Author: the Room
From chaos to CAOS
WARNING • UNAUTHORIZED AND AMATEUR translation using deepl.
Will cancel it “on demand” and substitute as I find better translations. The pdf is also full of my personal chaotic inconsistent reactions and reminders while re-reading it.
I thought it was worth translating, also a way for me to ready slowly (as some readings need)
There is rhetorical metaphoric style I feel ( what is the political mind? and why the need to discover another horizon), reading it at first I thought it was a bit too sensational. Still…I read it with interest.
FRANCO RIFO BERARDI
ENGLISH DEEPL TRANSLATION
RASSEGNATEVI
The Long Covid of the Social Mind
In the last pages of his book The Plague, Camus recounts the festive return to life of the city of Oran after the epidemic had died out. Today, in the autumn of 2021, there are no signs of an imminent celebration on the horizon. On the contrary, it seems that the signs of psychosocial unease are deepening, and if anyone dares to organise a rave party in the absence of meeting places, they risk being attacked as an unholy person.
At the beginning of the scourge, advertising cretinism said: we will come out better. The opposite is clearly true: generalised nervousness, rampant racism, predatory violence by large corporations, galloping inequality. The proprietary greed of Big Pharma has prevented the local production of vaccines and the result is Omicron. Old white men have injected themselves with the third doses that should have gone to others, but the virus is smarter and is preparing to kill a few million more, maybe even me.
But what interests me is not the persistence of the virus, but a kind of Long Covid of the social mind.
Long Covid is defined as the prolonged persistence of symptoms of various kinds after infection and recovery. A friend who suffered from it told me that her main symptom was constant exhaustion, loss of energy and even mental confusion. Indeed, exhaustion and mental confusion seem to dominate the contemporary scene. The chaos (economic, geopolitical and psychic) that the virus has produced seems to be continuing, indeed intensifying, beyond the positive effects of mass vaccination. The street protests, the resistance to vaccines, the rebellion against the Green Pass, whatever their motives, are fuelling a feeling of panic.
The virus has acted as a catalyst for opposing phantoms: paranoid phantoms of conspiracy and hypochondriac phantoms of fear that invade and paralyse subjectivity.
Public discourse is invaded by paradoxical alternatives and double binds. The health injunction provokes a reaction that manifests itself first as denial, then as phobia (attribution of evil powers to the vaccine, conspiracy obsessions). The reaction of governments and the majority of public opinion against the no-vaccine heretics takes on an authoritarian, paternalistic or aggressive character: dismissal, police charges, public stigmatisation, censorship. This produces mass victimisation, and in the long run the paranoid prophecy (the vaccine is a plot to impose a totalitarian form) ends up being self-fulfilling.
If we think that resistance to the vaccine is unreasonable (I neither affirm nor deny this, I do not intend to deal with matters that are outside my competence) we must interpret it as the symptom of a disorder, and it is absurd to criminalise the bearer of the symptom, just as it is useless to lecture him on responsibility. The symptom-bearer must be treated, but it is the whole of society that is pervaded by psychotic forms.
Who cures whom?
While imposing total obedience to the orders of the health-industrial complex, governments use the state of emergency as the perfect condition for a furious imposition of privatisation and precarisation policies. So the emergency must never end, and the media must continue forever the campaign of panic that has been flooding the collective discourse for almost two years. Every day we are fed hours of repetitive television images that have the sole function of terrorizing: nurses in green coats, masks and protective suits, running ambulances, and ampoules, vials, syringes, injections, dozens of injections, hundreds of injections.
The effect of this offensive that mobilises the entire media system in a campaign of terror is visible: the social body shrunken in a crisis of interminable hypochondria, as if it were afraid to give up fear. This paralysis of the imagination and this shrunkenness are not an effect of the virus, but the consequence of the prolonged impotence of society which is unable to stop the impoverishment, the devastation of the physical and mental environment: impotent rage is a highly pathogenic condition.
But therapeutic techniques that can cure a psychic epidemic generated by impotence, anger and loneliness can only be paradoxical.
I believe that the West is politically finished: not because of the horrors for which its rule is responsible, but because of its incompetence, incompetence and cowardice.
Marasmus and panic: Kabul airport a global metaphor
One thing made a particular impression on me in the American debacle that occupied the attention in the weeks of August: the marasmus.
Biden had said some time before: you will not witness the Saigon scenes, with embassy staff fleeing from the roof. In fact, the scenes of the Kabul airport evacuation, the terrified crowds, the violence, the bombing that the whole world witnessed were much worse than Saigon 1975.
In 1975, the Americans had prepared the evacuation well in advance, only the embassy staff were trapped at the end when the Vietcong entered the city. This time nothing had been prepared, because the Americans thought they still had six more or less secure months. Instead, everything collapsed in a few days and tens of thousands of collaborators were left at the mercy of fate. They believed that Westerners were all-powerful. They did not know that Westerners are cowards, bunglers and traitors.
That is why I believe that the West is politically finished: not because of the horrors for which its rule is responsible, but because of its incompetence, lack of knowledge and cowardice. In fact, it is not incompetence, but something deeper and more disturbing: it is marasmus, mental chaos.
Marasmus is the word for the state of mental confusion into which a person falls, unable to govern the events of his life.
When I saw poor Biden’s speech after the attack that killed two hundred Afghans, thirteen American soldiers and three British citizens, I had the impression that he was babbling nonsense. Marasmus: isn’t that what is happening to the West in general?
Panic is the effect of exposure to an unprocessable complexity, a succession of alternatives that can no longer be decided: chaos.
The speed, complexity and proliferation of social, military and health processes (the proliferation of viruses and their mutations) render the collective mind incapable of processing and governing the world around it.
Panic is the psychic and behavioural manifestation of an organism overwhelmed by the flow of ungovernable events. The origin of panic lies in a gap between the capacity for conscious processing of stimuli and the intensity and speed of the info-nervous stimuli.
We are approaching a situation in which degradation of the environment, multiplication of conflicts, and acceleration of info-neural stimuli make it impossible to know comprehensively and thus to decide rationally. We are entering a situation where the more we know the less we know, because the more information we receive the more difficult it is to make a choice.
Is there a political cure for panic? I’m afraid not, because panic deactivates the political mind. Is there a psychoanalytic cure for collective panic? This is the only question that matters at present. Everything else is marasmus.
The Kabul airport is a metaphor for the global condition that reappeared on an enormously larger scale three months later in Glasgow, where the panic of those who realise that time is up was staged. The marasmus of the white race is overwhelming the planet and civilisation itself. Extinction is not the only prospect left to us, but it is the least terrifying.
While the virus is playing hide and seek, disappearing and reappearing in various ways, signs are emerging of an economic crisis that has little to do with those of the past century. Disruption of the production and supply cycle: lack of electronic components and the consequent blockage of the car and computer cycle, lack of petrol caused by a shortage of lorry drivers in Great Britain, ships crowding into ports with enormous delays in the disposal of goods traffic, countless points of disconnection breaking the supply chain almost everywhere. Energy shortages in early winter.
This picture does not resemble the overproduction crises of the last century, nor the financial crises (on the contrary, the stock markets are showing a triumphant upward trend). What is it then? It is an effect of the chaos that is spreading in the chain of productive automatisms, and in the daily life of populations bombarded by an insistent campaign of panic. It is an overload chaos, which is first and foremost an effect of the pandemic, but also an effect of the nationalisms that are asserting themselves on the economic level, causing globalisation to crumble.
Chaos is king in the pandemic world: the technical automaton that controlled the flow of goods is going haywire, and the coordination of production functions is paralysed. On the other hand, we know that the more integrated and complex a system is, the more complex are the effects of discontinuity, and the more difficult it is to rebuild the automatisms.
In the coming winter, we will see how deep and far-reaching the consequences of the great supply chain disruption (reapeted in braketts in English in the original) are: simple localised disruptions, large-scale famines, entire regions without heating, large-scale collapse of civil life? We cannot know, because the complexity of the system being disrupted does not allow for realistic predictions.
Part of this great disruption (English in the original) is the energy shock brought about inter alia by timid decarbonisation measures. As winter approaches, people in some parts of the world have to choose between giving up heating or reopening coal mines that had been shut down to comply with the Paris climate accords. Of course coal mines are being reopened.
Technically there is no longer any way out of the cycle of devastation.
At the mercy of the winds
The catastrophic scenario that follows global warming has unexpectedly reopened the colonial question: the countries that have suffered European violence over the last two centuries (first and foremost China and India) have made it clear that for them industrial development remains the priority over temperature control.
The volume of pollution produced by Western countries over the last two centuries is far greater than that produced by the dominated countries. So let the West pay the price of damage reduction. But the West has no intention of paying it. So it is time to face up to it: the climate apocalypse that is now underway is destined to precipitate. Warming has already passed the point of no return, whole areas of the planet are becoming uninhabitable, migrations are inevitable and everywhere they provoke war and Nazism, because the white colonialists do not tolerate the colonised coming to soil their garden.
In Glasgow, the trumpeters of politics repeated the usual promises: in 2050 everything will be fine. At this rate, in 2050 there will be no one to check on it.
