Testo pubblicato in "Athanor" –
Tra Segni (1999-2000), accompagnato da 7 disegni in bianco e nero dal
titolo "Intersezioni". Il testo
è stato successivamente esposto come manifesto artistico alla mostra
personale dal titolo "Differenza
e Differimento" tenutasi presso la Galleria "Spaziogiovani"
del Comune di Bari (11 gennaio-11 febbraio, 2001).
The erasing of differences is a direct consequence of world
trade and global communication, which are two indissolvable characteristics
of contemporary society. We live in the age of homologation.
Signs of difference are no longer present in anything belonging
to the present - town planning, fashion, tools, furniture, medias, everyday
life environments (dwellings, offices, parks, entertainment places, discos,
airports, highways, clearance spaces, train stations, cars, mobiles, computers,
and so on).
This unbroken levelling and this continuous world homologation
have impoverished the universe of signs.
Difference, being in crisis, turns to more and more paroxysmal
affirmations of identity, clinging to signs, more or less obsolete, which
belong to the past (traditions, roots, ethnic groups, linguistic origins,
religions, etc.), stubbornly using them to mark differences in order to defend
identities that have been erased by homologation.
The signs of difference are clearly destructive - their utmost
expression is war.
It is tremendously important, vitally important, to give life
to new different signs in order to set them against both the spreading of
homologation and the dead signs of illusory differences.
The artist, more than anybody else, is the one whose task is
to create signs that differ; they have to differ, above all, from what is
functional either to the market homologation or to the global communication.
Signs are, in this sense, able to defer, to refer beyond the present, continuously
enriching and renewing both art and life.
The artist, because of his or her calling, places him/herself
out of the present, out of contemporaneity so that he or she can be immune
from this homologation and refractory to the deceit of the signs of difference.
The artist is, in fact, the one who is able to place his or
her research outside contemporaneity, the one who differs, the one who does
not remain prisoner of the present, he or she is the one who, within life,
not only participates and understands/includes life itself (practical, social,
political, moral, religious), but also the one who loves it from the outside,
in an extra-located and out of context activity (Cf. Bakhtin).
The artist - by placing him/herself out of life, without being
indifferent to it - will overcome everything that, otherwise, would have been
able to homologate, to circumscribe him or her or that would have been able
to reduce his/her strength or artistic expressive creativity. The artist will
overcome everything in the same way in which Perseo's indirect glance overcame
the petrification by the Gorgon through the reflex of his shield. The artist
could, in this way enrich both art and life with new signs that differ which
meet between them in an utopian community within an endless pluriversum of
signs.
Even though art intensely lives in this world, it does not
belong to this world and it does not allow itself to be secluded to this particular
historical period which would limit and reduce the strength of the artistic
act into a "small time".
The artistic act, the work of art, lives in the "great time"
and looks at "the same" phenomenon in its many-sided tones, accentuations,
and echoes.
It is release from what is the seen, lived, done, pre-packaged,
fake.
Signs that are outside the monological significance - just
as art is outside representation - free from classification, role, task, belonging;
free art which is constituted by new, different signs able to defer beyond
homologation and beyond the illusory and destructive differences of identity;
signs holding a dialogue among themselves, opened to any meaning as well as
misunderstanding; signs which are not already interpreted but signs to be
interpreted; non-idolatrous but iconic signs; non-representative signs but
signs that stand for; not signs of image but signs of imagination, not static
signs closed within a sole pre-packaged and imposed meaning but signs that
are dynamic in the various possibilities of questioning and of interpreting
dialogue.
Art can be "awakened" by differing of signs, awakening, in
turn, the whole of life and rescuing it from the dominant homologation process.
The pluriversum of artistic signs cannot be homologated, homogenized,
levelled if not at the cost of being definitively annulled.
Since the invention and creation of new differing signs - deriving
from different worlds and different modes of thinking of and interpreting
them - other new signs will spring up in a never-ending pluriversum of signs,
the unique real source of the wealth and of the renewing of human beings and
of life.
The - utopian - idea is that of a shifting towards a joyful
Babel, blending the differences so that what will exist will not be a unique
word, a unique language but a never ending production of new languages able
to differing/deferral.
