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Last Issue: #31 The Journey
Twenty thousand leagues under the sea by Jules Verne (1825-1905). This book is the answer to my thoughts on travel. It certainly anticipated the saga...Read more
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Loading ...I pass through a corridor and a greenish light hits me, sharp and unbearable. Halfway along I notice a little table and a chair resting on the ceiling. My perceptive certainties, already challenged, fall away and lead me to wonder whether my legs are attached to the ground.
This is one of the many works in which Bruce Nauman invites us to ask ourselves who we are, starting with the simplest questions, in other words where we are, how we behave, what our body is asking of us. They are not today’s works but they announce others – like those giant rotating mushrooms, also extraordinarily the wrong way up, created by Carsten Hoeller – which play on doubt, and on the other hand, on the quest for awareness.
Under those red mushrooms dotted with white, we wondered, like Alice, whether we had grown smaller or whether the world itself had changed dimension.
We are hit by a similar state of uncertainty looking at Mona Hatoum’s map: an enormous quantity of marbles placed on the ground, arranged according to the pattern formed by the land above sea level.
We immediately recognise the outline of the countries but do not see the political borders, the fissures of the mountains, the rivers; we cannot locate the cities and gingerly try to imagine where we are.
The blossoming of so many works on uncertainty tells us of the need for security that assails us, not only on an emotional level, but also makes us want to explain our everyday lives. We need to clearly understand at least what we can know, as far as possible, we need to come out of that darkness in which we are thrown by a period so full of new developments that it dazzles us.
Being aware of what we eat. Of what we learn. Of what we read. Of how artificial intelligence interferes with our own, and how the computer’s way of thinking becomes ours, to some extent. This other side of the coin, this way of treating uncertainty like an enemy to be defeated, has been taken to heart by many artists: “I shop therefore I am” read a famous slogan by Barbara Kruger, in a red, black and white graphic design with an imperative air.
I shop therefore I am. But is it really true that we cannot do anything about the idea of ourselves that tends to give us the flow of merchandise?
Perhaps not. The first of the opponents of this pessimism is Michelangelo Pistoletto. For years, he has been offering his physical presence as a possible accompaniment to his works and as a committed show of his own sense of social responsibility. This presence, in the “offices” that accompanied his works in large exhibitions like the Documenta in Kassel or the Venice Bienniale, has evolved, gaining enough power to create schools, projects, works and ideas, mainly focused in one place, Cittadellarte in Biella, where groups of young people are encouraged and “bred” to make them aware of the new ideas of the moment. Overall, Pistoletto’s work represents the ultimate realisation of those who think art is all the more important the more it helps the observer with his or her own level of awareness. To understand where we are, where we want to go, where we will end up if we do not exercise any control, if we flounder in uncertainty without knowing what we do or don’t want.
andrea illy angela vettese architecture Art artist berlin Biennale business coffee Colour communication community company creativity culture Design europe experience food future history idea ideas innovation internet Italy knowledge life london michelangelo pistoletto milan mind new york Passion past people school social Society Students time tradition university venice world
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"Where I am, makes me what I am"
“The time is always right to do the right thing”
"Liberty is about our rights to question everything".
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