MUSEO TEO ARTFANZINE # 50
(60)_EDITO
Civilization and Its Discontents
(Metalogue between Sigmund and
Gedeone)
S: - You’re so uncivilised…
tidy up a bit!
G: - Look at this lovely
drawing I’ve done!
S: - Yes… lovely! But now go and wash your hands!
This is how the issue of Museo Teo Artfanzine ON THE EDGE opened. Paths of
the Margin: ‘Artists on the margins of the art system’, we went on to write,
referring to the philosophers bell hooks (sic) and Zygmunt Bauman: ‘Museo Teo
has always existed on the margins, and it is there that it finds its lifeblood.
The choice was to position itself in a territory yet to be explored: the
margins of an art system made up of musty-smelling museums and an even more
nauseating market. (…) It has no ambition to clash with this system or to
reform it, but at least to lay bare its limitations and its operational
flaws. Marginality, then, as a way of
life: which is not marginalisation [but] continuing to cross visible and
invisible dividing lines at will, and to blur the boundaries’.
Perhaps some of you will remember the psychoanalyst Armando Verdiglione,
who was all the rage in the late 1970s. Among his endeavours was the conference
*Dell’arte… i bordi* (On Art… the Edges), but on the internet – where you can
find everything – there is no trace of it (Dario is probably the only one who
definitely knows anything about it…). Francesco Correggia’s *Ai bordi
dell’arte* (On the Fringes of Art) was published in 2020: ‘The edge is not just
the edge of a ship,’ writes Francesco. ‘I have always thought of the edge as a
boundary, but not the one that separates us from the sea. And in any case, if I
am within the edges, I do not feel as though I am on board, nor on the port
side nor on the starboard side. Nor do I feel like a castaway when I am outside
the edge.’ And again, the discussion on the boundary and the threshold:
‘Artists who have reached the threshold pause on its limen, wondering what
might lie beyond it, how the project takes shape and reveals itself, and how to
cross that threshold.’ Of course, this is the *Limen* from the film produced by
Luigi Fagioli and directed by his students Paolo Valeri, Simone de Padova and
Francesca Tassini, which we presented at the Triennale. Not to mention BORDI
(www.bordiartmeet.jimdofree.com), ‘a gaseous plane upon which to place words
and images to form constellations of questions that find their answers in other
questions’ (and yet I’m supposed to be the complicated one…), created by
Ermanno Cristini and Cesare Biratoni, two of the many friends with whom I am in
constant interaction.
“Thirty years on the fringes of
the art world,” we wrote about the thirty-year history of the Museo Teo; “Fifty
years on the fringes of the art world” (fifty-five, actually), I write today
about my relationship with this strange world. Strange to those on the outside,
but often to those on the inside as well. In fact, I wrote in the (famous)
*Manual for the Young Artist* (the thirtieth anniversary of which, as I begin
to write this text, is coming round…): ‘3.2.7 Art/ethnology. Dealing with the
artist is like dealing with a rare case, a strange animal or even a disease. We
seem to be too many of us, but to others we are nothing more than an obscure
object, perhaps not even worthy of interest, or to be studied as ethnologists,
entomologists and virologists do.’ Next, I come across a passage that I still
consider valid: ‘3.2.8 Politically correct. A fashionable catchphrase, but one that is highly topical. Every era has
had its own distinct ideology, just as every century – every decade, in our
case – has had its own art. Today, amidst a crisis of ideas even more so than
of ideologies, everything seems to be acceptable: it is like the race towards
the ‘centre’ that conceals old values and opposition to the timid semblance of
novelty. More than ever, art must take a stand, not so much in terms of
content as in terms of form.”
This is confirmed by *Il
Manifesto* of 21 June 26, which runs an article on Jean-Paul Sartre headlined:
‘Staging as a political act’, and so I find myself catapulted not only into
contemporary reality, but also into the very heart of our (artistic and
political) practice. Museo Teo was founded as both a creative and a political
act, even if the themes are not always immediately apparent: yet we have raised
the flag of peace on the Atomic Bomb Dome in Hiroshima, and that alone would be
enough.
But first, one more note on the
theme ‘On the fringes of the system’, namely the issue of visibility – or
rather, the recognition of our work by the ‘official’ art world: it was
necessary to organise an event at Viafarini in order to gain visibility
and recognition in certain circles – even those close to us. Similarly, the
aloofness – if not hostility – of certain artists stemmed, and still stems,
from the fear of losing a non-existent market. Would taking part jeopardise
their careers? There were many excuses for not taking part, and those for going
back on their word were downright pathetic. That ‘I was only joking’ from
someone I won’t name – who knows if he recognises himself – still makes me sad
(for him, of course). Yes, but how do we choose the artists or collaborators?
First and foremost from among our friends – meaning artist friends – as there
are far too many artists about… We try to give priority to those who aren’t
part of the system, but also to many who are; ideally, we should also find them
likeable, given that we have to spend time together. As Lucilla Meloni pointed
out in her book *L’opera partecipata* (The collaborative work), dedicated to
relational artists: ‘It seems clear that these artists, in their statements,
call into question the art system which, in the 1980s, had been restructured
according to purely market-driven logic and uncritical adherence to the social
system. They wish to return to everyday life in an attempt to bring art back
into life, by breaking down the boundaries that separate it from reality: both
spatial and formal boundaries’. Corrado Levi, Sergio D’Angelo and Lea Vergine,
for example, certainly had no qualms about playing along with us; when she
described me as a ‘hip-hop shaman’, she was recalling my role as the ‘scorching
conscience of the art world, an embarrassing presence for new and old
mandarins’. Even today, for those who do not belong to the art world – and
beyond – and discover what we do, enthusiasm is the most immediate reaction.