The 1.5 limit on temperature increase is no longer realistic. And India has announced that the zero-emission target is postponed until 2070.
Politics is unable to go beyond proclamations because politicians are on the polluters’ payroll, but more importantly because politics does not have the power to decide and act effectively against the irreversible, and because the political brain is clearly in a state of marasmus. The only thing that the political decision-makers can do, therefore, is to offload the burden of growing misery onto the weakest, and this they do with diligence and alacrity.
In Italy, the Draghi government (with the support of the Five Star and the PD) has avoided legislating a plastic tax for the fourth year running. Everyone knows that the unnecessary consumption of plastic is choking the planet’s waters, but the economy comes first, so plastic production cannot be touched: it is not a decision of politicians, it is an automatism from which society cannot get out.
Technically, there is no longer any way out of the cycle of devastation, as the planet’s inhabitants continue to grow in number (despite a providential drop in male fertility in the north), while the habitable spaces are shrinking at a rapid pace, and the great migrations that follow cause wars, nationalism and violence.
After Glasgow, the debate is over and we would do well to take note. Catastrophic phenomena will multiply, let us get used to them until they kill us. But among the multiplying catastrophic phenomena there is one that seems to me to contain the conditions of conceivability for an alternative strategy to those we have followed so far without success.
The signs of resignation are multiplying: 75% of those surveyed say they are afraid of the future, and 39% in a recent survey of an international sample said they do not want to have children.
A sort of resignation to extinction is emerging, almost a strategy of self-extinction that paradoxically could prove to be the only way out of extinction: providential mass repulsion from procreation, work, consumption and participation. Humans are deciding to abandon the game, or rather the games.
Is this a problem? In my opinion it is the solution.
The electorate in many countries no longer participates in elections. We are finally resigning ourselves to the impotence of representative democracy.
Resigning ourselves to the end of growth is, on the other hand, the only way to reduce energy consumption: detoxifying ourselves from the anxiety of consumption, educating ourselves to frugality. It is the only way to escape the stress and blackmail that forces us to accept slave labour.
Finally, resignation is the only way to reduce the demographic pressure that produces overcrowding, violence and war.
A strategy of resignation consists of four principles:
One: do not participate in the democratic fiction that leads one to believe that, by electing someone else, the irreversible can become reversible.
Two: do not work. Work is increasingly underpaid, less and less guaranteed, more and more exploited, more and more useless for the production of what is necessary. Let us devote our energies to care, to the transmission of knowledge, to research, to food self-sufficiency. Let us break every relationship with the economy.
Three: no longer consume anything that is not produced by the self-production communities, boycott the circulation of goods.
Four: Do not procreate. Procreation is a selfish and irresponsible act when the chances of a happy life are reduced to almost zero. It is a dangerous act because the habitable areas of the planet are shrinking and the population is growing.
In this quadruple act of retraction there is a principle of autonomy: emancipation from the Squid Game. Resignation from work is not just resignation, on the contrary, it is an act of self-assertion of thinking individuals abandoning the corpse of capitalism.
CAOS is set to grow, only Autonomous Operating Communities for Survival can allow us to survive and perhaps even live in the time to come.
Paradoxical therapy
What appears as a collective Long Covid can therefore be interpreted as an effect of psychodeflation that has forced us, or rather allowed us, to reduce the pace until we realise that there is no longer any reason to speed up the pace, to accumulate capital, to expand consumption.
Psychodeflation can manifest itself as fatigue and depression until one realises that it is the only therapeutic response against panic, against violence, against fascism and against self-destruction.
For Christians, resignation to God’s will is a virtue. I do not think that resignation is a virtue, but a therapy and a redefinition of the field of worldly expectations: the discovery of another horizon. *
Resignation is not just a surrender, it is also a re-signification, because it gives new meaning to the signs of which social life is composed. A movement of abandonment (of work, of consumption, of dependence) would remove all energy from the accumulation machine. It is illusory to think that in the post-pandemic future a revolution, a democratic uprising of some kind, can take place. The collective organism is physically and psychically weakened, depression is rampant.
But weakness can be an invincible weapon for those who know how to use it strategically and transform it into mass consciousness. We reset social energy, we abandon work and consumption. Mass defeatism, desertion and sabotage. Let these be our weapons in the time to come.
There is no political way out of the apocalypse. The left has been the main political instrument of the ultracapitalist offensive for thirty years, anyone who invests his hopes in the left is an imbecile who deserves to be betrayed, since betraying is the only activity the left is capable of competently performing.
The movements have been liquefied by panic-depressive psychosis. Subjectivity is at the mercy of psychosis, socially fractured.
The only possibility left to us is a paradoxical strategy that transforms psychodeflation into a wave of slowing down, of blocking, of silencing, of switching off the machine.
For life to return. *
Levinas Emmanuel
Protected: Photography book: Il corpo (the body) del (of the) capitano*, with texts by Filippo Ceccarelli e Nicola Paturno. By Luca Santese e Marco Valli.
Il terzo Reich di Romeo Castellucci
English
Anything that makes me write …
Festival FOG Triennale Milano Performing Arts. 2021.
Il Terzo Reich, con la collaborazione di Scott Gibson per il suono e di Gloria Dorliguzzo per la coreografia.
1
Present tense. I walk out of the theatre.
Before the beginning of the show a voice warned everyone that there are also rules on the order in which people should evacuate the space. I should be in the first group to move, if I got it right. Alone, I take it easy.
I need to enjoy the silence, the end of it.
A thought during the show was: “Is he (the director, the company, the theatre, who?) trying to tell me that it is actually – essentially – going to be like this for ever? ’till my death and beyond?”
I am so glad I don’t have to say anything to anyone…and that nobody tells me anything about it. I hear next to me some voice with some immediate comments that I have now completely forgotten. Slowly, I follow the small well masked crowd.
The way out the theatre is through a kind of open air local with beautifully illuminated people talking and drinking or eating. They also gather in front of screens, two for football and one with a movie or documentary.
It finally becomes more quiet, with lots of fresh air. Luckily we are in a park: I observe my walk, while walking to the car.
I perceive my walk.
Someone is looking at me for more than one second, or maybe more… I think that the fact that he is looking is normal, I am just there, in his cone of vision as he is in mine. Casually. It does not change my mood.
Yes, I was feeling in a kind of nice unprogrammed way… It is hard to explain… I see it now though. It all came along with the air, June, the night, the chair I left … For a brief while, I remember, I felt I was walking in a more defined, connected way: fluid and with a velocity and a weight, not at all fast nor slow, not at all heavy or light, just kind of precisely chosen, measured and felt at the same time, gauged by instinct, aligned to something, to the length of my bones and my thoughts, to the descending floor and the surroundings.
Once in the car, on the way home, I surprise my friend with a phone call. Normally at this time I’m asleep or I don’t make calls … I know she is awake. We talk and laugh. We get straight into the good mood together lately. It’s so good! She is literally 20 meters away from me for a few seconds, but I don’t stop by her house. We are both completely wrecked … We know we could cry with each other, but we laugh!
Words that make you laugh! Or smile. I love those… It is so good to build a language…and you actually build one with each one of your interlocutors …in a way.
2
The show, as announced, is a sequence of many many many minutes of acoustic noise, not so dis-armonic in the end (it is actually a masterpiece in itself, see info below), mate with semiotic noise? how do we want to call it?: a sequence of single words in capital letters, white on black, just written there, on the screen, in the space where we expect to see dancers, actors and scenes.
… From the word (WHAT or) THING, ( in Italian COSA means both what and thing) to the word HORIZON and in between: 12.000 words, says the web. Surely, I would be curious to know how the choice was made…
In my interpretation for now, the point is that the sequence has absolutely no order, no meaning, no literal intentions … ( if such an absolute exists!).
I may soon find out that I’m wrong, however… I know from experience, from a game we used to play with my father, that it is improbable to not make any kind of meaning, or schema, perhaps funny, in a sequence of words (try it!):
The sequence of words in The Third Reich does, indeed, make no sense at all. I am curious! I guess it was a job to contain this intention. Maybe, as in some psychological test, it’s the words you focus on that matter to each person… and that’s the message. Everyone finds their own. But this is just an assumption I’m making, a bit of a word game that it is not quite in theme here. I mean … I’m not sure at all…There is sure more than this. Or not even this, perhaps.
3
I am probably just curious myself: I have noted – in the dark – these few words: the three at the beginning: THING (but I had read WHAT –BONE – SMOKE and the last ones (I missed the one before the last): CONCESSION, ABYSS, another word and at then HORIZON, as final.
From which, in my absolutely wrong arbitrary and casual game, while still sitting in the chair at end of the show, I created this question: What … horizon? Answer: No horizon?
I also started noting: WHORE REVOLUTION ECONOMY MARRIAGE ANARCHY WRESTLING …then I stopped. I only did write, much later, CATALYSIS, because I like this word. (The imaginific behind my use of it). I had no idea I was going through all the nouns of Italian vocabulary … (Is there an “all words” complete list? I don’t believe it is possible or, at least, it is just debatable … who cares anyway).
