Groma occupies the place in
the synagogue where the scrolls of the Torah were kept inside
the curved ark reconstructed by Sol LeWitt. Marisa Merz’s
piece of alabaster rested there two years earlier with the
Rosa Luxemburg anthem played over loudspeakers by Susan
Philipsz. The groma was originally an instrument
used by the ancient Romans, and perhaps by others before
them, to delimit square lots of land. “The simplicity
of its construction fascinated me and the idea of dividing
the world into squares terrified me.” The materials
of which it is made are to be found everywhere: two crossed
sticks and four weights (sacks full of earth or glass jars).
It was first produced of the IBA architectural exhibition
at the Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin, in 1984, in old SS headquarters.
The earth used is certainly steeped in blood. “It
recalled the social project of Nazism, and I had woven a
very soft but very tough net of copper between the wires.”
A second version was exhibited in a richly frescoed room
at the Castello di Rivoli in 1989. In “a city constructed
precisely with the system of the groma, it indicated
an urban perspective but also a certain mentality”.
If the earth contained in the bags alludes here to the unending
history of the castle designed by Filippo Juvarra, the copper
net is replaced with pieces of cloth bearing colored Rorschach
blots. The Groma of 1997 was dedicated to Spinoza.
The sandbags are replaced with four jars of Murano blown
glass containing water that acts as a lens, making it possible
to read four lectures delivered by Fabro at the Academy
of Fine Arts and inserted into the jars: Una, cento,
mille qualità, La sciatteria, Il sospetto, Lo svanire
dell’opera dietro la morale, all of 1997. The
last jar instead rests on the text of the excommunication
decreed by the Jewish community of Amsterdam in 1656. In
the work Groma (monoteista) produced for Ostia
Antica, finally, the sandbags and glass jars are replaced
with four plaster pizzas, one inscribed with the Star of
David, one with the Christian cross, and one with the crescent
moon. The as yet formless fourth still awaits its symbol.
One of the above-mentioned lectures is inserted into each
pizza. As Fabro remarks with sarcastic irony, “The
idea is a diversion from the chain of tragedy to the food
chain.”51