Returning to everyday reality, I
still believe that it is essential never to lose sight of reality, in order to
see it more clearly. And to do this,
I continue to manipulate the images – certainly not reality – subtly, yet
relentlessly. Likewise, I continue to work in the same spirit as when I began,
proud of our independence and of our many years spent on the fringes and in the
interstices of the system. On the fringes, never on the margins.
One cannot help but begin with
the first exhibition, Sansistosei. ‘The
rooms are empty and, apart from the walls, bear few traces of their past. The
flat is now an empty space in which, as in Gaspard Winkler’s flat in *Life: A
User’s Manual* (La Vie mode d'emploi), what remains is what remains when
nothing remains; on the walls, however, there is a series of artefacts
belonging to the artist’s personal museum, constituting an equally personal ‘I
remember’. The exhibition is Museo Teo’s first initiative; it is the first
piece of a jigsaw that will gradually take shape, much like Perec’s.”
The presentation was pretentious,
but it would prove to be accurate: it wasn’t just an exhibition that would last
a single evening. We didn’t know it at the time, but we gave it a go. That
evening would truly change my life, which would begin to overlap, at least in
part, with that of Museo Teo. And yet I’d done plenty of things and met plenty
of people – to borrow Nanni Moretti’s famous line from *Ecce Bombo*: ‘I do
things, I meet people: I go about, I meet people, I get about, I get to know
people, I do things…’, a line I often find myself wanting to recall. One of the
many quotes I simply cannot resist quoting…
My story is made up of encounters
and reunions, often chance ones, though not always, and in any case linked to
the world of art: life’s events are not always linear, because it is through
others that interaction takes place – a word I do not recall having heard
before I began studying sociology.
More than fifty years have
passed, but I have never quite come to terms with that term. ‘Mutual influence
or action and reaction between people, events, phenomena and substances’ sounds
like a fairly standard definition of ‘interaction’ [in·te·ra·zió·ne], although
what interests us most is social interaction – that is, the mutual influence
between individuals through two-way communication processes. In this sense, I
like to coin the verb ‘interare’, meaning to make whole or to complete.
Everything is interaction and, as in any good dialectical process, it should
enrich (spiritually) both parties. Sometimes I think it’s nonsense, but there
is a remarkable mathematical product that seems to me to explain my reasoning
well: (a+b) squared is, as is well known, a squared + b squared + 2ab,
which, as well as confirming the usefulness of interaction, also explains, in
my view, the formation of surplus value.
Amidst these events and
interactions, the question of our relationship with art and politics therefore
arises, even though I feel I have already clarified the matter.
It is not enough for me to recall
that we have collaborated with Leoncavallo, S.Q.O.T.T., Macao and the Molini
Social Centre in Lugano: ‘Museo Teo, a nomadic museum of late-millennium art,
shifts into the vertical space of immaterial communication. Sometimes it takes
the form of ‘an exhibition’ that is more of a playful event or a ‘political
statement’,” we maintained from the very beginning, and this is not merely a
matter of cultural policy. When I speak of Art and the Social Culture of Images,
I mean not only to analyse reality, but to change it: ‘Art, like poetry, is a
paradoxical means of communication, not immediately comprehensible, yet it is
also, in its everyday experience, an unconscious practice. Images – for the most part banal and in poor taste
– pollute our cities and our minds just as much as noise and exhaust fumes.
Education in imagery, art and respect for our artistic heritage must become
shared values.’
‘A quarter of a century has
passed since I began to take art seriously. It was around the same time, in
1968, that I first became interested in politics, and started getting involved
in it,’ I state in the legendary *Manual for the Young Artist* in the
*Millelire* series. ‘Art and politics often seem like two opposing forces; and
indeed, if poorly combined, they can lead to unpleasant situations, but if they
are two fundamental components of a person’s life, they can yield surprising
results. I won’t talk about politics, and perhaps not even about art, but I
would like to emphasise that whilst it is not necessary to be a politician, it
is essential to be an artist – and not merely to act like one – because art is
only truly art if it is part of your life. As Laing said about schizophrenia:
‘You do not have schizophrenia; you are schizophrenic.’ So you do not ‘play at
being an artist’, but you are an artist; otherwise, you are schizophrenic.’
I’ll start again with a quote from Laing which I have generally always thought
was a precise analysis of the meaning of life, but which also fits well with
the idea of the nomadic nature of artistic practice and of acting in the world:
‘Sometimes I go, sometimes I come. I cannot recall what it is all about…’ In
1979 I met Ronald Laing and photographed the author of *Knots* as he was tying
his tie – a ‘light-hearted’ encounter at the end of a demanding lecture: in
reality, Laing is not tying his tie, but taking it off. Once the lecture is over, he frees himself from a
burden, from something that does not belong to him. We know this – I’ll let the
cat out of the bag – but it is not always possible to reveal the secret of art:
the image of Laing grappling with his tie is proof that the truth is never what
it seems or what we are told.
On the subject of everyday life, it is worth mentioning the book
*Analytical Index of World Literature – Volume One – The Facts of Life*. Once
again, the title may seem pretentious, and indeed it is – self-deprecatingly
pretentious. As well as being a clear homage to Laing, it reads almost like an
autobiographical analysis dictated by the unconscious; and, since it deals with
the facts of life, there is ample scope for sex, love, jealousy and betrayal –
as in most literature or cinema – meaning that the content does not necessarily
reflect the author’s personal opinions or experiences. To those who might point
out that certain situations could provoke outrage due to their cynicism or
eroticism verging on obscenity, the author replies: do you live in the real
world or in a fairy tale?
