole universe is really a unity of vibration. Naturally, this also explains how important the right sound and voice are in expressing sonic substance, whether they are produced by human beings or instruments. And this is where we return to the concept of confusion or correctness with which I

began. Only the right voice and the right sound can in any way complete a creative act. And to be specific, I would add that in high magic a formula, mantra, or invocation will work only – as is well known – if it is said and sung correctly, in the right timbre and with the right voice. This is true not only with regards to words, but also to sounds which have no linguistic meaning, and even screams. The active force of nearly every magic ritual lies in the power of voices and sounds; in the right sound. In a certain way even rituals, such as sacrificial ceremonies, always include initiatory songs or sounds made to the divinity. Indeed, material sacrifices are made to the lesser divinities, because sacrifices to the greater gods have to be musical, and nothing other than music. For example, I remember that one of the Upanishads states that if a god does not receive specially adapted songs of praise then he will vanish; similarly, people need an element of sound to know they are in the presence of the gods, which results in a kind of dialogue between people and their gods; and the Tibetans actually say that rituals owe their strength to music – needless to say, to the right music. Therefore the mission or the task of the musician is, in a certain sense, precisely to transmit music from the gods to the Earth and then to give it back to the gods and to the divine. For some time, above all in the West but also in the East, we have been losing this dialogue, which could be called mystical and which takes place between men and the divine through music.

Excerpt from Aus Den Sieben Tagen (1968) by Karlheinz Stockhausen Video stills of an interview with Alan Moore, from The Mindscape of Alan Moore (2008) by DeZ Vylenz

Today more than ever, man makes music by using his little brain and not by inspiration from above, whether from the heavens or from a Deva or deity. He doesn’t receive it and he doesn’t ask for it either, not having searched for it in those higher realms or levels. If he makes it on his own, creates it with his little brain, it ends in chaos and he no longer even offers it up high; he makes it for people like him, or for himself, or for nobody, or for money. We really need to ask ourselves if the current state of the world isn’t in some way due to the absence of this dialogue, to the interruption of the circuit of vibrations which is handed down from and back up to the divine; this may not be very clear, I will return to it further on; for the moment, let’s continue. I would now like to make a comment on sacrifice to the gods: why this idea of sacrifice, of sacrificing to the gods or divinities, which seems to lie at the basis of every religion, whether primitive or evolved, monotheist or pantheist? Sacrifice could be understood as an offering or an extreme homage made by the inferior realm to the superior realm, starting from flowers and going right up to the sacrifice of animals and even children, virgins, one’s own offspring, for reasons of personal benefit or for the collective good. But there are certainly further kinds of sacrificial offering. There are also personal sacrifices, such as renouncing the world for the cloister or having the willingness to be martyred, through to the sacrifice of the divine lamb to God the Creator. But what is the sacrifice of music to the gods if not also an offering by the musician of his most noble, subtle, intimate and hidden nature? This is what the musician gives, and not without sacrificing his own nature as a human being (sometimes with the most tragic consequences). The examples are too many to mention. The same holds when musicians – not always unknowingly – risk illness, madness or death, such sacrifices being worth just as much as any visible offering. It is not for me to speak about the transcendental, supernatural or spiritual value of sacrifice and its effects, which is hidden but unmistakeably there. In the case of music however, this offering also seems like – and may actually be – a co-operation with the heavenly design for the evolution of the planet. One can therefore hope that these musicians are greeted with silver trumpets.

“This doesn’t have anything to do with you!” – Says who?!... Oh! One of the usual windbags... (Giacinto Scelsi. Il Sogno 101. Edited by Luciano Martinis and Alessandra Carlotta Pellegrini. Quodlibet, 2010, pp. 5-9)

I would now like to offer some advice to any talented artist. My advice is: DON’T STUDY! I firmly believe that, contrary to popular wisdom, the ones who study and have to study are those who don’t have talent but just a certain predisposition, since with careful, conscientious study, they will succeed in being good pianists, good composers, good musical craftsmen, but not in creating works of genius – only works of high craftsmanship, which are respectable and honest. We can find out why this is so by asking: What does it actually mean to be a composer? “Composing” means placing one thing alongside another, and that is more the job of an artisan than a truly great artist. Therefore anyone with a really great, unmistakeable, spontaneous talent, anyone for whom creation is a NECESSITY, does not study, since for him it is NOT actually necessary. Creation itself – the creative urge – will of its own accord work to take form, and most of the time a new form. It is not the organ that creates the function, but function that creates the organ; and thus content creates language. So I repeat once more: if you have talent don’t study, because it will only put up barriers that stand in the way of real creativity. It is creation itself that will take form and produce a new language. In times past, conservatories and schools of fine art were necessary. No longer. Certainly, some basic skills might still be indispensable, but very few. What is required of artists now is something else, a different kind of work on another level. And for this kind of work, counterpoint, for example, becomes a mere dice game, a childish amusement. But I will have the opportunity to discuss this matter again… (Giacinto Scelsi. Il Sogno 101. Edited by Luciano Martinis and Alessandra Carlotta Pellegrini. Quodlibet, 2010, p. 19)

Excerpt from Theory of Harmony (1911) by Arnold Schönberg

Image from Harmonia Plantarum (1943) by Hans Kayser

of tones, harmonics, each of which create different effects that do not only originate from sound but get to the heart of sound; there are also divergent and concentric movements. Thus sound grows huge, it becomes part of the cosmos, even if just a minimal part, and contains everything inside it. [...] A note played repeatedly for a long time expands, becoming so big that you can hear more and more harmony grow within it, enveloped by sound. I assure you this is something else entirely: sound has an entire universe inside it, containing harmonics that can never be heard. Sound fills the space you are in, it surrounds you, you can swim in it. [...]

Excerpt from The Liberation of Sound (1966) by Edgard Varése

My music isn’t one particular thing or another, it isn’t dodecaphonic, it isn’t Pointillist, it isn’t minimalist... So what is it? No one knows. Notes are only clothing, a covering. Isn’t what lies within generally more interesting? Sound is spherical, it is round. But instead it is listened to as duration and pitch. This won’t do. Every sphere has a centre: this can be demonstrated scientifically. It is necessary to get to the heart of the sound: only then are you a musician, anything else and you are only an artisan. A musical artisan is worthy of respect, but he is not a true musician, nor a true artist. [...] You have no idea what a sound is! There is counterpoint (if you like), there are discrepancies

When you enter into a sound you are enveloped by it, you become part of the sound, and little by little it swallows you up so that you need no other sound. [...] Everything is there inside it, the whole universe fills the space, and it contains every possible sound. (Giacinto Scelsi. Viaggio al centro del suono. Edited by Pierre Albert Castanet and Nicola Cisternino. Lunaeditore, 1993, pp.19-25)

Image from Harmonia Plantarum (1943) by Hans Kayser

THE SOUND OF SCELSI

llora: che cos’è la musica, per me? Della musica mia, parlerò in seguito; ora, prima di tutto, debbo dirvi che la definizione di ciò che è musica e di ciò che non è musica non c’è! La musica o i cori degli Ottentotti o dei Pigmei africani, i canti cinesi e il Nō̄ giapponese, certamente non è né musica né canto per gli operisti, i cantanti ed anche per la maggioranza dei musicisti europei, senza parlare del pubblico. Fino a poco tempo fa, persino la bellissima musica tibetana ed il gagaku imperiale nipponico non erano considerate musica qui in Europa. Quindi non si può assolutamente dire e decidere ciò che è musica e ciò che non lo è. Penso che anche in Occidente, o per semplificare diciamo in Europa, alcuni amanti dell’Arte della fuga difficilmente potrebbero apprezzare i gorgheggi sopracuti dei soprani verdiani o belliniani; e gli amanti di queste opere troverebbero aridi e tediosi gli scolastici contrappunti bachiani. Tutto ciò senza neanche abbordare il problema della distinzione tra musica e rumore, che ha fatto scorrere fiumi d’inchiostro e di parole. Per conto mio il punto è un altro: occorre soprattutto che la musica non produca confusione di suono. Vi sarebbe molto da dire su questo concetto di confusione e di ordine, o piuttosto del giusto suono. Questo non è affatto in relazione ad un qualsivoglia sistema tonale o atonale europeo, africano od asiatico, bensì all’essenza stessa del suono. È il suono ciò che conta, più che la sua organizzazione, la quale avviene e cambia secondo le epoche, i popoli e le latitudini e nell’ambito della stessa Europa. La musica non può esistere senza il suono. Il suono esiste di per sé senza la musica. La musica evolve nel tempo. Il suono è atemporale. È il suono che conta. E il suono è forza. Quindi questa forza produce effetti negativi e spesso deleteri, quando viene male o confusa- mente usata. Perciò come ad ogni persona, ad ogni uomo, per respirare ed esprimersi è necessario uno spazio vitale e nessun uomo può respirare o sopravvivere a lungo stretto in una folla ed ancor meno in uno spazio angusto, così il suono ha bisogno di uno spazio vitale ad esso proporzionato per poter risuonare, vibrare ed esplicare il suo potere creativo. Si tratta di considerare il suono come base della forza che esiste: la forza cosmica che è insita nel suono stesso. Il suono è al principio di tutto; vi è anzi una bella definizione che dice: «Il suono è il primo moto dell’Immobile» – e questo è l’inizio della Creazione. Il Suono è l’essenza di tutti i sistemi magici in tutti i paesi.

gli individui, dei combattenti, dei guerrieri. La forza di questi guerrieri viene aumentata appunto da determinati canti, da particolari ritmi. Perciò quello che a me interessa è appunto cercare di percepire, ricevere e poi manifestare – con strumenti o con la voce – una parte, sia pure la più piccola, di questa forza sonora che è alla base di tutto, che crea e sovente trasforma l’uomo. Nella tradizione indiana, per esempio, si riscontra un’idea molto interessante, cioè che il suono ha tre «corpi»: quello fisico, quello psichico e quello logoico; e che pertanto il suono è contemporaneamente – si può dire: simultaneamente – spirituale e sessuale, appunto per- ché è creativo ad ogni livello. Questo poi spiega perché nelle dottrine tantriche si abbiano manifestazioni sonore di canti e di suoni particolarissimi, uniti poi a pratiche di carattere sessuale per una realizzazione d’ordine spirituale attraverso la parte, diciamo così, più fisica di noi, giacché l’intero universo non è che una unità di vibrazione. Ciò, naturalmente, spiega anche quanto sia importante il suono giusto, la voce giusta che esprimano la sostanza sonora, si tratti della voce umana o di quella strumentale. E qui torniamo appunto al concetto di confusione o di giustezza, di cui parlavo all’inizio. Soltanto la voce giusta, il giusto suono, hanno il potere di compiere un’azione creativa a qualsiasi livello. E, per inciso, aggiungerò che nell’alta magia – come del resto si sa – qualsiasi formula, qualsiasi Mantra, qualsiasi invocazione è efficace solo se detta o cantata nel modo giusto, col timbro giusto, con la voce giusta. E questo anche quando si tratta non solo di parole, ma anche di sillabe prive di senso discorsivo, o persino di grida. Quasi tutti i riti di magia hanno la loro forza attiva proprio nella forza sonora della voce o del suono, e del suono giusto. In un certo senso anche nei riti, per esempio nei cerimoniali sacrificali, a questi si aggiungono sempre alcuni canti o suoni iniziatici destinati alla divinità. I sacrifici materiali infatti sono destinati alle deità diciamo inferiori, poiché ai grandi dèi il sacrificio non può essere che musicale, niente altro che musica. Ricordo, per esempio, che in una delle Upanishad si dice che se un Dio non riceve i canti di lode a lui adatti svanisce; così pure che gli uomini hanno bisogno di una sostanza sonora che è in mano agli dèi, e quindi si ha una specie di dialogo alternato tra dèi e uomini; e i tibetani dicono appunto che i riti ricevono la loro forza dalla musica, beninteso quella giusta. Quindi, in un certo senso la missione, il compito del musicista è appunto di trasmettere la musica dagli dèi alla Terra e poi di rivolger- la nuovamente alle deità e al divino.

