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by Claudio Marra
There was a time, not long ago, when art was defined by deeply committing own's energies in the celebration and exaltation of the great communicative rite. This commitment was made comprehensible and justifiable by a total monopoly of a cultural atmosphere that enthusiastically believed in having to carry off the linguistic models of each object, situation, behaviour belonging to mankind. Culture and communication were even placed on perfectly interchangeable terms, as if the communication act was intended as unique and undiscussable able to pick up the presence of mankind or nature.
This situation which needeth not to be underlined, was kept up and authorised by the spectacular affirmation of technology which seemed to bring back action to the principle of communication, of communicational beings.
Nowadays, the cultural scene hasn't changed much, morover, by a qualitative point of view, it has expanded so much to enable us to talk about global inter-communication or collective intelligence. What hasn't been taken into consideration or even has been ignored is the risk of a flattening of this system, not projected towards continuous and invading discussion. The sophisticated logic of "surfing the web" seems to be in danger and substituted by "hello, where are you calling from?".
Alessandro Rivola did well in critically reconsidering the matter, with all the necessary irony and enjoyment that was needed to avoid the risk of reopening the controversy between "apocalypse and integration". Keep your mobile phones on, but remember when you were a child in your courtyard you played with cup and string phones, an extraordinary metaphor for communication, of a virtuality that reminds you however, that you are in front of someone else and eliminates the possibility of somebody not being available on the phone.
Also the double reading key used by Alessandro in this occasion, the colder one of photographic slides, and the warmer or archaic one of photographic emulsion on wall or cardboard, seems to want to confirm the refusal of having to choose between integration and apocalypse. The proteases must not self animate itself as a "terminal" expropriating in this way the real terminal, the authentic one, from the possibility of having always to be available.