Just a list of nouns, not verbs: right now I am in the middle of realms: grammar, translation, communication, art. Philosophy…language, theatre…society? Is this show just … Noise Noise Noise (instead of Noise Information Noise, which is a kind of adagio reminder for what communication is for Michel Serres).
Of course not. It is a piece of radical modern theatre with a tremendous score and, on the visual field, a beautiful dance short solo piece that precedes a long tempest of void words and thunders given at different unpredictable velocity and force, or violence. Almost unbearable. A year 2020 production.
4
If someone just told me about the show, let’s say in a few minutes, with a very good description of it, would I not understand the message anyway? (That we are deeply unawarely oppressed more than ever, since language rules but means nothing anymore, since meaning is dominated by rules and designs, all-round projects that we are less and less able to perceive, for example). How differently would I get this?
The day I went to the show I had done some readings and copy and paste from the web on a new document, where I’m writing now and on a page of my notebook. Here I copy two handwritten quotes, short and relevant:
Kempler Victor : The perversion of language leads to the perversion of thought and the decay of society. I have crossed society and wrote instead: the individual. I have learned to stop / question mark in front of the word society: I really do not know if this is something that exists…something we really know what we are talking about. Individuals or collectivities, are more valid terms somehow, for me.
Romeo Castellucci : “The theater is a battlefield, you need violence to imagine the world to come”.
The word violence is already violent to me. I know I have to deal with it, I know I am inevitably violent … abhorring violence is violent … there is no way out, we are constantly exposed to violence of different kinds. To kindness, too. If only we could focus a little more on kindness…right? Too simple, I know! …but still, I mean it and, if I write it down …I’ll write it down.
Before the show, along with the web press, thanks to which I started my little search, I also read a dissertation sheet on the working methodology of Romeo Castellucci…very interesting: it was written 15 years ago. The author quotes from “Romeo Castellucci, Program notes for Genesi: from the museum of sleep, and then comments:
“The noise of the room where you are sitting is already the beginning of everything”, “we are made self aware through a representation of ourselves”, writes the scholar.
What I find helpful in reading in this dissertation, both before and after viewing the piece, is this explanation of the creative process, even if it refers to 15 years ago: “As the image, the moment, or the scene is being worked, one of the consistent ways in which Romeo [and Chiara] search for meaning and rhythm is by off-setting the current idea with something which will trivialize it [if the idea is profound], or make it feel sacred [if the idea is profane]. In other words, they will seek to ‘level-out’ the associations, the domains, the categorizations and generally the culture of singular and specific ideas by applying them to their antithesis, for an object’s sacredness is put into question when it’s opposite’s profaneness is made to be seen as sacred. This process is always a type of perversion of the image, the object or the idea for applying a profound context to a trivial object can also be a perversion. Most importantly though, the world which is created through this perversion is a new territory where everything is flattened out, there is no more hierarchy between the sacred and the profane; the human and the animal; the present and the absent. It is precisely this ‘flattening out’ effect that guides Romeo’s process on both literal and subliminal levels”. I love it.
5.
What will I retain from having gone to the theatre?
What in the form of an attitude?
Beauty wise: I will retain some images and feelings from the short piece of solo dance. I would have that dance repeated 2.000 times, maybe from different angles and distances, and with that score again, instead of any flashing word; now I know!
And … to extract some optimism in the “necessarily pessimistic” anthropological vision of the artist: I will retain, hopefully, the impulse to walk – talk in a more defined, connected, gauged and yet spontaneous way than ever, ’till my death.
I am definitely not interested in the violence of the void.
Romeo Castellucci comments: “As a citizen I strive to be positive and to think that art, thought, literature, certain spirituality can liberate the day of each of us. Redemption can come from the search for happiness in a personal dimension”. I agree! What is “happiness”? How is happiness? Do I know? What is “personal dimension”?
Choosing. Is this an answer? Choose weight and rhythm. Choose how.
Your words, choose them whenever you can. Choose them in a more defined connected way, fluid and with a velocity and a weight, not at all fast nor slow, not at all heavy or light, just kind of chosen, measured and felt at the same time, gauged by instinct, aligned to something.Touch them touch the silence. Choose your words to say and to read or listen. Be in love. Choose and feel their weight and sound, choose the way you let them go, out in the world… Just start, resolutely and in kindness!
Will you?
Qualcosa è cambiato, non in
quello che fai, ma nel modo in cui lo lasci andare nel
mondo. Giorgio Agamben. Quando la casa brucia. 2020.
Lorenza Orlando. June 11/14th, 2021. Milan
Scott Gibbons has been composing music for more than 30 years, with a two-fold exploration into the possibilities of natural acoustic sound on the one hand, and those of audio technology on the other. Although he is a seminal and influential composer of Dark Ambient and micromusic, his work is not so easily pigeonholed. His compositions demonstrate an acute balance between delicacy and physicality, often focusing around frequencies that are at the outermost limits of human hearing, and embracing quietness as a central element. A series of early releases on the Sub Rosa label – based only on singular natural sound sources such as stones and air – has received praise from all over the world and provided inspiration for many “single-source” artists in their wake. He has created many unique electronic instruments for use on stage and has earned a strong reputation for his live performances. In fact his first live album – 1999’s Field Notes – was one of All-Music Guide’s “Best Albums of the Year” across all music genres. Gibbons has also created many works for large-scale spectacle with Groupe F to accompany fireworks which utilize the sound of pyrotechnics as an intregal part of the musical arrangement.
While reading OPERA APERTA by Alex Majoli / Cesura Publish 2021
Anything that moves me. June 2021
English / Italian
#2
I am comfortably reading OPERA APERTA in Alex’s studio. A few assistant photographers walk around me and are busy. Outside, in the court, more photographers are reunited around a 12 meters long composition of tables to talk things through and take decisions.
I have made myself feeling I have all the time of the world and in fact I feel happy to be here and to get to opening the book… I completely isolate myself with my selected music on my ears.
The book is indexed in acts, like operas.
The written piece in Act 2 is in English: it is an argumentative and historical philosophical text on Artaud and contagion : “Artaud, Germ Theory, and the Theatre of Contagion” dowloaded from the web.
I smile because I have been reading Artaud again and even printed, right last week, very small, just for myself: a sentence by Artaud in its original French version and its translation in English, some drawings by him that I had never seen, and especially a portrait of him by Man Ray, all on baryta paper as they deserve! And contagion is a word I also have used in my mind in a wider meaning outside the strictly medical one; the text in Act 2 synthesize it perfectly: contagion as a metaphor for disruption and creativity.
Who is Artaud? Here a picture of him, in a series of quotes from the web and a few selected extracts of different wikipedia introductions on him:
Antonin Artaud, died in 1948 at the age of 51, is a landmark in both the practical and theoretical fields of theater aesthetics worldwide: many famous leading figures of a revolutionary theatre point to the the landmark Artaud. In philosophy, in those fields of investigations around the boundaries between philosophy and the arts, he was made famous by the homage paid to him by Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Susan Sontag and he is undergoing a process of canonization. (Artaud’s Holy Theater:
A Case for Questioning the Relation between Ritual and Stage Performance Dietrich Harth)
All his life, he fought against physical pain, diagnosed as hereditary syphilis, with medication and drugs. …. He also underwent a series of electroshock treatments during successive internments, and he spent the last years of his life in psychiatric hospitals, notably that of Rodez. In his immense work, he makes art delirious (as Gilles Deleuze, great reader of Artaud, will make delirious the theory around the body without organ). (French Wikipedia). He believed that the text had ended up exercising a tyranny on the show, and pushed instead for an integral theater, which would include and put on the same level all forms of language, merging gesture, movement, light and word. (Italian Wikipedia) He conceptualized the Theatre of Cruelty movement with essays and plays, and wrote experimental texts with themes of introspection, mysticism, drug use, unorthodox politics and his experiences with schizophrenia. (English Wikipedia)
“It has not been proven, far from it, that the language of words is the best possible. Antonin Artaud”. Quotes the Spanish wikipedia.
I am happy to read this text…although difficult and full of data especially those on the history of germ theory that I know I will not retain, if not as a general idea… I go fully for it anyway.
When I get to this sentence: “repudiation as a form of productive relationship”. I stop. Copy it on my notes. It hurts me, to tears! “Fuck! I am crying”! The sweetest assistant on earth puts some napkins next to me without me even realizing; I find them after a while…
Repudiation indeed is an interesting word. Cruel at first to me and I think to many, because it obviously leads to the image, in my mind, of women abandoned and humiliated through this abandon … but this is only one meaning.
Repudiating is to refuse to accept. Which is interesting. I know I go nowhere, and still I question myself: What a relationship has to do with production? What is a relationship if not a love relationship?
Outside power, I am trying to sinthetyze my answer: relationship is the growing together, the helping , the sharing…the building the surviving together…definitely a making and a doing; all forms of love, I guess. Outside power.
I grok about 60% of the text at first, then a bit more…The fact that it is such an un-accessible text annoys me a bit…and again this is revealing … how much knowledge and which knowledge do we need, to be fine in our world?
