116 Pasolini docet – to be metabolized and translated into the strength of recovery. «Mass society does not want culture, but entertainment», Hannah Arendt wrote in 1961. It is clear that for the vertices the ease in governing is infinitely greater if turned towards a homologated, superficial and easily influenceable mass; for this reason it is much more convenient to silence art and to crush culture, its function and its perception to the sole dimension of entertainment, leisure, de-responsibility, with the complicity of some self-styled artists who trade ethics for a refined buffet at the vernissage. But the artist – which is not, with due respect, the window dresser – has the sacrosanct right to be rude, a maverick, short-circuit, loose cannon, when both political and value system are collapsing; he knows how to foresee where no one sees, he must blow up contradictions when ethics is in danger, and not redoing their makeup to make them pleasant. The artist won’t ever be able to politely ask «What time is the revolution, ma’am? How should we come, after lunch?», as a laconic Vittorio Gassman did to Stefania Sandrelli in La Terrazza by Ettore Scola (1980). Revolution cannot be regulated; art cannot be regulated. All the more so since political logic can hardly be applied to the artistic one, while the opposite is true and brilliantly demonstrated (an evidence that, moreover, many great enlightened industrialists he likes of Adriano Olivetti have understood and implemented, in being guided by art): Edi Rama – current Albanian Prime Minister, profession: artist – is leading his nation towards rebirth, giving value to lateral thinking and creativity as a resource. Giulio Carlo Argan – mayor of Rome from 1976 to 1979, profession: art critic – defended the environment and the redevelopment of the city, in concert with the enlightened urban planner Antonio Cederna. Andrea Cusumano – art and culture councillor for the city of Palermo from 2014 to 2018, profession: artist – turned under his aegis the Sicilian capital into an international crossroads of art, constantly careful to highlight the beauty of coexistence between peoples that reigns in Palermo. Whose side are you on? Because there is always a side to stand on, there is always a position to take, to take on the responsibility of being human in an ethical sense, and not just men in a biological sense. Art and culture are our most magnificent, our most powerful resource. And when likeability becomes a mechanism of power, the most ethical position to take is to stay against, to stand outside, but it can never, ever, be indifference (grey flag of non-difference). interlude I hate the indifferent «I hate the indifferent. I believe that life means taking sides. Indifference is lethargy; it is parasitism; it is cowardice; it is not life. Therefore, I hate the indifferent. Indifference is the dead weight of history. Indifference plays an important role in history. It plays a passive role, but it does play a role. It is fatality; it is something that cannot be counted on; it is something that disrupts programmes, overturns the best made plans; it is that awful something that chokes intelligence. What happens, the evil that touches everyone, happens because the majority relinquish their will to it, allowing the enactment of laws that only a revolution can revoke, letting men rise to a power which, later, only a mutiny can remove. Some whimper piteously, others curse obscenely, but few or none ask themselves: if I, too, had done my part, if I had struggled to exert my will, would what has happened have happened? This is why I hate the indifferent: their whimpering, innocents always, bothers me. I hold each and everyone of them accountable for how they carried out the task that life puts before them every day, for what they did and, especially, for what they did not do. And I believe I can afford to be unrelenting, unwilling to show pity and to share my tears with them. I am partisan, alive, and I already hear, in the consciences of those on my same side, the throbbing bustle of the city of the future that we are building. And in it, the social chain does not weigh on the shoulders of only a few, nothing is haphazard, fatality, but the intelligent work of its citizens. There is no-one watching from the sidelines while others are sacrificed, bled dry. I am alive, partisan. And, therefore, I hate those who do not take sides; I hate the indifferent». - Antonio Gramsci, La città futura – in L’ordine nuovo, Feb 11, 1917
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