98 interlude ethical anti-hypocritical breviary Respect is ethics | Tolerance is anaesthetics Community is ethics | Commonplace is anaesthetics Decorum is ethics | Decoration is cosmetics Prometheus is ethics | Narcissus is cosmetics Ecology is ethics | Ego-logy is cosmetics Memory is ethics | Nostalgia is anaesthetics Altruism is ethics | Whataboutism is anaesthetics Immersion is ethics | Immersive exhibition is cosmetics Hospitality is ethics | Acceptance is anaesthetics Irony is ethics | Sarcasm is cosmetics #wikilove is ethics | #cancelculture is anaesthetics Allegory is ethics | Caption is cosmetics Ius soli is ethics | Ius sanguinis is anaesthetics Showing is ethics | Showing off is cosmetics Physical distancing is ethics | Social distancing is anaesthetics Equal opportunities is ethics | Female quotas is cosmetics Future as thought is ethics | Future as procedure is anaesthetics The right to asylum is ethics | The residence permit is anaesthetics Progress is ethics | Growth is cosmetics Cure is ethics | Curatorship is cosmetics None excluded is ethics | I'm not [racist-homophobic-misogynist] but is anaesthetics antihuman. track #02 absolute poses (feat. la agrado) In the story of humanity there was a time when literacy was a privilege, and art was a luminous instrument to pass on a code of conduct starting from man, from a human way of knowing how to be in the world. A time that lasted nineteen centuries in which art was the only and most imagistic teacher, put in the chair by the central power, whether it was state or church. A time scratched for a moment by the bare rigor of Protestantism, but awakened with even more strength by the splendour of the Renaissance – because there has never been a political and social renaissance not involving an artistic and cultural regeneration. A time dotted with timeless masterpieces, because the great questions of humanity are granite in relation to the flow of time and to the (more or less ethical) acquisitions of progress: life and death, freedom, love and brotherhood, dignity, equality, work, the relationship with oneself, the relationship with nature. All that derives from it – bewilderment, classism, verticalism, human abuse against the human as against the environment, authoritarianism, torture, vivisection and death penalty, abortion, euthanasia; ports closed, as much as minds closed; the struggles to support LGBTQ+ rights, with people still executed, and to support gender equality, with women still infibulated and stoned, in that Italy where honor killing has been abrogated only starting from 1981; freedom of speech and the abuse of it, with a kind of hate speech legitimized in the name of a misunderstood democracy, which got out of hand – are but multiple sclerosis of the great ethical values, worsening as the years of social complexity grow. The great ethical questions are the great cultural questions, which art has been able to identify, crystallize and pass on through the tòpoi: recurring motifs, absolute poses, adapting to the form of styles and languages but remaining uncontaminated in their substance, fertile for those who want to listen to the image and make it a reflection on the human, make it experience, make it action, make it alive. There is the Vesperbild tÒpos, the Pietas – from the cycle sculpted by Michelangelo (1499 - 1564), to Van Gogh (1890), to Bill Viola (2016) – crystallizing the Madonna with the lifeless body of the Son on her lap, invoking compassion. There is the Vanitas tòpos, investigated by Holbein the Younger (1533), by Caravaggio (1596) by Damien Hirst (2007), a still life accompanied by allegories about the transience of life – a rotten fruit, a withered flower, a skull, an extinguished candle – to warn that, on the planet that hosts us, we are just passing through. There is the Labyrinth tòpos, studied by Tintoretto (1550), by Piranesi (1745), by Jannis Kounellis (2002), an allegory of the complexity of life that always contains a way out.
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