(vedi inserto pag. 80) (vedi inserto pag. 82) In una determinata conoscenza occulta, dalle origini antichissime, si riscontra l’idea che l’Energia – la forza cosmica – sia addirittura un fenomeno acustico, cioè sonoro. Questa energia acustica è poi quella forza cosmica creativa che razze antiche sembra siano riuscite in parte a dominare ed utilizzare anche a scopi pratici, come per la costruzione d’immensi edifici od anche per il volo degli uomini stessi; ed è questa la ragione per la quale certi canti ancora ora hanno lo scopo di rinforzare il ritmo de-

(vedi inserto pag. 83) Oggi, e già da tempo, soprattutto in Occidente, ma anche in Oriente, è in atto uno scadimento da tale dialogo, dialogo che potrei chiamare mistico, tra l’uomo e la divinità, per mezzo della musica. Ora l’uomo costruisce le musiche sempre più col suo piccolo cervello, non le riceve più dall’alto, né dal cielo né da qualsiasi Deva o deità. Non le riceve

e neanche più le chiede, non le ricerca in quella zona, a quel livello. Se le fa da sé, se le costruisce col suo piccolo cervello, ne fa una gran confusione e poi non le rivolge neppure verso l’alto; le produce per i suoi simili, o per nessuno, o per se stesso o per denaro. Vi sarebbe proprio da chiedersi se la situazione del mondo attuale non dipenda in qualche modo da questo mancato dialogo, dall’interruzione di questo circolo di vibrazioni che discende e poi risale verso la divinità; forse ciò non è molto chiaro, ne riparlerò ancora più tardi, ora continuiamo. Ora vorrei dire qualcosa sul sacrificio agli dèi; perché questa idea del sacrificio, del sacrificare agli dèi o alla divinità, idea che sembra essere insita alla base di ogni religione, primitiva o evoluta, monoteista o pan- teista? Questo sacrificio potrebbe essere inteso come l’offerta o l’estremo omaggio del regno inferiore al regno superiore, a partire dai fiori vivi fino al sacrificio di animali e talvolta persino di fanciulli, di vergini o degli stessi figli in proprio favore o in favore della collettività. Ma in questa offerta vi è certamente molto di più. Vi è poi anche il sacrificio personale, quello della rinuncia al mondo nella clausura o la disponibilità al martirio fino al sacrificio dell’Agnello Divino al Dio Creatore. Però che cos’è il sacrificio della musica agli dèi se non anche l’offerta da parte del musicista stesso della sua natura più nobile, sottile, intima ed occulta? È questo che il musicista offre, non senza, del resto, il sacrificio (talvolta fino alle più tragiche conseguenze) della sua stessa natura umana. Gli esempi sarebbero troppi. Così quando – e non sempre inconsciamente – egli va incontro alla malattia, alla pazzia o alla morte, allora questo sacrificio ha il valore di ogni altra più visibile offerta. Non sta a me parlare del valore trascendentale, soprannaturale o spirituale del sacrificio e della sua azione – occulta ma certa. Nel caso della musica, però, quest’offerta sembra essere anche una collaborazione – e forse lo è – al Piano Divino per l’evoluzione del Pianeta. È quindi sperabile che tali musicisti siano poi accolti con trombe d’argento. «Questo non ti riguarda!». – Chi parla?!... Ah! è uno dei chiacchieroni... (Giacinto Scelsi, Il Sogno 101, Quodlibet, 2010. A cura di Luciano Martinis e Alessandra Carlotta Pellegrini – pag. 5-9)

Ed ora vorrei dare un consiglio a tutti gli artisti che abbiano talento. Il consiglio è questo: NON STUDIATE! Contrariamente a quel che comunemente si crede, io penso fermamente che studino e debbano studiare coloro che talento non hanno, ma soltanto una certa predisposizione, giacché con lo studio applicato, coscienzioso, si può sempre arrivare ad essere buoni pianisti, buoni compositori, buoni artigiani della musica, però non già ottenere opere o risultati geniali: solo opere di alto artigianato, cioè cose rispettabili ed oneste. Ciò è possibile perché, infatti, che significa essere un compositore? «Comporre» significa: porre una cosa con un’altra, e ciò è proprio dell’artigiano più che del vero e grande artista. Quindi coloro che invece hanno un vero e proprio talento, indubitabile, spontaneo, coloro per i quali la creazione è una NECESSITA’, questi non studino, giacché in realtà per loro questo NON è necessario. La creazione stessa – lo slancio creativo – produrrà e darà loro la forma, e nella maggior parte dei casi una forma nuova. Non è l’organo che crea

la funzione, bensì la funzione che crea l’organo; e perciò anche il contenuto crea il linguaggio. Quindi, ripeto ancora una volta: se avete talento non studiate, perché ciò non può fare altro che opporre barriere ed impedire la vera creazione. Questa produrrà da se stessa la forma e il linguaggio nuovi. In altri tempi i conservatori e le scuole di belle arti erano e furono necessarie. Ora non più. Certo alcuni elementi-base sono forse ancora indispensabili, ma ben pochi. Altro è il lavoro che viene richiesto ora agli artisti, diverso e su di un altro piano. E di fronte a questo lavoro, quello del contrappunto, per esempio, diventa una scatola di dadi, un gioco per bambini. Ma di questo avrò occasione di parlare ancora… (vedi inserto pag. 85) (Giacinto Scelsi, Il Sogno 101, Quodlibet, 2010. A cura di Luciano Martinis e Alessandra Carlotta Pellegrini – pag. 19)

La mia musica non è né questa né quella, non è dodecafonica, non è puntilista, non è minimalistica... Cos’è allora? Non si sa. Le note, le note non sono che dei rivestimenti, degli abiti. Ma ciò che c’è dentro è generalmente più interessante, no? Il suono è sferico, è rotondo. Invece lo si ascolta sempre come durata e altezza. Non va bene. (vedi inserto pag. 86) Ogni cosa sferica ha un centro: lo si può dimostrare scientificamente. Bisogna arrivare al cuore del suono: solo aloora si è musicisti, altrimenti si è solo artigiani. Un artigiano della musica è degno di rispetto, ma non è né un vero musicista né un vero artista. [...] Non avete idea di cosa sia un suono! Vi sono di contrappunti (se si vuole), vi sono sfasamenti di timbri diversi, armonici che producono effetti del tutto diversi fra loro, che non solo provengono dal suono, ma che giungono al centro del suono; vi sono anche movimenti divergenti e concentrici. Esso allora diventa grandissimo, diventa una parte del cosmo. anche se minima c’è tutto dentro. [...] Ribattendo a lungo una nota essa diventa grande, così grande che si sente sempre più armonia ed essa vi si ingrandisce all’interno, il suono vi avvolge. Vi assicuro che è tutto un’altra cosa: il suono contiene un intero universo, con armonici che non si sentono mai. Il suono riempe il luogo in cui vi trovate, vi accerchia, potete nuotarci dentro. [...]Quando si entra in un suono ne si è avvolti, si diventa parte del suono, poco a poco si è inghiottiti e non si ha bisogno di altro suono. [...]Tutto è là dentro, l’intero universo riempe lo spazio, tutti i suoni possibili sono contenuti in esso. (vedi inserto pag. 87) (Giacinto Scelsi. Viaggio Al Centro Del Suono, Lunaeditore, 1993. A cura di P.A. Castanet, N. Cisternino – pp.19-25)

TOUCHABLES first part of an ongoing investigation into the sentimental properties of reproduced experiences

by michele manfellotto

I’VE MADE “DESCRIPTIONS.” THAT’S ALL I KNOW ABOUT MY CRITICISM. AND “DESCRIPTIONS” OF WHAT? OF OTHER “DESCRIPTIONS,” BECAUSE THAT’S ALL BOOKS ARE. ANTHROPOLOGY TEACHES US AS MUCH: THERE’S [...] THE FACT, THE THING THAT HAPPENED, THE MYTH AND [...] ITS SPOKEN DESCRIPTION. PIER PAOLO PASOLINI, DESCRIZIONI DI DESCRIZIONI, ED. GRAZIELLA CHIARCOSSI, EINAUDI 1979

1987 was the year Reagan and Gorbachev signed the first treaty on the elimination of nuclear missiles; it was the year of the third and last Thatcher government and the year that Fox aired the first ever Simpsons episode. In 1987 Microsoft presented the second version of Windows – the first one with icons – and my neighborhood, a residential area in the north part of Rome, got its first video rental store. I was ten years old and I saw Brian De Palma’s The Untouchables for the first time. It had a enormous impact on me. In the first place, I was stunned by the realism of the violent scenes, all of them very literal. I wasn’t familiar with horror films and that was the first movie where I saw blood flowing freely: what’s more, the blood was black, a detail that despite my having no experience of murdered corpses made it look all the more realistic to me. In De Palma’s movie the struggle between good and evil is very clearly outlined. But the contrast struck me as particularly dramatic, especially when the good guys died: the killings are heinous and the cruelty of the bad guys gave me a distinct sense of threat, wild, gripping. The sequence that stuck forever in my memory is the one where Capone’s favorite hit man kills the group’s bookkeeper, played by Charles Martin Smith. The bookkeeper takes the elevator and doesn’t realize that the guy conducting it is the hit man in disguise. At that point, the film cuts to Kevin Costner and Sean Connery: they’ve found out about the plot and they’re going to help the bookkeeper, but it’s too late. We don’t see him die: the next scene shows his corpse, and towering over it the word TOUCHABLES, which the killer has written in blood. In the film, “untouchables” is the moniker that the press uses to refer to the good guys: it alludes to their absolute incorruptibility, a trait which makes them virtually invulnerable. After that, a number of rappers go on to call themselves “untouchable,” but they’re referring to the bad guy, Al Capone, who in The Untouchables bares the unmistakable smirk of the great Bob De Niro. Untouchable then comes to mean “above the law” and the definition itself acquires still greater force once it’s automatically associated with traits belonging to other De Niro characters –

normal individuals that a Darwinian necessity transforms into criminals whose antisocial conduct embodies a political attitude: which is exactly how the rappers who lead hip hop to maturity in the nineties see themselves. Significantly, the appropriation of the term “untouchable” in this context follows upon the enormous success of Goodfellas and Casino, released years after The Untouchables. Scorsese’s two monumental films mark the definitive consolidation of Robert De Niro as the ideal cinematic gangster in the global collective imaginary. But aside from the obvious deviation of meaning entailed by the reference to Al Capone, the gangster par excellence, this particular use of the term “untouchable” takes us back precisely to the scene where the bookkeeper gets killed. The boss’s hit man, who with macabre coquetry wears only white, doesn’t limit himself to physically eliminating the enemy, but takes the time to also get him on a symbolic level: he desecrates the name’s function, destroying its mythic reach by proving to everyone that the purity of the souls of the famous Untouchables doesn’t protect them from the lead of Capone. Adding his terrifying caption to the massacre, the hit man effectively reveals himself master of a language that he not only understands but places at the service of his own criminal intentions. The film’s narrative therefore already contains a text that lends itself to being modified for expressive purposes: the journalistic definition of “untouchables” is deliberately altered by a character who aims to shift its mediatic force. Which is a little more subtle than a simple play on words. The linguistic operation carried out by the hit man struck my imagination with some force, making me forever sensitive to that kind of communication. The following year, 1988, the older brother of a friend of mine made me a tape of LL Cool J’s Bigger and Deffer and Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions: the latter had a song called Rebel Without a Pause on it, which I didn’t understand because I wasn’t yet familiar with the James Dean movie. In fact, I saw Rebel Without a Cause while studying for a film history exam when I was twenty. You all know the story. James Dean is Jim Stark, an adolescent in conflict with

his blindly conformist family; he fails to make friends at school and a group of bullies decides to pick on him. In order to get them to accept him, Jim agrees to an extreme show of courage, but his rival dies in the ensuing accident, while he survives. At that point, I thought I remembered a scene in which the director, Nicholas Ray, shows the umpteenth fight between Jim Stark and his father like this: the boy has his back turned and is talking to his father, but the father is off-screen for the entire duration of the monologue, excluded from the frame. The conflict between the two generations is expressed by a simple figure, as clear as it is intense: such a determined formal choice applied to a theme of that sort couldn’t not impress me at the age of twenty. Last week I watched Rebel Without a Cause twice just to find that scene, but I didn’t find it. I promised myself that I would watch it a third time, but I suspect that the scene I’ve described for you is a product of my memory. Which would have, in other words, selected and recombined elements of the film with other material present in my cultural baggage, giving life to an utterly personal synthesis that is meaningful for me: a copy, a version for the benefit of my own private experience. I found myself once again thinking that the principle attribute that our society demands of any cultural product is that it be freely modifiable by whoever receives it. The division of the arts is no longer necessary in the market of ideas, the concept of genre disappears in the magma of a pop culture that assimilates every mode of expression and gives it back in the form of a consumer good: the product is completely identified with the cultural act – that is, with the experience of its fruition in reality – and presents itself as a brand new human phenomenon that is at once intense hedonistic entertainment, conscious identity choice, and mirror of the thousand faces of social life, which culture thus justifies and legitimizes in its fixed forms. From the sophisticated pessimism of Larry David to the illiterate psychedelia of a rapper like Lil B, the infinite abundance of models, extremely varied but all equally flexible, takes its place alongside our real image: the tension that derives from this ends up defining first our behavior, and then our deepest being, in accordance with a process of individual

identity construction that technology has rendered completely automatic and spontaneous, and therefore inexorable. These public darlings have to be real in order to function. But where does the real Larry David end and the character begin? In Curb Your Enthusiasm David acts himself and lots of other famous actors appear in the series because they are his friends in real life. If this tension wasn’t there, if, that is, the fiction itself didn’t at times contain elements intended to suggest that what we’re watching isn’t fiction but reality, then the mechanism would be more difficult to set in motion: the confusion between the real David and the fictional one reproduces the confusion that each one of us experiences in the everyday tension between our own lived reality and the imaginary models that are superimposed over it. In this respect then, even the success of figures who have romantically pursued the fusion of art and life could be due not to a shift in mentality or a change of perspective in the dominant culture, but to a mutation in the dynamics of perception. This includes the good fortune of those who, like James Dean, have ended up becoming icons despite themselves. His death in a car accident occurs less than a month prior to the release of Rebel Without a Cause and it’s this tragically spectacular event that adds to any reading of James Dean a mythological depth that transcends his talents as an actor. It’s 1955. In Pier Paolo Pasolini’s fulminating definition, death concludes a biography and gives it meaning, like the final edit of a film. In Pasolini’s study of cinematic language the reflections on the Abraham Zapruder footage, which captures the assassination of JFK, play a central role. But in 1955 the United States senator John Fitzgerald Kennedy is undergoing a series of back surgeries: he’ll risk dying, he’ll even receive his last rites, but he’ll pull through, win the elections and, in 1963, he’ll show up in Dallas just on time to let a Jewish tailor shoot the most important amateur footage in the history of cinema. In addition to forever influencing the representation of violence, and not only in American cinema, Zapruder’s film will reveal, in a literally explosive way, the potentialities of a non-professional film, placing the relationship between reality and filmic representation at the center of the debate. It’s no doubt

