TRILOGY OF DECADENCE 1 - Laboratoire Italie, 2011
A voice in control, an image in black and white. An aseptic, scientific environment, similar to the object on the foreground.
The main characters in this work by Marcantonio Lunardi are three small worms which fight in order to avoid falling down a vial placed below them.
However, they are not alone, as there is also the strong, charismatic voice of a politician who has been omnipresent on the parliamentary life in Italy for the past twenty years: Silvio Berlusconi.
The artist has chosen not to show his face. His voice, his discourse is all that remains. The delay between what is heard and what is seen creates a short circuit which helps us in understanding the meaning of what the politician is saying; the animal, thus, become a metaphor for the Italian people.
"Laboratoire Italie" is the strong image of a Country that struggles against an economic but mostly moral crisis where art seems to be the only way to assert disagreement.
The main characters in this work by Marcantonio Lunardi are three small worms which fight in order to avoid falling down a vial placed below them.
However, they are not alone, as there is also the strong, charismatic voice of a politician who has been omnipresent on the parliamentary life in Italy for the past twenty years: Silvio Berlusconi.
The artist has chosen not to show his face. His voice, his discourse is all that remains. The delay between what is heard and what is seen creates a short circuit which helps us in understanding the meaning of what the politician is saying; the animal, thus, become a metaphor for the Italian people.
"Laboratoire Italie" is the strong image of a Country that struggles against an economic but mostly moral crisis where art seems to be the only way to assert disagreement.
TRILOGY OF DECADENCE 2 - Suspension, 2012
"Suspension" express the author’s mood squeezed between the social condition and the political situation around him.
This work is based on a waiting condition: the Italian citizens expect long since that something changes.
Today each home, each family has one or, many time, more TV. But TV, since the late ’80, became a sounding-board of a culture full of superficiality, degrade, destruction of each ethic form.
At the beginning the voice of the leader is clear but quickly becomes distorted, chaotic, incomprehensible and changes in a continuous background noise that accompanies the daily life of all Italian families. The meaning of his words becomes unimportant because citizens feel his speech like a disharmonic interference with their lives.
Each protagonist observes the viewer with an attitude of expectation and an underlying question: “Will anything change?”
But change seems impossible because TV get the upper hand. The final epiphany of the leader dominates the viewer, transforming him in a player of the drama on the screen.
This work is based on a waiting condition: the Italian citizens expect long since that something changes.
Today each home, each family has one or, many time, more TV. But TV, since the late ’80, became a sounding-board of a culture full of superficiality, degrade, destruction of each ethic form.
At the beginning the voice of the leader is clear but quickly becomes distorted, chaotic, incomprehensible and changes in a continuous background noise that accompanies the daily life of all Italian families. The meaning of his words becomes unimportant because citizens feel his speech like a disharmonic interference with their lives.
Each protagonist observes the viewer with an attitude of expectation and an underlying question: “Will anything change?”
But change seems impossible because TV get the upper hand. The final epiphany of the leader dominates the viewer, transforming him in a player of the drama on the screen.
TRILOGY OF DECADENCE 3 - Last 21 days, 2012
Default
In twenty-one days, Italy has seen change its
political system. Silvio Berlusconi, after 17 years of government, is
forced to resign by international economy.
There are days when the national media overwhelmed the citizens of numbers, graphs and languages unknown to most. But the people have the perception that the set of data unintelligible, radically affect on their daily lives, on their freedom of movement.
The actors of this story lose their shape and are replaced by the spectrum curves of the respective voices. The graphs thus generated are similar to those of marketplace whose laws are apparently different from the biological laws, but they really are derived from human impulses such as fear or elation.
The cash of a small shop in the suburbs becomes the simulacrum of an economy that does not exist anymore while the money disappears in the slow performance of a stock index.
There are days when the national media overwhelmed the citizens of numbers, graphs and languages unknown to most. But the people have the perception that the set of data unintelligible, radically affect on their daily lives, on their freedom of movement.
The actors of this story lose their shape and are replaced by the spectrum curves of the respective voices. The graphs thus generated are similar to those of marketplace whose laws are apparently different from the biological laws, but they really are derived from human impulses such as fear or elation.
The cash of a small shop in the suburbs becomes the simulacrum of an economy that does not exist anymore while the money disappears in the slow performance of a stock index.
translation: Giulia Negrello
Default is a work of art on the disillusionment of a system which has
reached a turning point. A man, alone, sits among the ruins of an
abandoned factory in front of a phone. His hand holds the receiver and
brings the handset to his ear. A series of answering machines, whose
metallic tones, like a filter between the citizens and their Country,
direct him in a vital suspension made only with waitings. His request
for being heard is mediated with a series of numbers, recorded voices
and impersonal sentences which bring him in a compulsive carousel of
information and pauses.
Suspended in this non-place, where time expands and the collapse of
society seems impending, a man can only wait for an answer which will
never arrive. Mistaking a key, a timetable or a sentence means starting
afresh. In the loop of the pre-recorded answers the nature of a Country
is subtended, which is not able any more to speak to its citizens, more
and more faraway, inadequate, absent.
The key to read this work lies in the static nature of the picture,
which is based on the symbolic elements introduced by the author. Under
the ecclesiastic vaults of a factory of the early XIX Century, a liturgy
takes place. The phone from the Sixties, emblem of the economic boom
and the table, covered in white cloth to symbolise a sacred banquet, are
the ritual props of this celebration. The phone call becomes a
metaphysic event, like a prayer devoted to a faceless and nameless
entity whose answered cannot be always trusted. From the point of view
of the citizens, what the Countries usually call a default, becomes the
communication gap in which the inability to comply with the terms of the
social contract is resolved.
More about Marcantonio Lunardi:
website: http://www.marcantonio.eu/en/
[2nd MULTIMEDIA SHOWCASE]
© Park 2013
website: http://www.marcantonio.eu/en/
[2nd MULTIMEDIA SHOWCASE]
© Park 2013
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