What this text is saying is: we should find new ways of theorizing individual and collective bodies.
Theorizing … Let’s see … I think I know this: we have just suppositions of what an individual is and what a collective is. (Even if we do not question ourselves). For groups, we give various names: mainly we like to call it family… we are pretty busy trying to define existing, ever existed, for ever existing groups …I think too busy to historicize them and institutionalize them: we seem to need to own an identity, the feeling of a provable belonging, an affiliation, a membership, to name a few associations. A church, a nation … we fools! We are not ideas of power. (And we are always alone) . We probably should be more busy in inventing relationships, let them be and most of all, we should be busy in finding ways of feeling free in them …Simply: talk to your neighbor! kind of …
Freedom is active work. (And one of Alex’s favorites about freedom is from an Italian songwriter: freedom is participation. Giorgio Gaber). The collective is a great (revolutionary) strength. That’s facts.
#3
Back to photography.
I am only half way through the book, but I decide to look at the photocopies that lye at the bottom of the box containg the various parts of which the book’s body is conceived. They really surprise me: the paper and ink are fixed on a fragile surface, the blacks create little abstractions and distractions. The black is gray. The paper is only similar to that of an ordinary document arrived in the mail. They seem the cheepest pages of the book, grabbed together infact with a simple big pin: what I am sure is that there is a precise choice.
In these last fragile pictures the constant I see is a gesture: a blink of “love transmission” between the person at center of the scene and the humans “contained” in those funny unreal and yet so now common hospital white protective suit. The very last picture reminded me of a woman I know, she is, to me, a mother feeling she should be by her child.
I am not trying to understand why the book is made this way, how each choice was made in such a variety of materials, and with an overall design complexity (I will get that later probably): for now I just go through the book and observe how it effects my perception, my experience of the book itself and mostly, my perception and experience of the story that it tells.
It is the “story” of an Italian photojournalist working for Vanity during the 2020 lock down in Italy: an authorial enough photographer to always have carte blanche for important assigments.
#4.
The story starts – it is on the catoon box cover – with an image that represents the death of Carlo Giuliani.
Who is Carlo Giuliani? During the anti-globalization demonstration outside the July 2001 G8 summit in Genoa, Italy: young protester Carlo Giuliani was shot dead by riot police as he and other demonstrators attacked their van, making his the first death during an anti-globalization demonstration since the movement‘s rise from the 1999 Seattle WTO protests.
Not only killed one, police tortured physically and psychologically many…
That day has been the most shocking day of my life till then, (I guess sept 11 shortly after was even worse )… the beginning of a new era of exceptional rules…all against freedom and with no care for the earth, in short…right?
I will remember those events as a sudden bitter shift that hit me and will remain like a permanent scar. I could not “not see” anymore!
I was hosting Alex and three other international photojournalists. They were in the street all day and the night they were editing photos to send to the international press. I was making coffees and cleaning the one-room mansarda… The day of the death of Carlo Giuliani, I also cleaned each step from bottom door to the sixth floor. Trying to stop crying at each fucking step!
I say now that that day has been my first day of “lock down”, in fact, I was alone, locked inside at home for safety.
I was at the protest the day before, feeling peaceful messages of hope, feeling a global love, a joy, I was singing along and dancing Manu Chao…then brutality. Lies. Oppression in a big way. Like now.
This.
#1
Opening the box containg the book the first pleasure to me is the accuracy and beauty of the black and white;
The first picture? Is there for you to take it and move it and touch it with your hands! I love books that do that. It is the picture of a scarecrow.
“I see it, Alex, straight to point at start!” I will think later. Fear. And the question comes to mind: how fear works ?
#6603: Majoli’s under light black and white is no surprise, he affirms/confirms his technique: he knows exactly what he is doing with these digital images.
I am just awake, and my immediate thought is that I will never put those separate pages back into the sequence and to the sequence of folders in which it is conceived and put together, evidently by hand, one by one. Alex confirms that it is possible.
I know me a little…right now the pages are all mixed. But yes: there is big and central number ( 1 to …) on the retro. On the front, under the full frame images cm 30 x 40 there is a white line with the number of the scene;
For several years now Majoli has titled a selection of his images with the name Scene # …and a number. An objective reference. Yet, they are called scenes: something imagined, prefigured in some way.
#5.
Oper Aperta is a collective work; as in Off Broadway (a collective self-produced show, New York 2004) and more clearly now, there are not significant boundaries between photojournalism and art, fine art and photocopies, play and work or theatre and life, Alex would like to say. It is how you do things that matters, and how they work: we agree.
In my take, as in Off Broadway, Opera Aperta wants to awake you. Wants you to be contagious and committed in your need to express, touch, grasp! Up to you to find out how.
Immersed in a semi-darkness, like in a theater, you lose some of your self-consciousness going through the “body book” …and maybe you feel the contagion on you, yes, but intentionally it is the contagion of commitment, necessary commitment for freedom as wellbeing.
I follow one piece of advice: Just start, always start. Take a role.
Your way! Just “don’t get lost”…I hear Alex telling me … “in the name of love” I conclude, without thinking much anymore…
For Cesura and all sweethearts. Lorenza Orlando
Italian: 95% automatic translation from English to Italian
Leggendo OPERA APERTA di Alex Majoli / Cesura Publish 2021
2
Sto leggendo comodamente OPERA APERTA nello studio di Alex. Alcuni assistenti fotografi camminano intorno a me e si danno da fare. Fuori, nella corte, altri fotografi sono riuniti intorno a una composizione di tavoli lunga 12 metri per parlare e prendere decisioni.
Faccio in modo di sentire di avere tutto il tempo del mondo e, infatti, mi sento felice di essere qui e di … aprire il libro… Mi isolo completamente con la mia musica selezionata nelle orecchie.
Il libro è indicizzato in atti, come le opere a teatro.
Il pezzo scritto nel secondo atto è in inglese: è un testo filosofico argomentativo e storico su Artaud e il contagio: “Artaud, Germ Theory, and the Theatre of Contagion” scaricato dal web.
Sorrido perché ho riletto Artaud e ho anche stampato, proprio la settimana scorsa, in piccolo e solo per me: una frase di Artaud nella sua versione originale francese e la sua traduzione in inglese, alcuni suoi disegni che non avevo mai visto, e soprattutto un suo ritratto di Man Ray, tutto su carta baritata come meritano! E contagio è una parola che ho usato anche nella mia mente in un significato più ampio al di fuori di quello strettamente medico; il testo del secondo atto lo sintetizza perfettamente: contagio come metafora della perturbazione e della creatività.
Chi è Artaud? Qui una sua foto, in una serie di citazioni dal web e alcuni estratti selezionati di diverse introduzioni di wikipedia su di lui:
Antonin Artaud, morto nel 1948 all’età di 51 anni, è un punto di riferimento sia nel campo pratico che teorico dell’estetica teatrale mondiale: molti famosi protagonisti di un teatro rivoluzionario indicano come punto di riferimento Artaud. In filosofia, in quei campi di indagine intorno ai confini tra la filosofia e le arti, è stato reso famoso dall’omaggio che gli hanno reso Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Susan Sontag ed è in corso un processo di canonizzazione. (Il Teatro Sacro di Artaud:
A Case for Questioning the Relation between Ritual and Stage Performance Dietrich Harth)
Tutta la sua vita, ha combattuto contro il dolore fisico, diagnosticato come sifilide ereditaria, con farmaci e droghe. …. Ha anche subito una serie di trattamenti di elettroshock durante i successivi internamenti, e ha trascorso gli ultimi anni della sua vita in ospedali psichiatrici, in particolare quello di Rodez. Nella sua immensa opera, fa delirare l’arte (come Gilles Deleuze, grande lettore di Artaud, farà delirare la teoria intorno al corpo senza organi). (Wikipedia francese). Credeva che il testo avesse finito per esercitare una tirannia sullo spettacolo, e spingeva invece per un teatro integrale, che includesse e mettesse sullo stesso piano tutte le forme di linguaggio, fondendo gesto, movimento, luce e parola. (Wikipedia italiana) Ha concettualizzato il movimento Teatro della Crudeltà con saggi e opere teatrali, e ha scritto testi sperimentali con temi di introspezione, misticismo, uso di droghe, politica non ortodossa e le sue esperienze con la schizofrenia. (Wikipedia in inglese)
“Non è stato dimostrato, tutt’altro, che il linguaggio delle parole sia il migliore possibile. Antonin Artaud”. Cita la pagina spagnola di wikipedia.
Sono felice di leggere questo testo… anche se difficile e pieno di dati soprattutto quelli sulla storia della teoria dei germi che so che non conserverò, se non come idea generale… ci vado comunque a nozze.
Quando arrivo a questa frase: “il ripudio come forma di relazione produttiva“. Mi fermo. La copio sui miei appunti. Mi fa male, fino alle lacrime! “Merda! Sto piangendo”! L’assistente più dolce del mondo mi mette accanto un rotolo di carta igienica senza che io me ne accorga; lo trovo dopo un po’…
Ripudio è una parola interessante. Crudele all’inizio per me, e penso per molti, perché ovviamente porta all’immagine, nella mia mente, di donne abbandonate e umiliate attraverso questo abbandono… ma questo è solo un significato.