thanks to the processes set in motion by Zapruder’s film that, some twenty five years later, Francis Ford Coppola will come to prophecy, from the depths of the Philippine jungles, that the future aesthetics of cinema will be determined by amateurs. Though I wasn’t able to find the scene I was looking for in Rebel Without a Cause, I did find another sequence that struck me, in this sense, as particularly valuable. Prior to the tragic finale, James Dean hides in an abandoned villa. With him is Judy, the girl he loves, played by Natalie Wood, and Plato, Sal Mineo, a troubled boy who mythicizes him and considers him a hero. Plato’s character, the first more or less explicitly gay adolescent to ever appear in cinema, is the one who will lead the situation to precipitate with his self-destructiveness; but when the three arrive at the villa, it’s precisely Plato that enables the constitution of a momentary and impossible deviant family nucleus. Plato dozes off and the two sweethearts watch him sleeping: then they realize that his socks are mismatched, one red and one blue. The frame chosen by Nicholas Ray shows us Plato stretched out with the socks in plain sight, and next to him the captivated couple. It’s a kind of nativity, a primal scene. James Dean and Natalie Wood are deeply touched by the absent-mindedness of their ideal child because it represents, in and of itself, the disavowal of an entire value system. The mistake thus becomes a sign of recognition, a declaration of identity, a language, and is able to take on an aesthetic value. James Dean’s clothes are also red and blue and they seem to evoke the colors of Plato’s socks along two diagonal lines that intersect harmoniously. In other words, Plato’s social attitude is so immediately deciphered and shared by his friends that his having mismatched the socks appears like the synthesis of a world view, a mark of style, which they understand and even find beautiful. At the dawn of rock ‘n’ roll, Rebel Without a Cause already adopts an aesthetic attitude that prefigures Francis Ford Coppola’s hypothesis, at least in a poetic sense. Throughout his life, Nick Ray will make his public appearances in a red buttonup shirt, as though citing the outfit of his hero. And he will wear a red shirt

in almost all of the scenes of Lightning Over Water, Wim Wenders’ disturbing and controversial work on the director’s last days. Cinema and reality, life and death: in the vision of a terminally ill Ray, opposites are complementary and the end gives meaning to the beginning. But there’s no need to have lived the legend in the first person in order for the cinema to seep into your bones. As Pasolini continuously theorizes in the writings collected in Heretical Empiricism, the instruments we use to read a cinematic image are the same ones we use to decipher a piece of reality: our senses are involved in it and the very narrative of the filmic story reproduces the structure of dream and memory, proceeding by way of synthetic figures. How much of our memory do we owe to lived life and how much instead to the reproduced experiences that emerge from the infinite flux of the audiovisual? Sal Mineo’s socks in Rebel Without a Cause are maybe the first ingenuous manifestation of an era that has looked increasingly towards the abstract freedom of art to sublimate the void left by the great hypothesis of social transformation. So, that same 1955 when James Dean dies is also the year that Michael J. Fox returns to from the future in his DeLorean: and in Back to the Future the comic function is entirely entrusted to icons, while the greatness of American capitalism is celebrated by completely identifying it with its imaginary dimension. The very nature of our memory seems to mutate in contact with reproduced experiences, which are camouflaged amongst our real memories, contributing to the formation of the knowledge at the basis of our identity. That’s why we’re vulnerable in front of the screen, touchables: because for us, watching a movie is more than entertainment, it’s a sentimental operation. (to be continued)

TOUCHABLES Prima parte di un’inchiesta in corso sulla proprietà sentimentale delle esperienze riprodotte Ho fatto delle “descrizioni”. Ecco tutto quello che so della mia critica. E “descrizioni” di che cosa? Di altre “descrizioni”, che altro i libri non sono. L’antropologia l’insegna: c’è (…) il fatto, la cosa occorsa, il mito, e (…) la sua descrizione parlata. Pier Paolo Pasolini, Descrizioni di descrizioni, a cura di Graziella Chiarcossi, Einaudi 1979 Il 1987 fu l’anno in cui Reagan e Gorbachev firmarono il primo trattato per l’eliminazione dei missili nucleari; fu l’anno del terzo e ultimo governo Tatcher e l’anno in cui la Fox mandò in onda la prima puntata dei Simpson. Nel 1987 Microsoft presentò la seconda versione di Windows, la prima con le icone, e nel mio quartiere, una zona residenziale nella parte nord di Roma, aprì il primo noleggio di videocassette. Avevo dieci anni e allora vidi per la prima volta The Untouchables di Brian De Palma, che mi fece un’impressione grandissima. Prima di tutto mi colpì il realismo delle scene di violenza, tutte molto letterali. Non conoscevo il cinema horror e quello era il primo film in cui vedevo il sangue scorrere senza risparmio: in più il sangue era nero, dettaglio che, nonostante non avessi esperienza alcuna di morti ammazzati, mi sembrò ancora più realistico. Nel film di De Palma la lotta tra il bene e il male è delineata in modo molto chiaro. Ma il contrasto mi pareva particolarmente drammatico, specie quando morivano i buoni: le esecuzioni sono efferate e la crudeltà dei cattivi mi trasmetteva un senso netto di minaccia, brado, coinvolgente. La sequenza che si fermò per sempre nella mia memoria è quella in cui il sicario prediletto di Capone uccide il contabile del gruppo, interpretato da Charles Martin Smith. Il contabile prende l’ascensore e non si accorge che l’uomo che lo manovra è il sicario travestito. Da qui il montaggio segue Kevin Costner e Sean Connery: hanno scoperto la trappola e vanno a soccorrere il contabile, ma è tardi. Non lo vediamo morire: la scena successiva ce lo mostra cadavere, sovrastato dalla parola TOUCHABLES, che l’assassino ha scritto con il sangue. “Intoccabili” è l’appellativo con cui, nel film, la stampa si riferisce ai buoni: allude alla loro incorruttibilità assoluta, che li rende virtualmente invulnerabili. In seguito più di un rapper si definirà “intoccabile”: ma facendo riferimento al cattivo, Al Capone, che in The Untouchables ha la smorfia inconfondibile del grande Bob De Niro. Intoccabile allora significherà “al di sopra della legge” e la definizione stessa acquisterà anche maggior forza quando ad essa si sovrapporranno automaticamente i caratteri propri di altri personaggi interpretati da De Niro, individui normali che una darwiniana necessità trasforma in criminali la cui condotta antisociale è di per sé una presa di posizione politica: ed è proprio così che sembrano vedere se stessi i rapper che portano l’hip hop alla maturità negli anni novanta del novecento. Significativamente, il recupero del termine “intoc-

cabile” in questo ambito seguirà il successo clamoroso di Goodfellas e Casino, usciti diversi anni dopo The Untouchables. I due film monumentali di Scorsese segnano la definitiva consacrazione nell’immaginario collettivo mondiale di Robert De Niro come gangster cinematografico ideale. Ma al di là dell’ovvia deviazione di significato rappresentata dal riferimento al gangster per antonomasia, Al Capone, questo particolare utilizzo del termine “intoccabile” ci riporta proprio alla sequenza del film in cui il contabile viene ammazzato. Il sicario preferito del boss, che con macabra civetteria veste solo di bianco, non si limita a eliminare fisicamente il nemico, ma si preoccupa di colpirlo anche sul piano simbolico: ne dissacra l’operato, di cui mina la portata mitica provando a chiunque che la purezza d’animo dei famosi Untouchables non protegge dal piombo di Capone. Aggiungendo al massacro la sua didascalia terrificante, il sicario si dimostra, in pratica, padrone di un linguaggio, che comprende e volge ai propri propositi criminali. Ecco che già all’interno della narrativa del film compare un testo che si presta a essere modificato a fini espressivi: la definizione giornalistica “intoccabili”, che viene deliberatamente alterata da un personaggio allo scopo di mutarne di segno la forza mediatica. Qualcosa di più sottile dunque di un semplice gioco di parole. L’operazione linguistica compiuta dal sicario colpì la mia immaginazione in modo decisivo, rendendomi sensibile per sempre a questo tipo di comunicazione. L’anno successivo, 1988, il fratello maggiore di un amico mi fece una cassetta con Bigger And Deffer di LL Cool J e It Takes A Nation Of Millions dei Public Enemy: quest’ultimo contiene il brano Rebel Without A Pause, che però non capii perché ancora non conoscevo il film con James Dean. Rebel Without A Cause infatti lo vidi a vent’anni, studiando per un esame di cinema. Conoscete tutti la storia. James Dean è Jim Stark, un adolescente in conflitto con la famiglia ciecamente conformista; a scuola non fa amicizia e un gruppo di bulli lo prende di mira. Per farsi accettare, Jim si presta a una prova di coraggio estrema, ma il suo rivale muore in un incidente, mentre lui si salva. A questo punto, credevo di ricordare una scena in cui il regista Nicholas Ray raccontava così l’ennesimo litigio tra Jim Stark e il padre: il ragazzo era di spalle e si rivolgeva a suo padre che però, per tutto il tempo del monologo, restava fuori campo, escluso dall’inquadratura. Il conflitto tra due generazioni era espresso con una figura semplice, tanto chiara quanto intensa: una scelta formale così potente, applicata a un tema simile, a vent’anni non poteva non restarmi impressa. La settimana scorsa ho guardato Rebel Without A Cause due volte proprio per ritrovare quella scena, ma non ci sono riuscito. Mi sono ripromesso di guardarlo una terza volta, ma sospetto che la scena che vi ho descritto sia un prodotto della mia memoria. Che avrebbe cioè selezionato e ricombinato elementi del film con altri materiali presenti nel mio bagaglio culturale, dando vita a una sintesi del tutto personale, significativa per me: una copia, una versione a uso e consumo della mia privata esperienza.

Mi sono ritrovato di nuovo a pensare che la principale caratteristica che la nostra società richiede a ogni prodotto culturale è che sia modificabile liberamente da parte di chi lo riceve. Nel mercato delle idee una divisione delle arti non è più necessaria, il concetto di genere sparisce nel magma di una cultura popolare che assimila ogni tipo di espressione e la restituisce sotto forma di bene di consumo: il prodotto si identifica completamente con l’atto culturale, cioè l’esperienza della sua fruizione dal vero, e si presenta come un fenomeno umano inedito che è, nello stesso tempo, intrattenimento edonisticamente inteso, scelta consapevole dell’identità e specchio dei mille volti del vivere sociale, che la cultura così giustifica e legittima nelle sue forme fisse. Dal pessimismo sofisticato di Larry David alla psichedelia illetterata di un rapper tipo Lil B, un’infinita abbondanza di modelli, estremamente vari ma tutti ugualmente duttili, prende posto accanto alla nostra immagine reale: la tensione che ne deriva finisce per definire prima il nostro comportamento, poi il nostro essere profondo, secondo un processo di costruzione dell’identità individuale che l’abitudine alla tecnologia ha reso inesorabile perché del tutto automatico e spontaneo. Questi nostri beniamini per funzionare devono essere veri. Ma dove finisce il Larry David reale e dove comincia il suo personaggio? In Curb Your Enthusiasm David interpreta se stesso e molti attori famosi appaiono nella serie in quanto suoi amici nella vita vera. Se non ci fosse questa tensione, cioè se a tratti la finzione stessa non ci desse elementi volti a farci supporre che non è finzione, ma realtà, quella che stiamo guardando, il meccanismo scatterebbe con più difficoltà: la confusione tra il David vero e quello della finzione, infatti, replica la confusione che ognuno di noi vive nella tensione quotidiana tra la propria realtà vissuta e i modelli immaginari che vi si sovrappongono. In questa ottica, allora, anche la fortuna di figure che hanno romanticamente perseguito l’identità di arte e vita potrebbe essere dovuta alla mutazione in una dinamica della percezione e non a un movimento della mentalità o a un cambiamento di prospettiva nella cultura dominante. Anche la fortuna di chi, come James Dean, ha finito per diventare un’icona suo malgrado. La sua morte in un incidente automobilistico avviene meno di un mese prima del lancio di Rebel Without A Cause ed è l’evento tragicamente spettacolare che aggiunge a ogni interpretazione di James Dean uno spessore mitologico che prescinde dal suo talento di attore. È il 1955. La morte, nella definizione fulminante di Pier Paolo Pasolini, conclude una biografia dandole senso, come il montaggio finale di un film. Nello studio svolto da Pasolini sul linguaggio cinematografico hanno un ruolo fondamentale le riflessioni sul film di Abraham Zapruder, in cui è ripreso in diretta l’assassinio di JFK. Ma nel 1955 il senatore degli Stati Uniti John Fitzgerald Kennedy si sta sottoponendo a un ciclo di operazioni alla colonna vertebrale: rischierà di morire, riceverà addirittura l’estrema unzione, ma si rimetterà, vincerà le elezioni e, nel 1963, sarà puntuale a Dallas per permettere a un sarto ebreo di girare la pellicola amatoriale più importante della storia del cinema.

