The examples of controversial individuals who have produced artworks capable of moving the bar of thought forward, from Caravaggio to Carmelo Bene, are countless, and we are increasingly forgetting that our surname is not Torquemada and that, in general, contemporary art and moralism are a zero-sum game. It is not about the rectitude of the person, but only about his or her art – which, in order to be such, must always have ethics; but all the more so in a world more and more burning, that ethics can only pass through a sanctified discomfort. And that is what Damiano and Fabio D’Innocenzo’s oeuvre is: cerebral concussion. It hits the brain and then everything else, chest cavity included, but what’s most needed is the brain. Its basso continuo is a distortion to shake off narcolepsy, tearing through with the fierce tenderness of someone who knows and loves humanity on the fringes, therefore does not romanticise it. An act of resistance against the contemporary plagues of yeah, whatever (= the self-proclaimed artist posing as a victim of a world that doesn’t understand, do me a favour and go ask yourself a question) + beauty will save the world (= art as an economic-nostalgic legacy paralysed by totally irresponsible canons) + what Bret Easton Ellis called likeability: the urbi et orbi et social media approvalprone posture of doing writing or saying something by self-censoring through the filter of others’ placet, a weapon of mass distraction, poser-art, content-art, a comfort zone as treacherous as Glazer’s uncanny Zone of Interest. What’s needed is a cerebral concussion, a counterpoint to the widespread sloppiness for which academicism is the password granting access to the hoity-toity artsiders’ club, aiming to match a painting to a sofa. What’s needed is a cerebral concussion, the very same that ignited Fabio Mauri’s Intellettuale in 1975, when he turned his lifelong friend Pier Paolo Pasolini into a human screen on which to project his own disturbing The Gospel According to St. Matthew outside Bologna’s Galleria d’Arte Moderna, allowing him to publicly assume his artistic and civic responsibility and claim the unsettling yet vital social weight of the most uncomfortable culture. What’s needed is a cerebral concussion, the kind the D’Innocenzo Brothers provoke through unbearable stories and a relentless, absolute commitment both to bravura and responsibility. «We do have a problem with vagueness. Life is tied to chance, yet when you're filming, you have to be responsible, to know where you’re headed». – Stefania Ulivi, Fratelli D’Innocenzo, i gemelli romani che non si accontentano, Corriere della Sera, 2018 That same responsibility Antonin Artaud took upon himself by setting up his theatre of cruelty: «The spectator who comes to our theatre knows that he is to undergo a real operation in which not only his mind, but senses and his flesh are at stake — knowing, of course, that he will not die, but that he will not come out of it unscathed». It is a mechanism as ancient as humankind itself: asking those who choose to undergo it to submit to the promise of an epiphany that both attracts and frightens, yet undoubtedly shakes, and hopefully awakes. It’s the same ancient mechanism of the spellbinding rapture of fairy tales: far from the sugar-coated, woke-ified complacency of a Disney industry turned sclerotic, it is enough to think that we grew up mesmerised by the tales of two other brothers, the Grimms, full of stepsisters who mutilated pieces of their feet to fit into a slipper, hunters who tear apart wolves to pull out entire family trees, cannibal witches fattening up lost siblings… yet the spur was never lacking. Contemporary art must have the same spellbinding rapture of fairy tales. Or rather, of bad tales. So here’s the bottom line: art is a matter of responsibility. Or perhaps not: a work cannot be boxed into a caption, a manifesto, or a sermon. Then again, yes: in an era where everything aspires to be consolatory beyond the limits of the an/aesthetics, art must assume the responsibility of waking us up. But there’s always that insidious risk of propaganda... So I put it to them: is art a matter of responsibility? And if so, how to reconcile the freedom it owes with the responsibility it requires? «It takes a lot more responsibility not to make art. If the main responsibility of a human being is to stay alive and “sane”, we wonder how one can live a life without trying to fix this game that’s so broken that it’s become unrecognisable. We feel incredibly lucky to make our living from art, but you have to want to, and it’s not easy. It’s not easy because you cannot live in art every second of your existence. You have to do all the things that have to be done and be sad, no, discouraged, no, defeated while doing them. Then, when the creative machine must be set in motion, the only responsibility is to yourself. No one can accuse an artist of cheating, yet one can cheat with remarkable ease. It’s crucial to reflect for a moment on the idea that an artist must necessarily have a civic or political spirit driving the whole thing: do we really care about that? Is it truly as important as we think it is? For instance, when it comes to cinema, is it really necessary to make political cinema, or is it enough to recognise that cinema, by the very fact that it is watched, discussed, rejected, or embraced, generates politics, regardless of the author’s intentions? To deny the political spirit of a fictional work – better if it is well conceived, even better if it is well realised – is paradoxical, because it would mean that we, the spectators, either don’t exist or don’t matter. From another viewpoint: we’re not on the politics payroll, yet our actions, our thoughts, and our reflections are political. Therefore, the only responsibility we feel is to give the very best of our potential: what we’ve learned, what we’ve always known and what we will never know. The rest is up to the spectators, with one fundamental postscript that cannot be subverted: cinema must be experienced by spectators, not by expectators. Those who merely expect, those who only wait, will receive from us nothing but meagre, bland meals. The passive reception of images and sounds is what happens in the dictatorship of normality. And we should fight with all our might for the cinema to aspire to something far greater. Whether we enter it or not. Any other answer more specifically into our work would get obvious responses: we simply try, every time, to make the most important film possible. A film must change a life. At least the life of the person who make it. The responsibility lies in knowing that you have one». 92 93 Unless otherwise credited, all photographs accompanying this conversation are by the D'Innocenzo Brothers. The photographs from Dostoevskij's set are unpublished tableaux donated by the D'Innocenzo Brothers to Ossigeno #14.
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