Ripudiare è rifiutare di accettare. Il che è interessante. So di non andare da nessuna parte, e ancora mi interrogo: Cosa c’entra una relazione con la produzione? Cos’è una relazione se non una relazione d’amore?
Al di fuori del potere (sto cercando di sintetizzare la mia risposta), la relazione è il crescere insieme, l’aiutare, il condividere… il costruire il sopravvivere insieme… sicuramente un fare e un fare; tutte forme d’amore, credo. Potere escluso.
Ho capito circa il 60% del testo all’inizio, poi un po’ di più… Il fatto che sia un testo così poco accessibile mi infastidisce un po’… e di nuovo questo è rivelatore… quanta conoscenza e quale conoscenza ci serve, per stare bene nel nostro mondo?
Quello che dice questo testo dice: dovremmo trovare nuovi modi di teorizzare i corpi individuali e collettivi.
Teorizzare… Vediamo… Credo di sapere questo: abbiamo solo supposizioni su cosa sia un individuo e cosa sia un collettivo. (Anche se non ci interroghiamo). Ai gruppi diamo vari nomi: principalmente ci piace chiamarla famiglia… siamo abbastanza occupati a cercare di definire gruppi esistenti, mai esistiti, per sempre esistenti…penso troppo occupati a storicizzarli e istituzionalizzarli: sembra che abbiamo bisogno di possedere un’identità, il sentimento di un’appartenenza dimostrabile, un’affiliazione, un’appartenenza, per citare alcune associazioni. Una chiesa, una nazione… noi folli! Non siamo idee di potere. (E siamo sempre soli) . Probabilmente dovremmo essere più impegnati nell’inventare relazioni, lasciarle essere e soprattutto, dovremmo essere impegnati nel trovare il modo di sentirci liberi in esse.
La libertà è un lavoro attivo. (E una delle preferite di Alex sulla libertà è di un cantautore italiano: la libertà è partecipazione. Giorgio Gaber). Il collettivo è una grande forza (rivoluzionaria). E questi sono fatti.
3
Torno alla fotografia.
Sono solo a metà del libro, ma decido di guardare le fotocopie che giacciono sul fondo della scatola che contiene le varie parti di cui è concepito il corpo del libro. Mi sorprendono molto: la carta e l’inchiostro sono fissati su una superficie fragile, i neri creano piccole astrazioni e distrazioni. Il nero è grigio. La carta è solo simile a quella di un normale documento arrivato per posta. Sembrano le pagine più economiche del libro, prese insieme infatti con una semplice spilla grande: quello che sono sicuro è che c’è una scelta precisa.
In queste ultime fragili foto la costante che vedo è un gesto: un balenare di “trasmissione d’amore” tra la persona al centro della scena e gli umani “contenuti” in quelle buffe irreali eppure così comuni tute protettive bianche da ospedale. L’ultima foto mi ha ricordato una donna che conoscevo; per me è una madre che sente che dovrebbe essere accanto a suo figlio.
Non sto cercando di capire perché il libro è fatto in questo modo, come ogni scelta sia stata fatta in una tale varietà di materiali, e con una complessità di design complessiva (ci arriverò più tardi, probabilmente): per ora mi limito ad attraversare il libro e ad osservare come influisce sulla mia percezione, sulla mia esperienza del libro stesso e soprattutto, sulla mia percezione ed esperienza della storia che racconta.
È la “storia” di un fotoreporter italiano che lavora per Vanity durante la serrata del 2020 in Italia: un fotografo abbastanza autoriale da avere sempre carta bianca per incarichi importanti.
4.
La storia inizia – è sulla copertina del cofanetto – con un’immagine che rappresenta la morte di Carlo Giuliani.
Chi è Carlo Giuliani? Durante la manifestazione anti-globalizzazione fuori dal summit del G8 del luglio 2001 a Genova, Italia: il giovane manifestante Carlo Giuliani è stato colpito a morte dalla polizia antisommossa mentre lui e altri manifestanti attaccavano il loro furgone, diventando il primo morto durante una manifestazione anti-globalizzazione dall’ascesa del movimento dalle proteste del WTO di Seattle del 1999.
Non solo ha ucciso uno, la polizia ha torturato fisicamente e psicologicamente molti…
Quel giorno è stato il più scioccante della mia vita fino ad allora, (credo che l’11 settembre poco dopo sia stato anche peggio)… l’inizio di una nuova era di regole eccezionali… tutte contro la libertà e senza cura per la terra, per farla breve… giusto?
Ricorderò quegli eventi come un improvviso e amaro cambiamento che mi ha colpito e rimarrà come una cicatrice permanente. Non potevo più “non vedere”!
Stavo ospitando Alex e altri tre fotoreporter internazionali. Erano in strada tutto il giorno e la notte editavano le foto da inviare alla stampa internazionale. Io preparavo i caffè e pulivo il monolocale mansarda … Il giorno della morte di Carlo Giuliani, ho anche pulito ogni gradino dalla porta di sotto al sesto piano. Cercando di smettere di piangere ad ogni fottuto gradino!
Dico ora che quel giorno è stato il mio primo giorno di “lock down”, infatti ero sola, chiusa in casa per sicurezza.
Ero alla protesta il giorno prima, sentendo pacifici messaggi di speranza, sentendo un amore globale, una gioia, cantavo e ballavo Manu Chao… poi la brutalità. Bugie. Oppressione in grande stile. Come adesso.
Questo.
1
Aprendo la scatola che contiene il libro il primo piacere per me è la precisione e la bellezza del bianco e nero;
La prima immagine? È lì perché tu la prenda, la sposti e la tocchi con le mani! Amo i libri che fanno questo. È l’immagine di uno spaventapasseri.
“Yes! Lo vedo, Alex: …Dritto al punto, alla partenza!” Penserò più tardi. La paura. E una domanda: come funziona la paura?
6603: il bianco e nero sotto luce di Majoli non è una sorpresa, afferma/conferma la sua tecnica: sa esattamente cosa sta facendo con queste immagini digitali.
Sono appena sveglia, e il mio pensiero immediato è che non potrò mai rimettere quelle pagine separate nella sequenza e nella sequenza di cartelle in cui è concepito e messo insieme il libro, evidentemente a mano, uno per uno. Alex conferma che è possibile.
Mi conosco un po’… in questo momento le pagine sono tutte mescolate. Ma sì: c’è il numero grande e centrale ( da 1 a …) sul retro. Sul fronte, sotto le immagini full frame cm 30 x 40 c’è una linea bianca con il numero della scena;
Da diversi anni Majoli intitola una selezione delle sue immagini con il nome Scene # …e un numero. Un riferimento oggettivo. Eppure si chiamano scene: qualcosa di immaginato, prefigurato in qualche modo.
Co-curated by Diane Dufour & David Campany
5.
Opera Aperta è un lavoro collettivo; come in Off Broadway (uno spettacolo collettivo auto prodotto, New York 2004) e più chiaramente ora, non ci sono confini significativi tra fotogiornalismo e arte, belle arti e fotocopie, gioco e lavoro o teatro e vita, direbbe forse Alex. È come si fanno le cose che conta, e come funzionano: siamo d’accordo.
Secondo me, come in Off Broadway, Opera Aperta vuole svegliarti. Vuole che tu sia contagioso e impegnato nel tuo bisogno di esprimere, toccare, afferrare! Sta a te scoprire come.
Immerso in una semioscurità, come in un teatro, perdi un po’ della tua autocoscienza passando attraverso il corpo-libro… e forse senti il contagio su di te, sì, ma intenzionalmente è il contagio dell’impegno, impegno necessario per la libertà come benessere.
Seguo un consiglio: Comincia, comincia sempre. Prendi un ruolo.
A modo tuo! Solo, “non perderti”…sento Alex che mi dice … “in nome dell’amore” concludo, senza più tanto pensare.
Per Cesura e per tutti gli “amanti della dolcezza” (sweethearts).
Lorenza Orlando
Tradotto con www.DeepL.com/Translator (versione gratuita)
The Cult of Rifo, a Bloody Beetroots Journey / Printing for Sir Bob Cornelius Rifo /Leica Private Edition 2021
English / Italian
I have been posting tons of Instagram stories lately about it, and I invite you here to get out into the web, and even more, to get out and go see the show in person!
While I am writing, may 2021, the show is on, at the Leica Gallery in Milano and it is the first official exhibition of photographs by Sir Bob Cornelius Rifo aka The Bloody Beetroots.
It is also the first public exhibition of a new type of prints that came out as a… premium discovery, or as the result of an intense curiosity and attention given to the printed image. They are printed with Epson archival pigment inks on Hanhemuhle Baryta paper, a classic for archival author prints.
Still, they are subtly different form any other inkjet, or glicee print.