Il film di Zapruder infatti, oltre a influenzare per sempre la rappresentazione della violenza nel cinema non solo americano, svelerà in modo letteralmente esplosivo le potenzialità del film non professionale, ponendo al centro del dibattito il rapporto tra realtà e rappresentazione filmica. È certo a causa di un processo innescato dal film di Zapruder se, oltre venticinque anni dopo, dalla giungla delle Filippine, Francis Ford Coppola arriverà a profetizzare che l’estetica del cinema futuro sarà decisa dagli amatori. Se non sono riuscito a ritrovare la scena che cercavo, in Rebel Without A Cause ho però trovato un’altra sequenza che mi è sembrata, in questo senso, molto preziosa. Prima del finale tragico, James Dean si nasconde in una villa abbandonata. Con lui c’è Judy, la ragazza che ama, interpretata da Natalie Wood, e Plato, Sal Mineo, ragazzo difficile che lo mitizza e lo considera un eroe. Il personaggio di Plato, il primo adolescente più o meno esplicitamente gay mai apparso al cinema, è quello che farà precipitare la situazione con la propria autodistruttività: ma quando i tre arrivano alla villa, è proprio a Plato che si deve la costituzione di un momentaneo e impossibile nucleo familiare deviato. Plato si addormenta e i due innamorati lo guardano dormire: allora si accorgono che ha i calzini spaiati, uno rosso e uno blu. L’inquadratura scelta da Nicholas Ray ci fa vedere Plato disteso con i calzini in vista, con accanto la coppia che lo veglia. È una specie di natività, una prima scena. James Dean e Natalie Wood sono toccati nel profondo dalla sbadataggine del loro bambino ideale dal momento che essa rappresenta di per sé il disconoscimento di tutto un sistema di valori. L’errore diventa così un segno di riconoscimento, una dichiarazione di identità, un linguaggio, e può assumere valore estetico. Anche i vestiti di James Dean infatti sono rossi e blu e sembrano riprendere i colori dei calzini di Plato lungo due diagonali che si incrociano armonicamente. In altre parole, l’atteggiamento sociale di Plato è così immediatamente decodificato e condiviso dai suoi amici che il suo sbagliare i calzini appare come la sintesi di una visione della vita, un segno di stile, che capiscono e addirittura trovano bello. All’alba del rock’n’roll, in Rebel Without A Cause potrebbe già essere presente un comportamento estetico che prefigura la profezia di Francis Ford Coppola, perlomeno in senso poetico. Per tutta la vita Nick Ray apparirà in pubblico in camicia rossa, come per citare il costume del suo eroe. E sarà in camicia rossa in quasi tutte le scene di Lightning Over Water, opera disturbante e controversa di Wim Wenders sui suoi ultimi giorni di vita. Cinema e realtà, vita e morte: nella visione di Ray malato terminale gli opposti sono complementari e la fine dà il senso al principio. Ma non c’è bisogno di aver vissuto la leggenda in prima persona perché il cinema vi sia entrato nelle ossa. Come teorizza sempre Pasolini negli scritti raccolti in Empirismo eretico, gli strumenti di cui ci serviamo per leggere un’immagine cinematografica sono gli stessi che utilizziamo per decodificare un brano di realtà: ne sono coinvolti i nostri sensi e la narra-

tiva stessa del racconto filmico replica la struttura del sogno e del ricordo, procedendo per figure sintetiche. Quanta della nostra memoria dobbiamo alla vita vissuta e quanta invece alle esperienze riprodotte che arrivano dal flusso infinito dell’audiovisivo? I calzini di Sal Mineo in Rebel Without A Cause sono forse il primo ingenuo manifesto di un’epoca che ha cercato sempre più nella libertà astratta dell’arte di sublimare il vuoto lasciato dalle grandi ipotesi di trasformazione sociale. Così quel 1955 in cui muore James Dean è anche l’anno al quale torna dal futuro Michael J. Fox con la sua Delorean: e in Back To The Future la funzione comica è tutta affidata alle icone e la grandezza del capitalismo americano è celebrata con l’identificazione totale di esso con la sua dimensione immaginaria. La natura stessa della nostra memoria sembra mutare a contatto con le esperienze riprodotte, che si mimetizzano tra i ricordi reali contribuendo a formare il sapere che è alla base della nostra identità. Perciò siamo vulnerabili davanti allo schermo, touchables: perché guardare un film, più che un divertimento, per noi è un’operazione sentimentale. (continua)

SALAD WITH

RANCH DRESSING

curated by lucas knipscher and piper marshall

a cura di lucas knipscher e piper marshall

ADAPTATION IS AN ONGOING PROJECT THAT MOVES BETWEEN PAPER AND THE INTERNET, REVERSING THE USUAL ROLES OF THE TWO MEDIA. IN EACH ISSUE WE INVITE AN ARTIST OR A CURATOR TO CONCEIVE AN ONLINE SHOW AND TO PUBLISH THE RELATED TEXT IN THE MAGAZINE. HERE WE PRESENT THE PRESS RELEASE OF SALAD WITH RANCH DRESSING, THE SHOW CURATED FOR NERO BY LUCAS KNIPSCHER AND PIPER MARSHALL. THE SHOW WILL BE PRESENTED ONLINE (AT WWW.NEROMAGAZINE.IT/SWRD.HTML) ON APRIL 15TH 2012 AND, AS ALWAYS, THE OPENING WILL TAKE PLACE AT 7 PM.

ADAPTATION È UN PROGETTO IN PROGRESS CHE SI MUOVE TRA IL FORMATO CARTACEO E QUELLO DI INTERNET, RIGIRANDO IL COMUNE RUOLO DEI DUE MEDIA. SU OGNI NUMERO INVITIAMO UN ARTISTA O UN CURATORE A CONCEPIRE UNA MOSTRA ONLINE E A PUBBLICARE SUL MAGAZINE IL RELATIVO TESTO. PRESENTIAMO QUI IL COMUNICATO STAMPA DI SALAD WITH RANCH DRESSING, LA MOSTRA CURATA PER NERO DA LUCAS KNIPSCHER E PIPER MARSHALL. LA MOSTRA SARÀ PRESENTATA ONLINE (ALL’INDIRIZZO WWW.NEROMAGAZINE.IT/SWRD.HTML) IL 15 APRILE 2012 E, COME AL SOLITO, L’INAUGURAZIONE SARÀ ALLE ORE 19.

The first image, presumably a screenshot of an iPhone contains information in regard to service, provider, accessibil-

La prima immagine, probabilmente lo screenshot di un iPhone, contiene informazioni circa service, provider, accessi-

ity, lifespan, time, day, date, and mood. There is no implied three dimensionality and only a limited allusion to the

bilità, durata della batteria, ora, giorno, data e umore. Nulla lascia intendere una tridimensionalità e compare solo una

perceived character of its owner. The translucent text and opaque data are presented in layers, similar to a series of

vaga allusione a ciò che si può percepire della personalità del proprietario. I caratteri traslucidi e i dati opachi vengono

overlapping scrims. The top and bottom sections of the phone, related to the livelihood of the device, each take up

presentati a strati, come una serie di garze sovrapposte. La sezione superiore e quella inferiore del telefono, relative

about ⅕th of the screen. These blocks of information frame a photo that seems to rest beneath it-- two pineapple tops.

al sostentamento dell’apparecchio, occupano ciascuna circa un quinto dello schermo. Questi blocchi di informazione

These are doubled and in grey tones. A longitudinal line runs at a thirty-five degree angle from the top to the bottom

incorniciano una foto che sembra appoggiata al di sotto - due cime di ananas, speculari e in bianco e nero. Una linea

of the picture; it divides the mirrored image. This fissure belies the otherwise smooth surface and points to a hitherto

longitudinale attraversa la foto dall’alto in basso lungo un angolo di trentacinque gradi, dividendo così le immagini

unforeseen depth in an otherwise flat picture plane.

specchiate. Questa fessura increspa la superficie altrimenti omogenea e indica una profondità finora imprevista in una fotografia piana.

The unusual dimensionality is carried over to the second image, where an asymmetrical crease also splits the picture plane into ⅓ and ⅔ parts, the respective parts fan-out from the division. A tastier offering occupies the larger portion,

L’insolita dimensionalità si estende nella seconda immagine, dove una piega asimmetrica divide il piano della foto-

where a spread of four pancakes, two whole-wheat and two of the bleached flour variety are served upon floral china

grafia, creando due sezioni rispettivamente da un terzo e due terzi. Una proposta più gustosa occupa la porzione più

and are flanked by sterling silver cutlery. In addition to the flowers, maple syrup pitcher, orange juice, and coffee mug,

estesa, dove una serie di quattro pancake, due alla farina integrale di frumento e due a base di farina bianca, vengono

a blistered banana seems to rest on the right-hand side of the plate itself-- jauntily cutting across the foreground. The

serviti su un piatto di porcellana a motivi floreali, affiancati da un servizio di posate in argento marchiato. Oltre ai fio-

curve of the banana, angled away from pancakes casts a shadow to its left. This slight detail conveys a depth to the

ri, alla caraffa di sciroppo d’acero, al succo d’arancia e a una tazza da caffè, una banana mezza marcia è poggiata sul

otherwise flat still life. Contextually, the swollen proportions of the banana render it and the image even stranger.

lato destro del piatto - tagliando con vivacità il primo piano. La curva della banana, orientata nella direzione opposta

A series of undulating striations-- not dissimilar to the grain of wood-- yet more calculated, seem to grip the tooth of

menti piatto. Contestualmente, l’aspetto rigonfio della banana la rende ancora più bizzarra – e così l’immagine nel suo

the paper. Whether or not this is a result of the printing quality, or the screen is undetermined. However, the striations

complesso.

rispetto ai pancake, proietta un’ombra alla propria sinistra. Questo dettaglio trasmette profondità a uno still life altri-

do not appear on the banana, which seems to be spot lit from above. Una serie di striature ondulate - non diverse dalle venature del legno, seppur più calcolate - sembra aderire alla grana The last image mashes together pixels, paisley, plaid, and gingham in an unlikely figurative portrait, one whose setting

del foglio. Non è chiaro se sia un effetto della qualità della stampa o dello schermo, ma in ogni caso non compaiono

and pose recalls Manet’s Olympia. Seated in the center a scantily robe-clad man holds a bowl and spoon in one hand, a

sulla banana, che sembra illuminata dall’alto.

black and white plaid canvas in the other. Bare legs crossed, he sits on a paisley couch. In front of him a table, marble, perhaps, is littered with quotidian items- a book, a bowl of fruit, maybe a calling card or two. A layer of magenta ob-

L’ultima immagine unisce pixel, tessuto paisley, tessuto scozzese e percalle in un improbabile ritratto figurativo, che

fuscates the contents of the table. This coloring continues to a portion of the figure’s arm and the bowl, which he

per ambientazione e disposizione ricorda l’Olympia di Manet. Seduto al centro, un uomo vestito di una succinta vesta-

holds. The background is a single color blue and points to digital manipulation. As does the bottle of wine on the table

glia nera stringe in una mano una scodella e un cucchiaio, e nell’altra un canovaccio scozzese bianco. A gambe nude

that has been masked in dots. The irregularity of colors, tones, and shadows suggest a digital manipulation, which

e incrociate, siede su un divano in paisley. Di fronte a lui un tavolo, forse in marmo, è disseminato di oggetti quoti-

could be thought of as fresh, nu-rave, youthful, and overly digitized. The mash-up of parts suggest a constructed still

diani - un libro, una cesta di frutta, forse una o due schede telefoniche. Uno strato di magenta offusca ciò che si trova

life that has been culled and grafted together to create a perceived three dimensional space that has then been flat-

sul tavolo, e si proietta anche su una porzione del braccio della figura e sulla scodella che tiene in mano. Lo sfondo è

tened into one smooth surface.

di un blu uniforme e indica un ritocco digitale, come la bottiglia di vino sul tavolo che è stata mascherata da puntini. L’irregolarità di colori, toni e ombre suggerisce una manipolazione digitale, che potrebbe essere considerata fresca, nu-rave, giovanile ed eccessivamente digitalizzata. L’unione delle varie parti suggerisce una natura morta costruita, selezionata e combinata per creare uno spazio percepito come tridimensionale poi appiattito su una superficie piana.

Lucas Knipscher (1979) is an artist based in New York. An important part of his work involves transferring photographic thinking to other mediums.

Piper Marshall is assistant curator at Swiss Institute / Contemporary Art in New York. In addition to her curatorial efforts, she is a frequent contributor to Frieze magazine and artforum.com

Lucas Knipscher (1979) è un artista con base a New York. Una parte importante del suo lavoro consiste nel trasferire il pensiero fotografico su altre tipologie di media.

Piper Marshall è assistente curatrice allo Swiss Institute/Contemporary art di New York. Oltre ai suoi progetti curatoriali, collabora regolarmente con Frieze e artforum.com

TROVATELLI images by julia frommel miart.it

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102

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The Armory Show Piers 92 & 94

Theaster Gates is the 2012 Artist Commission

March 8–11, 2012 New York City www.thearmoryshow.com Theaster Gates, Memento 1, 2011, 48” diameter, decommissioned fire hoses and wood. Courtesy of Kavi Gupta CHICAGO I BERLIN

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WORKS THAT COULD BE MINE & WORKS THAT I WOULD LIKE TO BE MINE a project by rä di martino

“I have been taking note through time of other artists’ works that bear a striking resemblance to ideas I have had and sometimes written in my notebook, but have never done. I catalogued these as: ‘works that could be mine’. More recently, looking at this list I drew a line and wrote a second list called ‘works that I would like to be mine’. I update these lists regularly and read with increasing curiosity the gap between the two; between what you can imagine yourself to be and how you would like to be, the image of yourself and the desire for something ‘other’ at play. I also started to consider what other artists' lists would be; if done in complete sincerity it’s an interesting set of lines and arrows between works seen through the eyes of one artist and how they view themselves. But it also inevitably plays with the idea of originality.”

