«The truth is that we cannot but live our time. But this cannot mean renunciation of a critical project; on the contrary, it means taking a stand on the side of those who work today in the direction of a deepening and renewal, of a new use of the notions, precisely, of project and rationality»[1], With these words Filiberto Menna concludes the preface to the second edition of Prophecy of an Aesthetic Society (1983). The volume, first published in 1968, proposes a fundamental reflection around the relationship between art and society: through an analysis of society from the eighteenth century to contemporary times, Menna affirms the need for art to enter into everyday reality, to be therefore an instrument capable of «acting within (and on reality) and no longer as a contemplation of an object that is outside of us»[2]. It is with this in mind that the author advocates the emergence of the – «utopian imagination»[3] – of a “new aesthetic society” contemporary, capable, through the artist’s work, of implementing that integration between art and life that could not occur in past eras. For Menna, a further reason to reflect on the relationship between the artist and the modern city is provided by Baudelaire and his Petits poèmes en prose – Le spleen de Paris, to which he devotes an entire chapter of the book: «living in the present meant for Baudelaire […] entering into the new reality, taking note of a profoundly changed situation in which the horizon of everyday existence is no longer given by nature but by the city. And so, if one lives in the city, in the midst of the crowd, it is no longer possible to preserve an attitude of contemplative detachment, to take a privileged distance towards the object of representation, to pose it, to go around it in order to return it in the round»[4]. What the French author understood was precisely the need for the modern artist to experience reality within it, representing the present with all its contradictions, in a combinatorial game that places him between the experience of the crowd and a programmed urban structure.
It is from this need that the project Spleen. Three Works for the Filiberto and Bianca Menna Foundation, presented on May 4 in the spaces of the Ex Casa del Combattente in Salerno, headquarters of the Foundation. Starting from the desire to reflect on the role that a historical institution of contemporary art has within the city of Salerno[5], the two curators, Gianpaolo Cacciottolo and Massimo Maiorino, entrust the invited artists with the task of implementing that art-life relationship advocated by Menna. In the desire to silently insert the work of art into the “programmed structure” of the city, once again focusing attention on a place, the Filiberto and Bianca Menna Foundation, that is too often neglected, the project is divided into three site-specific installations designed or adapted for the spaces of the Foundation.
The first, inaugurated on May 4, is by Davide Sgambaro, a Turin-based artist from Padua, entitled Hey there you, looking for a brighter season (W). Reimagined for the space of the Foundation’s turret, it is an environmental light installation, the second in the series, created to converse with the viewer through the imagery of belonging to strobe light; the latter, hooked up to a dmx recorder, are intermittently projected and loop a light track based on the binary system of morse code.
Dedicated to the city of Salerno, a symbol like other southern Italian cities of the beginning of the liberation from Nazi-Fascism, the projected message reads V V V V (…- / …- / …- / …-), a code used by Radio London to transmit messages to the Italian resistance, while the succession of the four Vs follows the metrics of the first two bars of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5; following the resistance’s use of the code, the W symbol was used as a symbol of victory. Through this intervention, visible in the evening, the work enters the interior of the square and the city, in the presence of passers-by who inevitably become an integral part of it, becoming at the same time a lighthouse whose light, facing the sea, symbolically represents a point of reference to cling to in a historical moment marked by great drifts. The same need for the artist, and art, to live in the present and tell the story of everyday reality, while at the same time rethinking the role of the Fondazione Menna, is given by the other two projects, Here I Feel at Home by Marco Strappato and Hikikomori by the collective damp, which will open on May 24 and June 14, respectively.
Notes
[1] F. Menna, Profezia di una società estetica, Officina Edizioni, Rome 1983, p. 27, translated from the original: “La verità è che non possiamo non vivere il nostro tempo. Ma questo non può significare rinuncia a un progetto critico; al contrario, vuol dire prendere posizione dalla parte di chi oggi lavora nella direzione di un approfondimento e di un rinnovamento, di un uso nuovo delle nozioni, appunto, di progetto e di razionalità”.
[2] Ibidem, p. 33, translated from the original text: “agire dentro (e sulla realtà) e non più come un contemplare un oggetto che sta fuori di noi”
[3] Ibidem, p. 132.
[4] Ibidem, p. 65.
[5] The Filiberto and Bianca Menna Foundation was established in 1989 at the behest of the Menna family and has been housed in the current spaces of the Ex Casa del Combattente since 1994.
Spleen. Tre opere per la Fondazione Filiberto e Bianca Menna,curated by Gianpaolo Cacciottolo and Massimo Maiorino
Fondazione Filiberto and Bianca Menna, Salerno, 04.05-30.06.2024
04.05: Inaugurazione di Hey there you by Davide Sgambaro
24.05: Opening of Here I Feel at Home by Marco Strappato
14.06: Inaugurazione di Hikikomori by damp collective