I have been collaborating with Sir Bob Cornelius Rifo since more or less February 2019: by June that year we knew that an exhibition was to be prepared for Leica, March the next year, and in fact 30 images where perfectly printed by me in the three last weeks before March 5, 2020. They are powerful and delicate: I feel I have treated them as newborn babies…
Looking backwards now, I think that my main job in this process was to connect Bob with his prints. And I think that it worked.
To do so I have been looking at his photographs truly a lot, and also, I have “studied” his art worlds, his languages… I have loved and been surprised by his photographs, print after print. It has been a continuous learning, through listening, reading, writing, connecting, experiencing ..and through the kind of communication I idealize: calm, synthetic, fluid, horizontal, open, seeking clarity.
In a text message (July 2019) Bob wrote: “I advance, every time I shoot and then see the print I get a new consciousness and I imagine. Bomba così“.
“A world of thought, even a very abstract one, in continuous exposure and evolution was to be transferred onto paper, brought to life in fact”. I felt this mission.
Things kept connecting … at various speeds, and in kindness.
Printing for Bob and creating his archive was certainly an exciting contagion that re-activated in me a lot of energy, and focus: or maybe it was just a coincidence that at the same time I was attracted again to a radical approach to anything, through testing, broad and cross-cutting research, on technique and art, philosophy and poetry; as in many other times of my life, there has been highs and lows of curiosity: this was an high.
Work, play, research, experiments: an intertwine of beauty, clarity, paradox, synthesis and surprise.
We have arrived – together, albeit from a distance – at printing a powerful, intense black and white that adheres to the subjects.
The final prints contain a movement: as in the old daguerreotypes, where the image can only be seen under a certain inclination of the light, here the blacks are totally absolutely always black (a priority!), but in the darks and in the shades of light, depending where you stand or how the light falls in in that moment, you will see a slightly different image, a different view. So, I think that this perceptive consistency makes these prints adhere to the language of black and white in a new way, perhaps transgressive, definitely free.
There is a lot of energy in these prints. I wonder if they could be described as “punk prints”: dark, powerful and loving.
Great images are catalysts, “a photograph is a catalyst“. I love this word, that Bob pulled out at some point, and I love to think this way.
“We call a body a catalyst if it enters into a certain relationship without participating in it, but favouring it, so that it leaves the transformation exactly as it entered it”.
Thus, as in biochemical life the catalyst promotes reactions and transformations with enhanced effectiveness…without changing itself;
in the world of signs, the printed photograph is a catalyst when it produces a visual and emotional information …and unleashes the formation or conflagration of ideas, the solutions of problems faster and easier.
Beauty and marvel, and too many words already! In a bio on Instagram I read: “Insight’s not what you think, it’s what you see”. I loved it.
Lorenza Orlando
“To see beyond seeing is to be beyond being, and therein bliss. And this is the known that will not be known, an encompassment that defies all reason; a conflagration”. Penny Rimbaud
ITALIANO
Ho postato un sacco di storie di Instagram ultimamente al riguardo e vi invito qui ad uscire in altri territori del web, e ancor più, ad uscire e andare a vedere la mostra di persona!
Mentre scrivo, maggio 2021, la mostra è in corso, alla Leica Gallery di Milano ed è la prima esposizione ufficiale di fotografie di Sir Bob Cornelius Rifo aka The Bloody Beetroots.
È anche la prima mostra pubblica di un nuovo tipo di stampe che sono nate come una… scoperta premio, o come il risultato di un’intensa curiosità e attenzione all’immagine stampata. Sono stampate con inchiostri a pigmenti d’archivio Epson su carta Hanhemuhle Baryta, un classico per le stampe d’autore d’archivio.
Tuttavia, sono sottilmente diverse da qualsiasi altra stampa a getto d’inchiostro o glicee.
Collaboro con Sir Bob Cornelius Rifo più o meno dal febbraio 2019: a giugno di quell’anno sapevamo che una mostra doveva essere preparata per Leica, a marzo dell’anno successivo, e infatti 30 immagini sono state perfettamente stampate da me nelle tre ultime settimane prima del 5 marzo 2020. Sono potenti e delicate: sento di averle trattate come bambini appena nati…
Guardando indietro ora, penso che il mio lavoro principale in questo processo sia stato quello di mettere in comunicazione Bob con le sue stampe. E credo che abbia funzionato.
Per farlo ho guardato veramente tanto le sue fotografie, e inoltre ho “studiato” i suoi mondi artistici, i suoi linguaggi… Ho amato e sono stata sorpresa dalle sue fotografie, stampa dopo stampa. È stato un apprendimento continuo, attraverso l’ascolto, la lettura, la scrittura, l’esperienza… e attraverso il tipo di comunicazione che idealizzo: calma, sintetica, fluida, orizzontale, aperta, alla ricerca di chiarezza.
In un messaggio di testo (luglio 2019) Bob mi ha scritto: “Avanzo, ogni volta che scatto e poi vedo la stampa ho una nuova consapevolezza e immagino. Bomba così”.
Le cose continuavano a collegarsi…a varie velocità, e con gentilezza.
“Un mondo di pensiero, anche molto astratto, in continua esposizione ed evoluzione doveva essere trasferito su carta, portato in vita appunto. Ho sentito questa missione.
Stampare per Bob e creare il suo archivio è stato sicuramente un contagio entusiasmante che ha riattivato in me molta energia, e focus: o forse è stata solo una coincidenza che nello stesso momento sono stata nuovamente attratta da un approccio radicale a qualsiasi cosa, attraverso la sperimentazione, la ricerca ampia e trasversale, sulla tecnica e sull’arte, sulla filosofia e sulla poesia; come in molti altri momenti della mia vita, ci sono stati alti e bassi di curiosità: questo è stato un alto.
Lavoro, gioco, ricerca, esperimenti: un intreccio di bellezza, chiarezza, paradosso, sintesi e sorpresa.
Siamo arrivati – insieme, anche se a distanza – a stampare un bianco e nero potente e intenso che aderisce ai soggetti.
Le stampe finali contengono un movimento: come nei vecchi dagherrotipi, dove l’immagine si vede solo sotto una certa inclinazione della luce, qui i neri sono assolutamente sempre neri (una priorità!), ma negli scuri e nelle sfumature di luce, a seconda di dove ci si trova o di come cade la luce in quel momento, si vedrà un’immagine leggermente diversa, una visione diversa. Così, penso che questa coerenza percettiva faccia sì che queste stampe aderiscano al linguaggio del bianco e nero in un modo nuovo, forse trasgressivo, sicuramente libero.
C’è molta energia in queste stampe. Mi chiedo se si possano definire “stampe punk“: scure, potenti e amorevoli.
Le grandi immagini sono catalizzatori, “una fotografia è un catalizzatore“. Amo questa parola, tirata fuori da Bob un certo punto…e mi piace pensare in questo modo.
“Chiamiamo un corpo catalizzatore se entra in una certa relazione senza parteciparvi, ma favorendola, in modo che lasci la trasformazione esattamente come vi è entrato”.
Così, come nella vita biochimica, il catalizzatore promuove reazioni e trasformazioni con maggiore efficacia… senza cambiare se stesso;
nel mondo dei segni, la fotografia stampata è un catalizzatore quando produce un’informazione visiva ed emozionale…e scatena la formazione o la conflagrazione di idee, la soluzione di problemi più velocemente e facilmente.
Bellezza e meraviglia e già troppe parole! In una bio su Instagram ho letto: “L’intuizione non è ciò che pensi, è ciò che vedi”. Mi è piaciuto.
“Vedere oltre il vedere è essere oltre l’essere, e lì la beatitudine. E questo è il conosciuto che non sarà conosciuto, un’inclusione che sfida ogni ragione; una conflagrazione”. Penny Rimbaud
Lorenza Orlando
Read more articles on the web:
https://www.repubblica.it/spettacoli/musica/2021/04/20/news/sir_bob_cornelius_rifo_la_fotografia_mi_ha_salvato_dal_luogo_comune_dell_autodistruzione_rock_n_roll_-297256989. and https://www.rockon.it/musica/arte-musica/the-cult-of-rifo-a-bloody-beetroots-journey/
Loie Fuller, photographs
Loïe Fuller, the American modernist dancer known for her inspired use of dramatic lighting techniques, once tried to brighten the very clothes she danced in. Living in Paris at the turn of the 19th century, she was aware of experiments with radium which Marie and Pierre Curie were conducting–especially after they won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903.
The New York Public Library has in its collection one of Loïe Fuller’s notebooks: 59 pages titled “Lecture on Radium” written in January of 1911. “If Radium can bring to our vision those things which we cannot see (as it does the atom),” wrote Fuller, “its influence cannot be measured on materialists who say, ‘I’ll believe when I see.’ If it can show us the soul as it leaves man by registering it on the photographic plate, if it can be the means of photographing our imagination, so that the eye can see it, what will we not believe, we materialists who think that only things we realized with our human senses are real.” (from link )
Responsible for a #radical#renewal of #dance in the overcoming of academic formalism, Loïe Fuller anticipates the demands of the artistic avant-garde that would soon become established.
The transition from gas to electric lighting, which began in 1879, encouraged her studies on light, for which she was appointed a member of the French Astronomical Society.