Lists by EVA MARISALDI, Bologna, 01-01-2012

Works that could be mine

Works that I would like to be mine:

Maja Bajevic

Maria Thereza Alves

Tresses, 2001

Seeds of Change, 1999-Ongoing project

Monika Sosnowska 1:1, 2007/2008

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Eva Marisaldi, Democratic Psychedelia, 2011, courtesy the artist and Galleria Massimo Minini, Brescia

Australie Neon Parc Austria Heike Curtze / Ernst Hilger / Christine König / Krinzinger / Mario Mauroner / Raum Mit Licht / Steinek / Elisabeth & Klaus Thoman / Hubert Winter Belgium A.L.I.C.E. / Aeroplastics / Aliceday / Anyspace / BaronianFrancey / Base-Alpha / Bodson-Emelinckx / Crown / Patrick De Brock / Dependance / Deweer / Geukens & De Vil / Gladstone / Hoet Bekaert / Hopstreet / Xavier Hufkens / Jamar / Rodolphe Janssen / Elaine Levy / Maruani & Noirhomme / Greta Meert / Meessen De Clercq / Mulier Mulier / Nomad / Nathalie Obadia / Office Baroque / Tatjana Pieters / Elisa Platteau & Cie / Almine Rech / Sebastien Ricou / André Simoens / Stephane Simoens / Sorry We’re Closed / Micheline Szwajcer / Transit / Triangle Bleu / Twig / Van De Weghe / Van Der Mieden / Tim Van Laere / Samuel Vanhoegaerden / Axel Vervoordt / VidalCuglietta / Nadja Vilenne / Waldburger / De Zwarte Panter Brazil Leme Czech Republic Hunt Kastner Denmark Martin Asbaek / Avlskarl / Larm / David Risley France Galerie 1900-2000 / Jean Brolly / Bernard Ceysson / Chez Valentin / Cortex Athletico / Laurent Godin / Alain Gutharc / Jeanne Bucher – Jaeger Bucher / Fabienne Leclerc / Lelong / Magnin-A / Marion Meyer / Nathalie Obadia / Perrotin / Almine Rech / Michel Rein / Pietro Sparta / Daniel Templon / Torri / Georges-Philippe & Nathalie Vallois / Aline Vidal / Xippas Germany 401 Contemporary / Anita Beckers / Bourouina / Conrads / Cruise&Callas / Michael Janssen / Andrae Kaufmann / Koal / Kwadrat / Gebr. Lehmann / Loock / Peres Projects / PSM / Florent Tosin / Tanja Wagner / Wentrup / Zink Greece Bernier/Eliades India Maskara / Seven Art Limited Iceland i8 Italy Cardi Black Box / Continua / Monica De Cardenas / Fama / Fluxia / Galleria Cardi / Gentili / Invernizzi / Noire Contemporary Art / Prometeo / Tucci Russo / Mimmo Scognamiglio / Jerome Zodo Japan Art Statements / Yumiko Chiba Luxembourg Bernard Ceysson / Nosbaum & Reding Portugal Filomena Soares Slovenia Skuc Spain ADN / Max Estrella / Marlborough Fine Art / Senda / Michel Soskine / Toni Tapies / Sweden Niklas Belenius / Christian Larsen Switzerland Annex 14 / Blancpain / Susanna Kulli / Lelong / Patricia Low / Mai 36 / Saks / Skopia The Netherlands Paul Andriesse / Ellen De Bruijne / Grimm / Motive / Gabriel Rolt / Martin Van Zomeren United Arab Emirates Isabelle Van Den Eynde United Kingdom Hannah Barry / Pilar Corrias / Carl Freedman / Ibid / Simon Lee / Marlborough Fine Art / Other Criteria / The Paragon Press / Karsten Schubert / Wilkinson / Works Projects United States Of America Cherry & Martin / Clearing / CRG / Luis De Jesus / Fitzroy / Honor Fraser / Gladstone / Christopher Grimes / Inman / Lelong / M+B / Marlborough Fine Art / Mc Caffrey / Patrick Painter / Eleven Rivington FIRST CALL / Belgium D+T France Gaudel De Stampa Germany Soy Capitan / Chert / Krome / Tanya Leighton / Harris Lieberman Ireland Mother’s Tankstation Italy Norma Mangione Romania Plan B Sweden Johan Berggren United States Of America Exile / Alex Zachary (index December 2011)

30th contemporary art fair Thu 19 - Sun 22 April 2012 Brussels Expo - www.artbrussels.be Preview & Vernissage Wed 18 April (by invitation Only)

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCE RN

The following is a simple collection of letters – or extracts from correspondence – sent or received by important people in the fields of culture, art, cinema and music. The focus is on the particular way that people write letters, and above all on the intimacy that letter-writing allows and to a certain extent enables. The existence of ever-faster and more interconnected means of communication has served to undermine this form of exchange, whose most obvious peculiarity lies precisely in its staggered and extended temporality. Because of this, what is more interesting than the content itself is actually the register and tone of the writing and the way that the content is expressed. The infinite possibilities that letter-writing allows – letters that are intimate, formal, open, written for a particular aim, letters to strangers, letters of admiration, secret letters, love letters, etc. – mean that it is interesting to see how a kind of face-to-face communication is kept up. Through this communication, the writer can discuss things of greater or lesser importance, things which are sometimes pointless and sometimes fundamental to the life or work of the writer. The tone is personal and decisive but free of the kinds of restrictions that we could call “editorial.” Most of the time, letters are written with only one reader in mind – which is exactly why the writing is focused, with no digressions into more or less conscious ramblings or feats of display. The audience for any other form of writing (article, essay, manifesto, interview) can never entirely be identified, whereas letters

are written with their recipient, whoever it may be, in mind. This means that they communicate unambiguously and confidentially, in a way that may often be poetic or simply intimate. These considerations obviously bring us in this case to a fundamental contradiction, which is the fact that they are being published in a magazine. But as always in this section of the magazine, the collection has been put together with no other aim in mind than to use a random selection of fragments, mostly taken from the internet, so as to encourage a reconsideration of the letter and above all the relationship that exists between letters and the people who make use of them. That is to say, we are not so interested in what is said, or in who is saying it, but in the fact that those who have chosen to speak have done so in a particular way because of the means with which they are saying it. We have for the most part transcribed all of the letters from images which were not always very clear and handwriting that was sometimes almost incomprehensible. Because of this there may be some inaccuracies, as we haven’t always been able to cross-check with the original sources or references to guarantee the authenticity of the information. As already mentioned, the material in the following pages is simply a conceptual outline which does not assume to be a compendium, guide, or strict record. We would advise anyone who is interested to research any particular letter further so as to find the original source. All of the rights of the original letters belong to the respective holders.

PHILIP K. DICK’S LETTER TO CLAUDIA BUSH, 1974

July 5, 1974

Of course the possibility existed that I didn’t have the book in my library, that I would have to go out and buy it. In several

Dear Claudia,

dreams I was in a bookstore doing just that. One time the book was help open before me with its pages singed by ﬁre on all

Since I last wrote you (sending on the 7 page letter to Peter Fit-

sides. By that I took it to be an extremely sacred book, perhaps

ting plus the 2 page letter to you) I have continued to have the

the one seen in the Book of Daniel.

same dream again and again which I mentioned: a vast and important book held up before me which I should read. Yesterday,

Anyhow today I looked all day around the house, since Tessa

for example, since Tessa and Christopher had gone off on a

has been sick with a sunburn, and all at once I found the book.

picnic, I took several naps and had four dreams in which printed

The three month search is at last over.

matter appeared, two of them involving books. As soon as I took down the volume I knew it was to be the right For three months, virtually every night, I’ve had these dreams

one. I had seen it again and again, with ever increasing clarity,

involving written material. And within the last few days it be-

until it could not be mistaken.

came obvious that a speciﬁc book was indicated. That the ultimate purpose of these dreams was to call my attention to an

The book is called THE SHADOW OF BLOOMING GROVE,

actual book somewhere in the real world, which I was to ﬁnd,

hardback and blue, running just under 700 huge long pages of

then take down and read.

tiny type. It was published in 1968. It is the dullest book in the world; I tried to read it when the Book Find Book Club sent it to

The ﬁrst dream on July 4 was much more explicit than any be-

me but couldn’t.

fore; I took down my copy of Robert Heinlein’s I WILL FEAR NO EVIL, a large blue hardback U.K. edition, for two men to look

It is a biography of Warren G. Harding.

at. Both men said this was not a book (or the book) they were interested in. However, it was clear that the book wanted was

Cordially,

large and blue and hardback. Phil In a dream a month ago I managed to see part of the title; it ended with the word “Grove.” At the time I thought it might be

P.S. This is on a level, and it goes to show you that you should

Proust’s WITHIN A BUDDING GROVE, but it was not; however,

never take your dreams too seriously. Or else it shows that the

there was a long word similar to “Budding” before “Grove.”

unconscious or the universe or God or whatever can put you on. A three-month gag. (If you want to read the book I’ll mail it to

So I knew by the ﬁrst part of the day yesterday that I was look-

you. Postage should be enormous. You got three years ahead

ing for a large blue hardback book --very large and long, ac-

in which you have nothing planned?)

cording to some dreams, endlessly long, in fact-- with the final word of the title being “Grove” and a word before it like “Budding.” In the last of the four dreams yesterday I caught sight of the copyright date on the book and another look at the typestyle. It was dated either 1966 or possibly 1968 (the latter proved to be the case). So I began studying all the books in my library which might fit these qualifications. I had the keen intuition that when I at last found it I would have in my hands a mystic or occult or religious book of wisdom which would be a doorway to the absolute reality behind the whole universe.

AN OPEN LETTER BY LA MONTE YOUNG ON GEORGE MACIUNAS, 1978

I met George Maciunas in 1960 when we were both students in

ist who has already made his mark in history during his own

the late Richard Maxﬁeld’s pionering electronic music course at

lifetime. When considered in the context of ﬁnished projects he

the New School.

ahs perhaps accomplished more in this lifetime than most of us

George organized a series of concerts at AG Gallery in which

may accomplish in several.

my work, as well as his own and that of several other compos-

In 1961 George suffered very severe asthma and the doctrs

ers were presented. Even at that early point in our relationship

gave him only one year to live. George, however, responded

I was very impressed with his talens. He was an organizer,

to the challenge with even more vigor and before the year was

publisher, designer, artist, and possessed a remarkable ability

up medical science ad discovered alternative remedies for his

to bring the efforts of diverse artistic personalities into succesful

problem. As we all know he simply went on to increase his out-

collaborative events.

put of artistic activities over the years.

In the early sixties I edited An Anthology. George’s exceptionally

George Maciunas unquestionably meets the high standards

original layout and design created a unique visual presentation

of those deserving grants and public funding. In 1977 he was

to this unprecedented book which was destined to inﬂuence

awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and

scores of similar works in the generations of books to follow. In-

there is no doubt that his work will continue to be important

spired by my “Compositions 1960” and the work of some of the

to the history of Art and will reﬂect distinction upon those who

other artists in An Anthology George went on to found the entire

contribute towards its further support. Both on the basis of his

Fluxus movement.

achievements and in consideration of his urgent need, I strongly

Not only did he coin the word Fluxus and organize the ﬁrst

recommend that every possible means be directed toward his

Fluxfest, but in addition, he performed his own “events” as well

assistance.

as the works of others and actually provided the energy on every level to make the concerts happen. Indeed the very notion

Sincerely yours,

that there was even a need for such an organization as Fluxus and that it could ever work was George’s own conception. It is now a matter of history that Fluxus became a self-propelling art movement of international dimensions, drawing such a large group of artists rom all over the world that many of them did not even have the opportunity to meet George. But along with George’s singular achievements as an artist, there is an aspect of his personality that must not be overlooked in even so brief a resume of his accomplishments as this text. George was extraordinarily generous to the needy. I remeber several times when I was virtually starving and without money, whereupn going to George, he would give me cans of imported food he had earned as payment for a layout or design job. He also shared with others his expert knowledge of design and production and, while he himself lived a spartan life, spurning unnecessary possessions and priding himself on living within a budget of one dollar a day, he usually completely ﬁnanced the publications of Fluxus editions of other artists’ works. It is only ﬁtting then at this time of great need in George’s life that we all rally to the cause. Here is an opportunity to give in return to one who has given us all so much. George is an art-

La Monte Young

UMBERTO BOCCIONI’S LETTER TO HIS FAMILY, 1914

To my family Milan [16 September 1914] My Dearest Ones, demonstrations for war are beginning. We have given the Signal. You will have read that during last night’s gala evening, I tore up an Austrian ﬂag and Marinetti waved the Italian one on a stage at Dal Verme. We will do the same tonight. Maybe we will be arrested for a few hours. It is needed. Don’t be frightened if you read of this in the Corriere Della Sera. The ofﬁcials, the security and the police give a sly smile when they arrest us, saying: we agree with you. We are only arresting you to show that the Government is repressing the cry of “Down with Austria.” It is the same old story. I am not working. I am experiencing a period of great peace, as is my girlfriend, who remains extremely attached to me just as I am to her. Marinetti is leaving for Rome, but I am going to stay in Milan. He is going to take part in what will happen in Rome with Balla, Sironi and the others. I gave your letter to my girlfriend to read. All is well. How are you? Make sure to write. Kisses to everyone, Umberto

ROBERT SMITHSON’S LETTER TO ARTFORUM, 1967

Sirs,

swamp monster which amounts to a preﬁguration or emblem of geometric progressions)…”, in other words “Judd’s Speciﬁc

France has given us the anti-novel, now Michael Fried has

Objects, and Morris’s gestalts or unitary forms, Smith’s cube...”

given us the anti-theater. A production could be developed on

This atemporal world threatens Fried’s present state of temporal

a monstrous scale with the Seven Deadly Isms, verbose dia-

grace—his “presentness.” The terrors of inﬁnity are taking over

tribes, scandalous refutations, a vindication of Stanley Cavell,

the mind of Michael Fried. Corrupt appearances of endlessness

shrill but brilliant disputes on “shapehood” vs. “objecthood,”

worse than any known Evil. A radical skepticism, known only to

dark curses, infamous claims, etc. The stage should subdivide

the dreadful “literalists” is making inroads into intimate “shape-

into millions of stages.

hood.” Non-durational labyrinths of time are infecting his brain

The following is a “prologue” from an unwritten TV “spectacular”

with eternity. Fried, the Marxist saint, shall not be tempted into

called The Tribulations of Michael Fried. …there will be no end

this awful sensibility, instead he will cling for dear life to the “sur-

to this exquisite, horrible misery; when you look forward you

faces” of Jules Olitski’s Bunga. Better one million Bungas than

shall see a long forever, a boundless duration before you, which

one “speciﬁc object.” Yet, little known “speciﬁc demons” are at

will swallow up your thoughts.

this moment, I want to say, “breaking the ﬁngers” of Fried’s grip

—Jonathan Edwards

on Bunga. This “harrowing” of hellish objecthood is causing modernity much vexation and turmoil—not to say “nashing of

Michael Fried has in his article “Art and Objecthood” (ARTFO-

teeth.”

