The
intense, heartfelt words of the artist encapsulate the meaning
of La resa a white flag mounted on a tall pole anchored
to a solid but flexible base flying over the field in front
of the synagogue and visible also from the heart of the Capitol.
Immediately decipherable, this emblem is also highly enigmatic
here. Who is surrendering? To whom? Every trace of battle
has been effaced by time and absorbed into the timeless hush
of the ruins. On reading the text that accompanies the image,
however, we find an explicit reference, albeit discreet and
poetic, to the “bare navels of the girls blown up”
and “the old man in a hat and braids who prays and sways
in bewilderment at the temporary absence of God”. We
thus have two antagonists, two generations, one with a future
of despair, the other with a past of grief, consuming their
lives in a pitiless war in the belief that they are “honoring
noble causes” while they are in fact only building “terrifying
conclusions for those now present and those to come”.
Despite all the necessary and never sufficient distinctions
drawn between Israel and the Diaspora, between people and
nation, the choice of the synagogue as the epicenter of the
exhibition cannot be indifferent to this scenario, as is shown
by the fact that some artists preferred to decline the invitation.
Kounellis’s repopulation of the synagogue and LeWitt’s
reconstruction of the ark of the Scrolls address the problem
of the Diaspora squarely. They are festive, vital, optimistic
and constructive. They reaffirm the irreplaceable function
of the synagogue and hence of the exile and European culture.
La resa is rooted precisely in the impossibility of such a
solution. It addresses the other scenario, but in order to
assert the impossibility of judging, of establishing what
position to adopt. This is a truly unusual situation for Mauri
and hence all the more painful. As attested by some of his
best-known works, from Che cosa è il fascismo to
Ebrea, Mauri has always known which side he is on and dragged
us with him by showing the horror of the other side |
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SURRENDER
I have always wondered what works I would prepare for
the coming of the Apocalypse. There would undoubtedly
be a multitude of special effects. Together with the
desperation that the unbelievable would turn out to
be true. I would run naked as in gothic frescoes or
sit sobbing because I had missed the point during the
course of my life. Every now and then we experience,
for a few seconds, almost by chance, the absolute. I
immediately ask myself about the source of the passion
for the relative, which forms the detail of our existence
and ties us closely to life, no one excluded.
It is a reflection on the imbalances in the world, the
brief world, in which man lives.
The result is the firm decision to follow a few elements,
from another era, related to those who are present and
those who came before us. A few themes of investigation:
the reason for our existence, its end, evil, injustice,
pain. A few questions. They are not infinite.
I wonder if we will be judged on these themes during
the terrible super-loop of the Apocalypse, tending towards
the absolute substance of values, or justified, even
by the most miniscule and temporal acts of loyalty,
family, our native city, resident’s meetings.
My intent is not to slip into simple rhetoric. The combination
of a moral and spiritual existence, including art, is
part of a dense network of details. I wonder if the
evident imbalances that leap before our eyes are supplied
by a basic freedom or slavery, a prevalent destiny,
which determines our future, to our joy or perdition.
At similar crossroads of the mind I must immediately
contrast a Jansenist inclination: I am unable to believe
in the integral freedom of the individual. I take into
account, through an act of faith that this freedom truly
exists and that man is entirely responsible for the
moral development of his life.
The scenery does not change. Great passions, when faced
with the eternal inevitability of nothingness or God
denounce the dramatic inconsistency of existence, puerility
for those who drown.
Pain has become a sphere, like the earth.
Tenderness has been shattered.
I would have liked to be a monk of the Thebaid. Though
I was not. I would have liked to die in a thousand reasonable
ways. I am still alive, and I am still touched by the
image of the naked belly of girls as they leap in the
air. I feel affectionate pain for the old man in his
braids and hat who prays and rocks, lost in the temporary
absence of God.
Experience, as we can see, when we participate with
care, produces a definitive end to our expectations.
The meaning of the world is transformed into a feeling
of torment. Almost a recording.
Is this an answer? Undoubtedly, though not entirely
reasonable.
I feel not only depressive compassion for those who
die, who are killed, or who go to die for reasons dictated
by others.
The constructions of the world are strongly connected
and, with missionary engineering, they erect an unjustified
building. It is tragic when we subsume ourselves for
God. We must fear His Terribleness. The tests of pain,
of temporality, the mutations, death as a metaphysical,
extra-temporal necessity.
War defends, or wishes to honour noble causes, though
it creates only terrifying conclusions, for those present
now and in the future. It leads to a simple death that
is no less absolute.
The work I have created intends to say something about
this.
It is the rendering of judgement. Of mine at any rate.
I am inundated by an inability to understand.
Even those I love and approve of by familiarity.
And History, to which I have already dedicated attention
as an indicative trace of a common meaning to man, shadows
included, in the end crushes awareness into a noose
of stupor and loathing.
It is stupid. It was stupid.
Perhaps it has no reason to exist.
Mine is a formal surrender.
A white flag.
A certain degree of surrender can perhaps uncover new
alternatives of peace.
19-09-2002 |
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