“One of the first of many American modern dancers who traveled to Europe to seek recognition. Fuller supported other pioneering performers, such as fellow United States-born dancer Isadora Duncan. Fuller’s pioneering work attracted the attention, respect, and friendship of many French artists and scientists.
An #1896 film of the Serpentine Dance by the pioneering film-makers Auguste and Louis Lumière gives a hint of what her performance was like. (The unknown dancer in the film is often mistakenly identified as Fuller herself; however, there is no actual film footage of Fuller #dancing).
Fuller’s stardom owed nothing to the sexual glamour that, to this day, usually comprises the appeal of female performing artists. Fuller even managed to be openly lesbian while evoking virtually no titillation or disapproval in her public. Contemporary journalists tended to describe her personal life as “chaste” and “correct”, writing often of her relationship with her mother and rarely even mentioning her live-in female companion of over twenty years, Gabrielle Bloch.
#Experimenting is a form of #desire.
Fuller “was way more interested in making things happen than creating a name for herself.”
I am fascinated when, finding an element in an author that I love I let my self dig into it and develop it so that – as Agamben describes in his idea of interpretation – “it is not possible to distinguish between what is ours and what belongs to the author ”
#giorgiogamben 2017 *Creation and Anarchy chapter 2, pag 32 (italian version).
Dive and let imagination do the job.
#fineartprinting#touch it lightly.
#photography#artist#americanborn#paris#moderndance
#dance#agamben
Love Photography
omG!. ..I love #diabolical stuff! Now I am worried.
Old #funnydebates and #uselessdebates#1839
#photography#society#historyofphotography
Photography & Society
BY GISELE FREUND
First published in English 1980 by David R. Godine, Publisher, Inc. Original edition copyright © 1974 by #GiseIeFreund.
BORING DEBATE:
From the time of its invention it became the focus of violent controversy as to whether it was simply a technical instrument capable of mechanically reproducing what the lens saw, or whether it could be used in the expression of an individual artistic sensibility.
GOODANDBAD DEBATE:
To fix fleeting images is not only impossible, as has been demonstrated by very serious experiments in Germany, it is a sacrilege. God has created man in His image and no human machine can capture the image of God. He would have to betray all his Eternal Principles to allow a French· man in Paris to unleash such a diabolical invention upon the world.
1968 Graffiti
That is a #graffiti. Paris, 1968.
Take your desires as reality.
#geevaucher on graffiti on a recent interview
“Well, I love a lot of graffiti, it rightly gives people a space to voice and view their opinions, realisations etc. Of course, not all of it will be to one’s liking, especially those that cross the line into hate and discrimination. But you have to let it all go into the mix and let the people work it out, either by covering it up or adding a comment.
Graffiti is such an ancient way of the people voicing an opinion whether it’s “I love Joe” or “Boris [Johnson] is a wanker”. There have been some incredible words and images shared and long may it continue.
The biggest problem is how and where. If you want people to get past the ‘vandalism’ bit, I think it’s important how you approach what you want to say and where you want to put it. Most people don’t want mindless scrawl over their buildings. If you want people to stop, look, consider and think, I think it’s important to approach it with thought, make it part of what you want to say, so there is a chance of getting past the knee jerk reaction. Obviously, the prime example of that has been Banksy – trouble is, it’s gone beyond what he is trying to say and has now become someone’s ‘millionaire’ dream, a photo opportunity. He can’t stop that, it’s now a commodity.
I love the fact that the word graffiti means scratch in Italian, and if you have ever been to Pompeii you see a lot of graffiti, a lot of scratching on walls, insults, declarations of love, political accusations etc, thousands covering the streets. Some are really funny. One of them has a drawing of a dick and next to it it says “handle with care”. Nothing changes much.
Lorenza Orlando Printing Room
Mi occupo di stampa fine art e post-produzione per mostre e libri di fotografia e per edizioni aperte o limitate di stampe d’autore dal 2001.
Ho maturato la mia esperienza di stampa fotografica digitale e di cultura fotografica al fianco di Alex Majoli, Magnum Photos, per il quale sono stata assistente “non fotografa” negli anni 2001-2005.
Gli anni di intensa collaborazione per Majoli e per altri fotografi MagnumPhotos, l’esperienza quasi avventurosa della produzione di molti meravigliosi libri fotografici con Gigi Giannuzzi / Trolley Books e i suoi stampatori veneti e i suoi artisti internazionali, il lavoro di archivio e digitalizzazione con Lorenzo Castore agli inizi del suo percorso artistico, sono state le principali esperienze che mi hanno formato e che mi hanno suggerito, nel 2008, alcune linee guida per aprire un laboratorio di stampa dove continuare a lavorare e ricercare da Milano.
Le immagini dei fotografi con cui ho lavorato hanno riempito i miei schermi, tavoli e muri. Accompagnano e arricchiscono il mio quotidiano fatto di altro, altre avventure, collaborazioni, riflessioni e ricerca in diverse discipline.
Quello che è diventato davvero evidente per me è che la fase di stampa è una parte integrante e illuminante del processo di creazione artistica in fotografia e, soprattutto, che una stampa bella non finisce mai di darmi piacere.
Lorenza Orlando
English:
I specialize in fine art printing, post-production and production of fine art inkjet prints for photography exhibitions and open or limited editions of photography.
I gained my basic experience in digital photographic printing and photo culture alongside Alex Majoli, Magnum Photos, for whom I was working partner from 2001-2005.
The years of intense collaboration with Majoli and other MagnumPhotos photographers, the almost adventurous experience of producing many wonderful photographic books with Gigi Giannuzzi / Trolley Books and his printers from Veneto and his international artists, the archival work with Lorenzo Castore at the beginning of his artistic career, were the main experiences that formed me and suggested, in 2010, some guidelines to open a photo lab where I could continue to work and research from Milan.
The images of the photographers I work with have filled my screens, tables and walls. They accompany and enrich my daily life made of other things, other adventures, collaborations, reflections and research in different disciplines.
What has become really apparent is that the printing stage is an integral and enlightening part of the process of artistic creation in photography and that a good print never ceases to give me pleasure. Lorenza Orlando
Lorenza Orlando
Marcello Comoglio Workshop
MARCELLO COMOGLIO si occupa di prototipazione e produzione di oggetti, elementi di arredo, allestimenti e oggetti di desgin, arte e sculture seguendone l’intero processo dal disegno, allo sviluppo progetto e alla produzione del prodotto finito.
Nato a Milano nel 1965, dopo esperienze di studio e lavoro nella fotografia e in televisione, dal 1990 a oggi ha ampliato le competenze per la lavorazione dei materiali più diversi e per progetti compositi.
Ha lavorato con diversi artisti, architetti e designers:
Jil Sander, Karla Otto, Gibo, Global Link Fashion Trade HoChiMin city Vietnam, Zara, MSGM, Miroglio Fashion, Mario Merz, Luciano Fabro, Bob Wilson, Sara Ciracì, The Kim Shirin, Pietro Roccasalva, Mario Airò, Annie Ratti, G / lab, CLS architects, Studio arch. Perduca, Studio arch. Pizzoni , Joseph Grima, Triennale Milano, Ugo La Pietra, Experimenta Lisbon, La Biennale di Venezia, Joseph Grima, MSGM, Museo Bagatti Valsecchi Milan, Nilufar Milan e diverse gallerie in Italia e Europa.
MARCELLO COMOGLIO deals with prototyping and production of objects, furniture elements, installations and objects of design, art and sculptures following the entire process from the design, project development and production of the finished product. Born in Milan in 1965, after experiences of study and work in photography and television, from 1990 to today has expanded skills for working with different materials and composite projects. He has worked with various artists, architects and designers: Jil Sander, Karla Otto, Gibo, Global Link Fashion Trade HoChiMin city Vietnam, Zara, MSGM, Miroglio Fashion, Mario Merz, Luciano Fabro, Bob Wilson, Sara Ciracì, The Kim Shirin, Pietro Roccasalva, Mario Airò, Annie Ratti, G / lab, CLS architects, Studio arch. Perduca, Studio arch. Pizzoni, Joseph Grima, Triennale Milano, Ugo La Pietra, Experimenta Lisbon, La Biennale di Venezia, Joseph Grima, MSGM, Museo Bagatti Valsecchi Milan, Nilufar Milan and several galleries in Italy and Europe.
……………..
Citronnier, MMM , Salone del Mobile 2016
Ugo La Pietra, 2016
West Lake, Nilufar Gallery / cls architetti 2011-2015
Immersioni, Ugo La Pietra. Triennale Milano, 2015.
Sara Ciracì e Antonello Ruggieri, GeoChavez, di tanti uno solo, Associazione Musei D’Ossola 2013.
Neo Asterism, Experimenta 2013.
FOmobile, Clerici, Space Caviar 2013.
Bob Wilson, Isola Madre, Lago Maggiore. 2012
PROTOTIPI
ALLESTIMENTI
Show rooms for fashion, various clients, 2002-2016. Paris and Milano.