RUM, June 1967) declared a “war” on what he quixotically calls

At any rate, eternity brings about the dissolution of belief in

“theatricality.” In a manner worthy of the most fanatical puritan,

temporal histories, empires, revolutions, and counter-revolu-

he provides the art world with a long-overdue spectacle—a

tions—all becomes ephemeral and in a sense unreal, even the

kind of ready-made parody of the war between Renaissance

universe loses its reality. Nature gives way to the incalculable

classicism (modernity) versus Manneristic anti-classicism (the-

cycles of nonduration. Eternal time is the result of skepticism,

ater). Fried, without knowing it, has brought into being a schism

not belief. Every refutation is a mirror of the thing it refutes—ad

complete with all the “mimic fury” (Thomas Carew) of a ﬁctive

inﬁnitum. Every war is a battle with reﬂections. What Michael

inquisition.

Fried attacks is what he is. He is a naturalist who attacks

He becomes, I want to say, in effect the ﬁrst truly manneristic

natural time. Could it be there is a double Michael Fried—the

critic of “modernity.” Fried has set the critical stage for man-

atemporal Fried and the temporal Fried? Consider a subdivided

neristic modernism, although he is trying hard not to fall from

progression of “Frieds” on millions of stages.

the “grip” of grace. This grace he maintains by avoiding appearance, or by keeping art at “arm’s length.” Fried discusses this

Robert Smithson,

“grip” in Anthony Caro and Kenneth Noland-Some Notes on Not

New York City

Composing (The Lugano Review, 1965/III-IV). What Fried fears most is the consciousness of what he is doing—namely being himself theatrical. He dreads “distance” because that would force him to become aware of the role he is playing. His sense of intimacy would be annihilated by the “God” Jonathan Edwards feared so much. Fried, the orthodox modernist, the keeper of the gospel of Clement Greenberg has been “struck by Tony Smith,” the agent of endlessness. Fried has declared his sacred duty to modernism and will now make combat with what Jorge Luis Borges calls “the numerous Hydra (the

ESTHER FERRER’S LETTER TO JOHN CAGE, 1991

Querido John,

to consider others as beings who practice

puts to sleep our capacity to think, to revolt,

Here are some quick thoughts to respond

liberty too.

to manage our lives, because it promises

to your question as to the future of anar-

Anarchy is quite simply a problem of as-

everything and gives us practically nothing.

chism,

suming individual responsibility. It is the

Maybe it is easier, and even more comfort-

- For me, anarchism shall always have a

idea that each person conceive of himself

able, to delegate than to think.

future, and a present, for the basic reason

as a thinking being, capable of making his

Anarchism, in the face of all the other

that I associate it with creativity. Please, I

life decisions without delegating his deci-

doctrines and ideologies, is a marvelous

don’t mean art, which is something else,

sion making capacities to someone else,

exception. IT PROMISES NOTHING! Wow!

much more limited. I am talking about

whether it be a god, a king, a state, a party,

What joy! It gives us no model of pleasure

creativity in the sense that it comes from

an ingenious artist, a master of thought,

to follow, to go for. It gives us no paradise,

rejoicing, from pleasure and it serves ﬁrst

a leader, a mother or a father. Now, to be

neither an artiﬁcial one nor a real one nor a

of all the person who practices it, without

more speciﬁc, for me, John, anarchy re-

proletarian one, at the end of an authorita-

paying attention to the consequences and

ally does have the future that people are

tive road. This is because, among other

without feeling obligations to anyone else.

talking about, and for a reason much more

things, there is no road. Machado, a Span-

There is no “master” except oneself.

concrete than the one, fundamental for me,

ish poet, exiled by the forces of General

Anarchy, like creativity, is thus a completely

which I spoke about before, that is, creative

Franco, and who died in exile, has written:

gratuitous choice, which engages only

conduct, as opposed to subordinate con-

“caminante no hay camino, se hace camino

yourself and which you decided to practice;

duct, and positive individualism:

al andar” (“Walker, there is no road, the

one could well deﬁne anarchy as a practice

In these times, which ﬂow in a behavioral

road is made by walking”).

of liberty, ﬁrst individual and then social.

“grisaille”(2), it is no doubt attractive to fol-

So, from this struggle against the state,

One can practice it alone, even if others are

low a way of thinking that does not demand

which does not mean the conquest of

not at all interested. That is often the case,

anything, that simply proposes the possibil-

power, but rather its dispersion, anarchy

when one speaks of anarchism, others laugh

ity that you have the courage to assume

struggles against the patriarchal family, of

or mistrust the idea, but that does not take

the decision and the consequences of your

which the state is only one manifestation,

away from one’s own joy. This is to say that

own acts, without protecting yourself in the

(even if anarchist writing, with rare excep-

anarchistic thought is something out of time,

imperatives of an ideology, a religion, or an

tions, make no reference to women, and

even without time, and I would even dare to

authority, which convert you into an irre-

even if, in their individual behavior, some

say that it is something anchored in human

sponsible person, ﬁrst in regard to yourself,

of the great anarchist theoreticians were

nature (there are other things anchored in hu-

and then in regard to society.

misogynist and authoritative). The term

man nature also, unfortunately) and like cre-

In view of the unworkability of all the doc-

“patriarchal” really means any hierarchical

ativity, individualistic and individualized. This

trines that claim to liberate humanity, such

pyramidal structure, in which the summit is

is the source of its attractiveness, and of its

as capitalism, Marxism, or authoritative

occupied by a supreme authority tradition-

enormous risk, which in my opinion, makes it

socialism(3), the big loser of all the revolu-

ally masculine. Given that one of the goals

all the more attractive.

tions (Soviet, without forgetting Kronstadt,

of feminism is to decompose the patriarchal

As a result, John, I think that in periods

Spanish, etc.), that is, anarchism, seems for

family (and not, if you please, to replace it

of “desánimo”(1) of “desesperanza”, as

many to be once again a possibility. (As the

by a matriarchal authority) in this sense the

today, when there is not, or seems not to

Basque sculptor Jorge Oteiza, used to say to

various feminist movements, can stimulate

be, any messianic hope to stuff our heads

me: “From failure to failure right up to the ﬁnal

and actualize--thanks to women anarchists-

with, when the hopes have turned out to be

victory”). Of course, that this possibility could

-some anarchistic ideas.

largely inoperative, there is a return to es-

become another fashion, another fad, is a

These ideas, John, at bottom, are simply

sential things, and the essential things are

new risk that anarchists must assume.

natural creations of free thought, capable of

never far away, because WE CAN FIND

Why is anarchy a possibility? Because we

generating someday, a fraternity and soli-

THEM IN OURSELVES, without needing

begin to understand that we have delegat-

darity, conﬂictive, I hope (anarchy does not

recourse to ideologists and master think-

ed too much, believed too much in the dad-

fear contradictions, she is submerged in

ers, without needing to think outside of

dy state, which protects us, and gives us

them), but capable of inventing imaginative

ourselves. Our liberty is only limited by the

such security (or the delusion of it) and puts

and joyful solutions.

characteristics of our species in the most

us to sleep (in the best cases) or which

physical sense, and by the personal deci-

exploits us (in the worst, and unfortunately

sion to employ liberty intelligently, that is,

more frequent cases). The daddy state also

Esther Ferrer

JOSEPH KOSUTH’S LETTER TO LEO CASTELLI, 1971

Leo: Since I’m not completely clear as to how familiar you are with this work, you should know a few basic things. 1. They are not paintings. In fact, when I began this work an aspect of it was anti-painting. They are blow-up photostats and can be destroyed and re-made. (yet they are original works). 2. The “original” document, which is signed and dated and is generally rather small (aprox- 6’’ x 5’’) is what is important. It is from this “paste-up documentation” that the photographer make the blow-up. Without this the collector has nothing. It is like the deed to the work. 3. Each work has the same title: “Titled (Art as Idea as Idea)”. For your purposes (records, etc.) it will probably be necessary to differentiate them further. 4. Since I stopped this work in 1968 when I began other work, the amount of it I have is limited, of course. The prices are a reﬂection of this. Perhaps it would be good if we discussed this aspect of it sometime. This work is rather easy for me to sell. At some point, Leo, I would like to discuss with you the thinking behind my work (and the general idea). As I’m sure you realize it is much, much, more complex than it appears.

Regards, Joseph Kosuth

MADONNA’S LETTER TO STEPHEN LEWICKI, 1979

Dear Stephen,

feeling miserably unproductive, but I couldn’t bear the Parisian sterility or my homelessness any longer, so I came back to N.Y.

Please excuse the informal resumé. I have been out of the

I’ve been here 3 weeks now, working with my band, learning to

country for several months and upon returning discovered many

play the drums, taking dance classes and waiting for my 20th

important papers misplaced. My resumés included.

birthday.

I was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan where I began my

Is this all?

career in petulance and precociousness. By the time I was in the ﬁfth grade, I knew I either wanted to be a nun or a movie

Madonna Cicconi

star. 9 months in a convent cured me of the ﬁrst disease. Dur-

674-8301

ing high school, I became slightly schizophrenic as I couldn’t

h – 5’4½”

choose between class virgin or the other kind. Both of them

w – 102

had their values as far as I could see. When I was 15 I began

Hair – brown

taking ballet classes regularly, listening to baroque music and

eyes – hazel

slowly but surely I developed a great dislike for my classmates,

B.D – 8/16/59

teachers and high school in general. There was one exception and that was my drama class. For one hour every day all the megalomaniacs and egotists would meet to compete for roles and argue about interpretation. I secretly adored each moment when all eyes were on me and I could practice being charming or sophisticated, so I would be prepared for the outside world. My infinite impatience graduated me from high school one year early and I entered Fine Arts School at University of Michigan studying Music, Art, Dance and participating regularly in most theatrical productions. (I seemed to turn just about everything into a theatrical production.) After 2 years of isolated and utopic living I was dying for a cha(lle)nge, so I moved to New York City and became a college dropout. At first I concentrated only on dancing and in 2 months joined a modern dance company (Pearl Lang) I did 3 seasons and toured Italy but dancing was not as fulfilling as I’d hoped it would be as Pearl’s psycotic ways were ruining me. I sustained myself dancing with some small mediocre companies (Walter Nicks, Peggy Harrel, Ailey III) singing in a New Wave band, working with a filmmaker (Eliot Fain) and modelling for artists and photographers. In May of 79 some French record producers (Aquarius Label) saw me singing and dancing at an audition and asked me to come to Europe where they would produce me as their singing artist. An apartment on 36 & 10th Ave and a steady diet of popcorn made the decision easy. I came to Paris on the agreement that after a few months of working in a music studio and becoming familiar with the record business I would decide whether I wanted to sign a contract with them. After 2 months of restaurants & nightclubs everyday, being dragged to different countries every week and working with business men and not musicians I knew this life was not for me. I hung out in Paris for one more month,

AN OPEN CALL TO MARK DI SUVERO BY OCCUPY WALL STREET’S ARTS & CULTURE COMMITTEE, 2011

Dear Mark Di Suvero,

York goes against your intentions for the work, as well as the very spirit of public art. “Joie de Vivre” is especially poignant as

We are artists and art workers forming the Arts & Culture work-

this movement actively ﬁghts to empower people of marginal-

ing group of the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement.

ized economic status. Indeed, that struggle is the joy of life.

OWS is a people-powered movement inspired by popular upris-

OWS is now in Day 52. This movement will only continue to

ings in the Middle East, Europe and South America. OWS is

grow and evolve. It is our wish, and we believe yours as well,

now in 100 cities in the United States, with actions in over 1,500

that the sculpture be integrated spatially with the activities tak-

global cities. We are working to create new social forms to sup-

ing place at Liberty Plaza. Therefore, we ask you to make a

plant the obsolete models currently in place, holding banks and

public statement urging city authorities to keep all barricades

corporations accountable for buying out democracy, and sack-

away from this and other public sculptures in the area, allowing

ing the economy.

free access to the area under and around public sculptures.

OWS is organized horizontally to bring participatory democracy.

We would also like to invite you to speak at a teach-in related

The “people’s assembly” is a forum used all over the world to

to the political role of artists. We would be happy to host such

facilitate collective decision making, with shared roots in the

a teach-in at Liberty Plaza, including a conversation about the

history of democratic movements, dating back centuries. The

history of the Peace Tower and other socially engaged public

OWS General Assembly welcomes people from all ethnicities,

art. We are interested in sharing with you the past actions and

genders, sexualities and beliefs to attend and participate in di-

future goals of the Arts and Culture committee, and listening to

rect democratic decision making.

your thoughts on the movement.

Your sculpture, “Joie De Vivre,” at Liberty Plaza (“Zuccotti

Sincerely,

Park”) has served as a visual backdrop for the movement in

Arts & Culture Committee

New York. The area underneath and around the sculpture has hosted meetings, rendezvous points, teach-ins and concerts. We are conscious of your role in the creation of the Peace Tower (1966 and 2006), and your public opposition to the wars in Vietnam and Iraq. Your work is an integral part of our collective history, and the tradition of artists who exercise their responsibility as public citizens. Recently, after one individual climbed the sculpture, city authorities placed barricades around “Joie De Vivre”, cutting off access and separating it from the politically activated space of Liberty Plaza. Some of the barricades carry Metropolitan Museum of Art signage as well as NYPD stickers (see attached photos). This was an unnecessary overreaction in light of OWS’ track record as a peaceful, proactive movement, generating conversation and fostering community and engagement. Recently, Community Board 1, which consists of the neighborhood’s residents, voted to request the city to remove unnecessary barricades from the area, especially in light of the OWS’s stated commitment to nonviolence. We believe that cordoning off your gift to the people of New

ALBERT EINSTEIN’S LETTER TO HYMAN ZINN, 1939

June 10, 1939 My dear Mr.Zinn: May I offer my sincere congratulations to you on the splendid work you have undertaken on behalf of the refugee during Dedication Week. The power of resistance which has enabled the Jewish people to survive for thousands of years has been based to a large extent on tradtions of mutual helpfulness. In these years of afﬂiction our readiness to help one another is being put to an especially severe test. May we stand this test as well as did our fathers before us. We have no other means of self-defense than our solidarity and our knowledge that the cause for which we are suffering is a momentous and sacred cause. It must be a source of deep gratiﬁcation to you to be making so important a contribution toward rescuing our persecuted fellowJews from their calamitous peril and leading them toward a better future. Sincerely yours Albert Einstein

BUCKMINSTER FULLER’S TELEGRAM TO ISAMU NOGUCHI, 1936

Isamu Noguchi Care Greenwood 66 Calle Republica Coumbia Mexico City Einsteins formula determination individual specifics relativity reads quote energy equals mass times the speed of light squared unquote speed of light identical speed all radiation cosmic gamma x ultra violet infra red rays etcetera one hundred eighty six thousand miles per second which squared is top or perfect speed giving science a finite value for basic factor in motion universe stop Speed of radiant energy being directional outward all directions expanding wave surface diametric polar speed away from self is twice speed in one direction and speed of volume increase is square of speed in one direction approximately thirty five billion volumetric miles per second stop Formula is written quote letter e followed by equation mark followed by letter m followed by letter c followed closely by elevated small figure two symbol of squaring unquote only variable in formula is specific mass speed is a unit of rate which is an integrated ratio of both time and space and no greater rate of speed than that provided by its cause which is pure energy latent or radiant is attainable stop The formula therefore provides a unit and a rate of perfection to which the relative imperfection of inefficiency of energy release in radiant or confined direction of all temporal space phenomena may be compared by actual calculation stop Significance stop Specific quality of animates is control willful or otherwise of rate and direction energy release and application not only of self mechanism but of from self machine divided mechanisms and relativity of all animates and inanimates is potential of establishment through einstein formula Bucky

EXCERPTS FROM A LETTER TO JEAN RENOIR BY FRANÇOIS TRUFFAUT, 1960

October 31 1960 I haven’t really kept up-to-date on what you’re doing these days (teaching cinema courses?), but if any of your current activities might result in writing something which you would entrust to Cahiers, I can assure you that we would be extremely grateful for it. All of us at Cahiers have resorted to “begging for alms”, as it were -- you see, we (Godard, Rivette, Doniol and myself) are so shocked by the gap between our ideas as cinephiles and our discoveries as film-makers that we don’t dare write anything any more. Nevertheless, so much journalistic attention has been paid to the “New Wave” that the magazine is selling better than ever. The situation with French cinema is very strange at the moment -- the number of films produced has doubled within a year, and in the last year’s euphoria, many young film-makers jumped in feet first and made films without producers. And what’s more, some young producers have also thrown themselves into the water the same way, by producing films without having distribution for them. What this means is that right now, distributors (and especially exhibitors) are in a very advantageous position: they can sit back and let the films pile up -- and collectively depreciate. Then they can pick and chose the ones they want, only taking what they think is sure to do well at the box office. And so, for most films, the market is totally closed off -- the only films which get released are by major directors, with big budgets and stars. Perhaps the revolution in film production happened too quickly, too roughly, or perhaps what’s to blame is that no restructuring took place at the level of distribution and exhibition. In any case, the “New Wave” is currently coming under such attack -- from all sides -- that in order to survive, it needs to come up with a big hit every three months. The most recent one, last February, was Jean-Luc Godard’s A Bout de Souffle. Ever since then, we’ve been massacred. Godard’s second film, Le Petit Soldat (about torture) was completely banned by the censors, and everything else has completely flopped or was never released in the first place -- even some really lovely films, like Eric Rohmer’s Le Signe du Lion.

ITALO CALVINO’S LETTER TO GOFFREDO PARISE, 1973

Turin May 9 1973 Dear Parise, I kept a hold of your Sillabario and read some every now and then, and now that I have ﬁnished it I have to write to you to tell you that your poetry, the exactness with which you describe faces, food, and your days, works really well. As long as I was reading your statements in the pages of the Corriere della Sera I could say: well, this is what we usually say to try and rid ourselves of the intellectualism that we will never actually be able to shake off, longing to speak in a way which no one can any more because it died out in 19th century Russia. Instead you have managed something different to what was and is done, and it is there in the way that you construct the story, in the way that you use carefully selected details to bring life into focus, in the highly individual way that you measure your prose to suit exactly what you want to say, in short, in your style. Also, the degree to which you take sides in the application of your poetic style really is a sign of the fact that you write today, that you “execute a literary task” (you may object to this), and this is where the meaning of your work really lies. As an example of the kind of story that I like (I do not like all of them equally) I will mention Amicizia, and, in general, the ones that are more indirect and that move along temporally. With warmest regards

RICHARD HAMILTON’S LETTER TO PETER AND ALISON SMITHSON, 1957

16th January 1957

Pop Art is: Popular (designed for a mass audience) Transient (short-term solution) Expendable (easily-forgotten) Low

Dear Peter and Alison,

cost Mass produced Young (aimed at youth) Witty Sexy Gimmicky Glamorous Big Business

I have been thinking about our conversation of the other evening and thought that it might be a good idea to get something

This is just a beginning. Perhaps the ﬁrst part of our task is the

on paper, as much to sort it out for myself as to put a point of

analysis of Pop Art and the production of a table. I ﬁnd I am not

view to you.

yet sure about the “sincerity” of Pop Art. It is not a characteristic of all but it is of some - at least, a pseudo-sincerity is. Maybe we

There have been a number of manifestations in the post-war

have to subdivide Pop Art into its various categories and decide

years in London which I would select as important and which

into which category each of the subdivisions of our project ﬁts.

have a bearing on what I take to be an objective:

What do you think?

Parallel of Life and Art (investigation into an imagery of general

Yours,

value) (The letter was unanswered but I used the suggestion made in Man, Machine and Motion (investigation into a particular tech-

it as the theoretical basis for a painting called Hommage á Chr-

nological imagery) Reyner Banham’s research on automobile

ylsler Corp., the ﬁrst product of a slowly contrived programme.

styling Ad image research (Paolozzi, Smithson, McHale) In-

R.H.)

dependent Group discussion on Pop Art - Fine Art relationship House of the Future (conversion of Pop Art attitudes in industrial design to scale of domestic architecture) This is Tomorrow Group 2 presentation of Pop Art and perception material attempted impersonal treatment. Group 6 presentation of human needs in terms of a strong personal idiom. Looking at this list is is clear that the Pop Art/Technology background emerges as the important feature. The disadvantage (as well as the great virtue) of the TIT show was its incoherence and obscurity of language. My view is that another show should be as highly disciplined and uniﬁed in conception as this one was chaotic. Is it possible that the participants could relinquish their existing personal solutions and try to bring about some new formal conception complying with a strict, mutually agreed programme? Suppose we were to start with the objective of providing a unique solution to the speciﬁc requirement of a domestic environment e.g. some kind of shelter, some kind of equipment, some kind of art. This solution could then be formulated and rated on the basis of compliance with a table of characteristics of Pop Art.

IAN HAMILTON FINLAY’S LETTER TO AD REINHARDT, 1963 C.A.

Gledfield farmhouse, Ardgay, Ross-shire, Scotland 18 August Dear Ad. R., very many thanks for your letter. It was a good surprise to get it. I hope my stuff has reached you or reaches you soon. I’m rather eager to know what you think of it. I’m delighted you feel you’ll manage a Poor. Old. Tired. Horse. That’s splendid. I’m really pleased. Now, Robert Lax is already doing his own issue. He has plans for someone to draw in it. So I think that should be treated as tied-up (hopefully). I imagine, though, you mean to write, rather than draw, in your number? (In brackets, yes, I have seen your writing - it is fine. I haven’t seen that much, but what I have, is good. Do you know much concrete poetry, or prose? It ought to interest you, I feel…). So, on your suggestion, I have written a first, tentative letter to Bridget Riley, asking if she’d like to draw in your number… She may not want to, because we can’t pay etc., but I have asked, and I will let you know what she says, of course. If she does draw, you could write, and that would be it.. Splendid. Again, you might like to draw a bit too. Please do as you feel. Only, if you can keep in touch, it’s a great help: I like to try to plan issues a wee bit ahead because time goes by, etc. This is really just a wee practical letter, to say I’ve had yours, and that I’ve written Bridget Riley.. Try to write when you get my stuff, and I’ll write again later, too --- with pleasure, I must say. Very good wishes. Sincerely, Ian (H.F.)

TWO LETTERS TO ANDY WARHOL, 1956 / 1965

Andy Warhol’s letter to Alfred H.Barr Jr.

Alfred R. Goldstein’s letter to Andy Warhol

Dear Mr. Warhol:

November 15, 1965

Last week our Committee on the Museum Collections held its

Dear Mr. Warhol:

ﬁrst meeting of the fall season and had a chance to study your drawing entitled Shoe which you so generously offered as a gift

We have been advised that you have been giving parties in the

to the Museum.

fourth ﬂoor space occupied by you. We understand that they are generally large parties and are held after usual ofﬁce hours.

I regret that I must report to you that the Committee decided,

We have found that your guests have left debris and litter in the

after careful consideration, that they ought not to accept it for

public areas which you have never bothered to clean. Further,

our Collection.

we feel that a congregation of the number of people such as you have had may be contrary to various applicable govern-

Let me explain that because of our severely limited gallery and

mental rules and regulations and also might present a serious

storage space we must turn down many ﬁdgets offered, since

problem with the Fire Department regulations.

we feel it is not fair to accept as a gift a work which be shown only infrequently.

Your lease, of course, does not permit such use and occupancy and you hereby directed not to have any such parties in this

Nevertheless, the Committee has asked me to pass on to you

building.

their thanks for your generous expression of interest in our Collection.

Very truly yours,

Sincerely, ELK REALTY, INC., Agents Alfred H. Barr, Jr. Director of the Museum Collections

Alfred R. Goldstein President ARG:sd

P.S. The drawing may be picked up from the Museum at your convenience.

GIL SCOTTHERON’S LETTER TO BROUHAHA MUSIC, INCORPORATED, 1997

Let me take these two lines to say That i’m sorry i wasn’t there yesterday But look for me around two o’clock ‘Cause right now that’s when i’m planning to stop This note is to allow my favorite trio A chance to get set for old soulful mio I’m doing this in case i don’t stop to say thanks Since i’ll be in such a hurry to get to the bank I that explains why the hell i spent So much time on this fine document. What i’m sitting here to sign Means more to me than dotted lines What i’m preparing to do right here Will be the high or low point of my career Thirty five years of piano playing Thirty five years of poetry saying Twenty seven years of record making Forty seven years of rule breaking A final test for the spirits i follow The rejection of four hundred thousand dollars. But since i ain’t as rich as j. Paul getty Please, (if you can), get at least one check ready (drum roll and trumpets blaring:) To steve and vera and randy No weed, no beer and no brandy But for giving my spirit such a lift: There will be for each of you a personal gift: Gil

DAVID FOSTER WALLACE’S LETTER IN RESPONSE TO DAVID HUBBARD, 1984

To the Chairman: I write in response to a letter from Dave Hubbard ‘87, who objects to the fact that those of his neighbors who find his (apparently regular) blasting of music irritating and distracting have the power to call security and make him turn his stereo down. Hubbard regards his neighbors’ unreasonable desire for quiet to think or to hear music of their own as dangerous infringements on his “freedom,” and as symptoms of the oppressive, deadening atmosphere that apparently now obtains on the Amherst campus following the decision to close fraternities. Hubbard’s thoroughly dumb letter wouldn’t even deserve comment if it weren’t such an irritating example of a sort of attitude regarding noise and music and freedom that seems pretty widespread at this college. People seem to think that it’s their right not only to listen to whatever music they wish (which they could do at low volumes), not only to listen to it as loudly as they wish (which they could do on headphones), but to subject others to their particular choice of music and volume, too. (This sometimes gets as extreme as sticking their silly speakers in their windows.) Corresponding to their fascinating theory of loudnessas-inalienable-right is the idea that people who don’t want to be subjected to their choices are spoilsports or tools who want to deny loud-music lovers their “freedom.” This idea is thoughtless in more than one sense of the word. It’s a fundamentally selfish (and so warped) idea of freedom. The way freedom is commonly and sensibly defined and understood, one is free to do exactly those things that do not infringe on other people’s freedom to do the things they value—like sleep, or read, or do homework, or talk to their friends, or listen to stuff they like...silly things like that. Hubbard’s blasting of AC/DC obviously denies people who can’t escape earshot the freedom not to have to listen to loud music (in the particular case of AC/ DC, I think this freedom is probably cherished by every rational being over the age of nine). Since his blasting does this, he’s clearly not “free” to do it. He can of course still be an inconsiderate schmuck and try, until somebody gets irritated enough to call Security or to pay him a little visit himself. For those of us he’s forced his tastes on and annoyed, all we can say, in the words of the immortal lyricist S.O. Teric, is “So sad you’re off to Stanford at the end of the year/In the meantime take your speakers, and stick them in your ear.” Dave Wallace ‘85

CHARLES BUKOWSKI’S LETTER TO HANS VAN DEN BROEK, 1985

Dear Hans van den Broek: I am not saying that my book is one of those, but I am saying Thank you for your letter telling me of the removal of one of

that in our time, at this moment when any moment may be the

my books from the Nijmegen library. And that it is accused of

last for many of us, it’s damned galling and impossibly sad that

discrimination against black people, homosexuals and women.

we still have among us the small, bitter people, the witch-hunt-

And that it is sadism because of the sadism.

ers and the declaimers against reality. Yet, these too belong with us, they are part of the whole, and if I haven’t written about

The thing that I fear discriminating against is humor and truth.

them, I should, maybe have here, and that’s enough.