UpCycle Cafè , Milano 2012
Museo Bagatti Valsecchi, Milano 2011.
the Room produzioni
WELCOME to our NEW WEB SITE !
the Photographers’ room S.A.S. di Marcello Comoglio e Lorenza Orlando e c , nasce nel 2008 a Milano, dall’unione delle competenze, dei desideri e delle forze dei soci:
Marcello Comoglio continua e sviluppa la sua professione di lavorazione dei metalli e produzione per l’architettura l’arte e il design.
Lorenza Orlando, apre lo spazio the Photographers’ room , a Milano Isola (2008-2014): uno spazio su strada aperto al pubblico, dedicato ai servizi di stampa e post-produzione dei fotografi, ma anche alla condivisione della cultura fotografica e della sostenibilità ambientale.
Dal 2016 the Room produzioni è il “nuovo nome” che contiene i percorsi fatti insieme fino ad oggi con collaboratori, clienti, amici.
the Photographers’ room S.A.S. di Marcello Comoglio e Lorenza Orlando e c , was born in 2008 in Milan, from the union of skills, desires and strengths of the partners:
Marcello Comoglio continues and develops his profession of metalworking and production for architecture, art and design.
Lorenza Orlando, opens the Photographers’ room, in Milano Isola (2008-2014): a space on the street open to the public, dedicated to the printing and post-production services of photographers, but also to the sharing of photographic culture and environmental sustainability.
Since 2016 the Room produzioni is the “new name” that contains the paths made together so far with collaborators, clients, friends.
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
Vittorio Mortarotti – Eden
Io sono stato qui, di Gaia Giani.
“Walter Benjamin e Maria Montessori, un incontro possibile” si è svolto presso MiCamera, via Medardo Rosso 19. Giovedi 31 ottobre 2013, h. 18.
Cecilia Quagliana, Francesco Cappa, Martino Negri, moderati da Isabella Amaduzzi, hanno proposto temi filosofici e esposto esperienze professionali e personali sul pensiero e sull’agire pedagogico – sull’importanza dell’osservare e ascoltare – a partire dalle suggestioni del progetto video e fotografico di Gaia Giani : IO SONO STATO QUI, cartoline dalla scuola Montessori di via Porpora (Milano). Self Published, editing the Photographers’ room.
Lo sguardo di Gaia Giani nelle fotografie e nel video e il montaggio di Maresa Lippolis hanno davvero saputo comunicare, muovere, facilitare un pensiero capace di informare e trasformare. Complimenti a Gaia e grazie a Micamera per aver voluto e accolto questo incontro.
L’interdisciplinarità ha dato un fantastico esempio del suo potenziale nell’incontro e nella collaborazione di professionalità distinte: Cecilia Quagliana direttrice didattica di una scuola montessoriana, Francesco Cappa filosofo, Martino Negri esperto di illustrazioni, Isabella Amaduzzi traduttrice; uniti e aperti di fronte al pubblico grazie allo sguardo testimone, vissuto e tradotto della fotografa, documentarista, filosofa e madre. Cavallerizza e amica, si potrebbe aggiungere, ma forse, forse, questo non c’entra…. ;)
L’incontro è stato registrato da Gaia. Il suo progetto è in progress, attendiamo le prossime tappe!
http://www.raffaellocortina.it/figure-dell%27-infanzia
Questo il libro di recente pubblicazione, a cura di Francesco Cappa e Martino Negri , traduzioni dal tedesco Isabella Amaduzzi su Walter Benjamin (1892-1940), filosofo, teorico della cultura e letterato tedesco, è oggi riconosciuto come una delle figure più originali e acuti interpreti della modernità.
Vittorio Mortarotti
THE FIRST DAY OF GOOD WEATHER.
Van Der – Via Giulia Di Barolo 13 – Torino T: 0116983283 – 33352053866 www.vandergallery.com
THE FIRST DAY OF GOOD WEATHER, la prima personale in Italia di Vittorio Mortarotti.
Il titolo della mostra riporta il comando che il Presidente degli Stati Uniti Harry Truman diede per il lancio della bomba atomica sul Giappone. Lancio che sarebbe avvenuto su una delle città bersaglio nel momento in cui su una di queste si fosse presentata una condizione di bel tempo. Il 6 Agosto 1945 quella città era Hiroshima.
Parte da qui un racconto fotografico che nasce da una perdita personale, quella del fratello di cui l’artista cerca le tracce fino in Giappone, e diventa esplorazione fisica e metaforica tra quello che rimane (macerie, rottami, oggetti trovati) e quelli che rimangono (i sopravvissuti).
Il Giappone fotografato da Vittorio è quello di Kaori, la fidanzata giapponese del fratello, ma anche quello dello tsunami del 2011 e della bomba atomica.
A due anni esatti dalla catastrofe che causò la morte di circa 25000 persone e la distruzione di 475000 abitazioni Vittorio parte da Fukushima e dalle temporary house delle prefetture di Miyagi e Iwate dove vivono i sopravvissuti e dove l’artista ha trascorso molto tempo. Il viaggio prosegue a Niigata, una delle città salvatesi dal bombardamento degli americani grazie alla condizioni meteo non ottimali presenti la mattina del 6 agosto del 1945, continua a Hiroshima e giunge infine a Machida, il sobborgo di Tokyo dove vive Kaori, la ragazza che ha continuato a scrivere al fratello di Vittorio ancora mesi dopo l’incidente e le cui lettere, trovate dall’artista pochi mesi prima, hanno fatto nascere l’idea del progetto.
Le oltre cinquanta immagini in mostra creano un percorso non lineare che si svolge tra soggetti, formati, tipi di stampa e carta diversi. Una particolare attenzione è poi data al formato del dittico. Immagini doppie, dallo scarto fisico e temporale minimo, che suggeriscono l’idea di un prima e un dopo.
Il tutto è presentato in un allestimento all’apparenza caotico. Proprio a suggerire e rafforzare l’idea di un flusso incessante di immagini, la mostra per le sue cinque settimane di durata, subirà altrettante variazioni settimanali che porteranno alla sostituzione parziale dei lavori esposti e all’aggiunta di nuovi. Questi interventi saranno aperti al pubblico secondo date che verranno comunicate a breve.
Per l’occasione sarà poi stampato, in collaborazione con Print About Me, un tabloid fotografico realizzato in edizione limitata.
Vittorio Mortarotti (1982) nel 2008 ha la sua prima mostra personale al festival Photomonth di Cracovia. Lo stesso anno espone al Fries Museum di Leeuwarden in Olanda nella mostra “Behind Walls” curata da Wim Melis. Nel 2010 Laura Serani lo inserisce nel progetto “Italian Emerging Photography” che viene presentato al Mois de la Photo di Parigi. Nel 2012 espone nell’ambito della nona edizione di Manifesta realizzando un lavoro -site-specific durante una residenza che ha luogo a Genk, in Belgio.
Mario Airò – En Plein Air
L’arte dialoga con la misteriosa bellezza della natura, che ne diventa prorompente ispiratrice, in En Plein Air di Mario Airò. Nella mostra fotografica l’artista ci propone il fermo immagine di animazioni laser proiettate su paesaggi dalla natura incontaminata. Sala del Maggior Consiglio, Palazzo Ducale, Genova. Dal 23 ottobre al 3 novembre.
La bellezza sarà il filo conduttore dell’undicesima edizione del ‘Festival della Scienza’, in programma a Genova dal 23 ottobre al 3 novembre prossimi. Una bellezza intesa come prospettiva di un mondo migliore e come stimolo per raggiungerlo. La rassegna si dipanerà in alcuni luoghi simbolo della città, da Palazzo Ducale, al Porto Antico, fino a villa Rossi a Sestri Ponente.
Tecniche: Ink jet paper su canson satin, montaggi su cartoncino acid free.
Antonin Kratochvil / Galapagos
Per Antonin Kratochvil abbiamo fatto una provinatura ad hoc sui suoi file su 8 carte diverse: ha scelto la Harman by Hanemhule Art Fibre Warmtone.
Il Festival Cortona on The Move nasce dall’incontro tra Carlo Roberti, Fondatore e Direttore del TPW – Toscana Photographic Workshop, e l’associazione On The Move.
La prima edizione del festival si terrà dal 21 Luglio al 4 Settembre 2011 a Cortona (AR), durante il periodo del festival avranno luogo i workshop fotografici del TPW – Toscana Photographic Workshop (24 Luglio – 6 Agosto), la 4° edizione di Passion & Profession (serie di incontri dedicati alla professione fotografica) e le mostre fotografiche di Fotografia IN viaggio. Oltre a questi appuntamenti segnaliamo lo spazio dedicato agli E-magazines, le conferenze ed i dibattiti con gli autori e le proiezioni notturne.
Qui troverete il calendario di tutti gli eventi.
Il festival Cortona on The Move ha tutte le carte per diventare un punto di riferimento internazionale per i professionisti e gli appassionati di fotografia: un festival che si pone come occasione di incontro, divulgazione e sperimentazione.
the Photographers’ room ha curato la stampa della mostra “Galapagos” di Antonin Kratochvil e “Couchsurfing” di Gabriele Galimberti.