If I write badly about blacks, homosexuals and women it is

may we all get better together,

because of these who I met were that. There are many “bads”-

yrs,

-bad dogs, bad censorship; there are even “bad” white males. Only when you write about “bad” white males they don’t complain about it. And need I say that there are “good” blacks, “good” homosexuals and “good” women? In my work, as a writer, I only photograph, in words, what I see. If I write of “sadism” it is because it exists, I didn’t invent it, and if some terrible act occurs in my work it is because such things happen in our lives. I am not on the side of evil, if such a thing as evil abounds. In my writing I do not always agree with what occurs, nor do I linger in the mud for the sheer sake of it. Also, it is curious that the people who rail against my work seem to overlook the sections of it which entail joy and love and hope, and there are such sections. My days, my years, my life has seen up and downs, lights and darknesses. If I wrote only and continually of the “light” and never mentioned the other, then as an artist I would be a liar. Censorship is the tool of those who have the need to hide actualities from themselves and from others. Their fear is only their inability to face what is real, and I can’t vent any anger against them. I only feel this appalling sadness. Somewhere, in their upbringing, they were shielded against the total facts of our existence. They were only taught to look one way when many ways exist. I am not dismayed that one of my books has been hunted down and dislodged from the shelves of a local library. In a sense, I am honored that I have written something that has awakened these from their non-ponderous depths. But I am hurt, yes, when somebody else’s book is censored, for that book, usually is a great book and there are few of those, and throughout the ages that type of book has often generated into a classic, and what was once thought shocking and immoral is now required reading at many of our universities.

Charles Bukowski

GEORGE MACIUNAS’S LETTER TO VYTAUTAS LANDSBERGIS, 1963

February 1963

write in Lithuanian at all, I am writing in English, and I have no contacts at all with the Lithuanian immigrant community, I have

Greetings, Vytas!

no interest in their decadent chauvinism and reactionary bourgeois thinking. Šalčius is one rare exception even if he’s still too

I was very happy to receive your letter. I am interested in locat-

immersed in narrow Lithuanian, and not anational, supranational

ing my old friends. Besides, I am interested in making contacts

questions.

with cultural and political activists in Lithuania and the Soviet Union. My interests in seeking such contacts are motivated by a

I would very much like to visit the Soviet Union and Lithuania

Fluxus desire to clarify the communist principles re. the new art.

(maybe in Summer 1964). Especially I would like very much to

This new art is:

organize in Lithuania—and other places—a series of concerts (new music and „theater” or „eye-kineticmusic“). Such concerts I

1. Concrete and realistic, because it doesn’t lean towards artiﬁ-

could present with local talent. You could help me, perhaps, with

ciality or illusionism or intellectualism or abstractism—neither in

the preparations and presentations of such concerts? Do you

content, nor form, nor style.

have connections with ofﬁces that could provide me with an auditorium, and help prepare the posters, etc. I would come on my

2. Folk Art—because it’s not made for specialists, critics, artists

own expense, and I wouldn’t charge anything for the concerts.

and other intellectuals. Such art can be created, understood and

It’s possible that I would come with two composers—one from

performed by all—by the educated and non-educated. It’s made

Japan, another from USA. We (that is, Fluxus activists) we have

for all.

already organised ﬁve festivals. We gave 14 concerts in Wiesbaden, in London one, in Copenhagen seven, in Paris eight, and

3. Socialist—because such art would eliminate forever the pro-

last week in Dusseldorf two concerts at the Art Academy. This

fession of the artist and would prescribe to former artists more

spring we are making plans to travel to Poland; in the fall—to

socially useful jobs.

Florence, Milan and New York; in Winter perhaps to Japan. So that it would be the best for us to come to the Soviet Union via

In order not to repeat, I am enclosing with this letter a short arti-

Siberia (we could give concerts there too).

cle which attempts to explain the principles of that new art. (I will send you other articles separately, right now I am in a hospital

Write to me about the possibilities of giving such concerts in

and do not have the articles with me.) Also I am enclosing our

Lithuania. Fluxus No.1 contains many examples of Fluxus mu-

Manifesto. Separately I am sending a new copies of FLUXUS

sic, art and magnetic tapes, so it will give you a good idea about

NO.1 (so far there was only one number published). I am also

the programmes of such concerts. I would like to know some-

sending some magnetic tapes with music (from our concerts),

thing about the state of new music in Lithuania today. Could you

programmes of our concerts, photographs, posters, etc.—in

send me something?

short, a package with miscellaneous paper scraps. Best regards, I am not sending you the book on dodecaphonism. I am not

Jurgis Mačiūnas

sending it and I am not advising it to you, because dodecaphonism is decadent and outdated, behind the times. Like

I have a big favour to ask you. Could you ﬁnd out where I could

abstract art, it has no social meaning, it’s understood only by

get—buy or borrow—photo copies of LEF magazine which was

musicans and mathematicans, and, besides, it’s understandable

edited by Mayakovski? We would like to publish a facsimile in

only after the scores have been fully studied. But I will send you

our Eastern European issue of FLUXUS. Maybe you have some

several John Cage compositions (scores and tapes) which, in

friends in Moscow or Leningrad who could help with it? Try.

my opinion, are more meaningful to our times and to the evolution of the new art.

Another request. I have a friend who wants very badly to study in the Soviet Union. Could you ﬁnd out procedures how to go

Forgive me the mistakes of my Lithuanian. Even in Lithuania, in

about it? He is a participant of FLUXUS and one of the editors—

school I always got the worst marks for the Lithuanian grammar,

Henry Flynt—politically trustworthy.

I didn’t use any accents, etc. And now, I have no occasions to

EDGARD VARESE’S LETTER TO LEON THEREMIN, 1941

May 5, 1941 Dear Professor Theremin, On my return from the West in October I tried to get in touch with you. I wanted very much to see you again and to learn of the progress of your work. I was sorry - on my account - that you had left New York. I hope that you have been able to go on with your experiments in sound and that new discoveries have rewarded your efforts. I have just begun a work in which an important part is given to a large chorus and with it I want to use several of your instruments - augmenting their range as in those I used for my Equatorial especially in the high range. Would you be so kind as to let me know if it is possible to procure these and where ... and in case of modiﬁcations in what they consist. Also if you have conceived or constructed new ones would you let me have a detailed description of their character and use. I don’t want to write any more for the old Man-power instruments and am handicapped by the lack of adequate electrical instruments for which I now conceive my music. Mr. Fediushine has kindly offered to forward this letter to you. Please let me hear from you as soon as possible. With cordial greetings and best wishes in which my wife joins me, Sincerely, Edgard Varese P.S. If any of your assistants or collaborators are continuing your work in New York would you kindly put me in touch with them.

EXCERPTS FROM A LETTER BY HENRI MATISSE TO MR. HENRY CLIFFORD, 1948

Venice, February 14, 1948

also thinks that he paints from his heart. Only the latter is right, because his training and discipline allow him to accept impulses

Dear Mr. Clifford: I have always tried to hide my own efforts

that he can, at least partially, conceal. I do not claim to teach;

and wished my works to have the lightness and joyousness of

I only want my exhibition not to suggest false interpretations to

a springtime which never lets anyone suspect the labors that it

those who have their own way to make. I should like people to

has cost. So I am afraid that the young, seeing in my work only

know that they cannot approach color as if coming into a barn

the apparent facility and negligence in the drawing, will use this

door (“entrer au moulin”); that one must go through a severe

as an excuse for dispensing with certain efforts which I believe

preparation to be worthy of it. But ﬁrst of all, it is clear that

necessary. The few exhibitions that I have had the opportunity

one must have a gift for color as a singer must have a voice.

of seeing during these last years make me fear that the young

Without this gift one can get nowhere, and not everyone can

painters are avoiding the slow and painful preparation which is

declare like Correggio, “Anch in son pittore”. A colorist makes

necessary for the education of any contemporary painter who

his presence known even in a simple charcoal drawing. Yours

claims to construct by color alone. This slow and painful work

gratefully,

is indispensable. Indeed, if gardens were not dug over at the

Henri Matisse

proper time, they would soon be good for nothing. Do we not first have to clear, and then cultivate, the ground at each season of the year? When an artist has not known how to prepare his flowering period, by work which bears little resemblance to the final result, he has a short future before him; or when an artist who has “arrived” no longer feels the necessity of getting back to earth from time to time, he begins to go round in circles repeating himself, until by the very repetition, his curiosity is extinguished. The future painter must feel what is useful for his development-- drawing or even sculpture-- everything that will let him become one with Nature, identify himself with her, by entering into the things--which is what I call Nature--that arouse his feelings. I believe study by means of drawing is most essential. If drawing is of the Spirit and color of the Senses, you must draw first, to cultivate the spirit and to be able to lead color into spiritual paths. That is what I want to cry aloud, when I see the work of the young men for whom painting is no longer an adventure, and whose only goal is the impending first one-man show which will first start them on the road to fame. It is only after years of preparation that the young artist should touch color-- not color as description, that is, but as a means of intimate expression. Then he can hope that all the images, even all the symbols, which he uses, will be the reflection of his love for things, as a reflection in which he can have confidence if he has been able to carry out his education, with purity, and without lying to himself. Then he will employ color with discernment. He will place it in accordance with a natural design, unformulated and completely concealed, that will spring directly from his feelings; this is what allowed Toulouse-Lautrec, at the end of his life, to exclaim, “At last, I do not know how to draw anymore.” The painter who is just beginning thinks that he paints from his heart. The artist who has completed his development

JON O’BRIEN’S LETTER IN DEFENCE OF DAVID WOJNAROWICZ, 2010

Dear Secretary Clough,

speaks for very few, but does so very loudly. However, as is often the case, the noise level should not be considered indicative

We at Catholics for Choice are very disappointed in your deci-

of the strength of its support nor the correctness of its claims.

sion to remove David Wojnarowicz’s “A Fire in My Belly” from

We too are Catholics, but we do not support the use of our reli-

the “Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture”

gion in this crusade. As Catholics, we absolutely do not support

exhibition. Your decision amounted to censorship, plain and

your decision and join the majority of Americans -- Catholic and

simple.

non-Catholic alike -- who do not support censorship of the arts.

The National Portrait Gallery plays a vital role in safeguarding

We can only judge what we can see. We accept the possibility

and expanding the nation’s cultural heritage. In doing so, people

that we may be offended by what we see. In the spirit of pro-

have rightly come to expect great things from the gallery. The

moting artistic freedom, we are happy to accept that possibility.

magniﬁcent spaces that were developed during the recent reno-

Censorship of the arts is the last thing that an art institution

vations have ﬁttingly drawn accolades and visitors from around

should be doing. You have set a low standard for yourselves,

the world. As a result, the gallery’s exhibitions nurture the na-

and for your public. The National Portrait Gallery plays an im-

tion’s cultural life, promoting the arts as well as the public’s ap-

portant role in the cultural life of the city and the nation. Your

preciation of the arts.

decision sends the worst possible message to artists, to other

Unfortunately, your decision to censor David Wojnarowicz’s art

cultural institutions and to the American people.

has sullied the reputation of the National Portrait Gallery and

Yours sincerely,

does a disservice both to the arts community and the public. For artists, it suggests that in order to be considered by your

Jon O’Brien

gallery, their art may have to be uncontroversial. For the public,

President, Catholics for Choice

it suggests that what they see at the gallery may not be the full story, that exhibitions may be tailored so that they do not offend anybody. Neither scenario is positive. Dealing with complaints and criticism is part and parcel of being a public ﬁgure and a public institution. However, that does not mean that you should seek to avoid controversy. Nor, on the other hand, are you required to seek it out without good reason. However, we should acknowledge the role that controversy can play in advancing the arts. Discussions about what is and is not controversial can help us judge what is and is not good art. In considering how to respond to the controversy, you had a decision to make. Who should be the arbiters of what is available -- those who scream the loudest about what they don’t like, or those whose job it is to decide whether a speciﬁc piece of art is included in an exhibition? In choosing to pay heed to the loudest voices, you did a disservice to the public. It is especially disturbing that you bowed to pressure from an organization that has made a business out of manufacturing controversy. Bill Donohue of the Catholic League is a zealot who seeks to curtail freedom of expression at every turn. His attacks on “A Fire in My Belly” follow his tried and tested modus operandi, as can be seen in a report we produced on his group, The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights: Neither Religious nor Civil, and would have been obvious to anybody who had done even a cursory search on the group. The Catholic League does not speak for all Catholics -- in fact it

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