Grass roots : the Italian´s desert

              is indeed paradoxical to see the study in
academic circles of the medieval
"cancionero popular," while the popular
song of the 20th century is ignorad with
olympic disdain.
In Europa, only tha bourgeoisie
(upper or lowar), and more recently, the
middle class, are considerad the
guardians of "good taste" and the
rapository of cultural models. This is a
delusion created by the imagas offared
by media and advertising. There is no
uniformity in what is or should be
considered "good taste" and no
possibility of reducing bourgeois
behavior to some infallible structuras.
Grignon and Passaron declare that as an
opposition to "somewhat edifying
descriptions of the domineering class,
one feels like introducing, within
sociological discourse, the vast librarías
with unread books, the museums that
are visited by hurrying patrons, the
concerts that are heard by an audience
that is half-sleep, the buffet dinners that
are assaulted...'" This is so true in
Europe that, contrary to what one may
think, a great number of those who are
considered "paople" sometimes do go to
concerts without faliing sleep, visit
museums, read books, and do not
"assault" a buffet dinner, even though it
may be free of charge.
These stereotypes of social classas
(and thair "cultures") are arbitrary and
useless. It is, however, a fact that the
tastes of the upper class, cheapened and
interpreted by the middle class, are
taken over by the working class,
sometimes becoming a caricature. This
happens in pattems of behavior, in
clothing, in interior decoration and even
in linguistic usage, This gama of
influences, which normally foUows a
descending pattem (from tha upper to
the lowar classes) has acquired a
peculiar dynamic in the rural population
of European countries.
It is a privilege enjoyed by the
domineering class "to convert into
cultural delicacies popular products that
have been transformad into consumar
goods''(Grignon and Passeron). This
recycling of popular artifacts and cultura
is evident in European interior
decoration: the pieces of fumitura that
had baan discarded by the rural
households, in order to modemize their
homes, became the latest trend in urban
circles and recently these pieces have
been revalued and restored by rural
households. The enormous influence of
magazines is a contributing factor (all of
them monopolized by the great
European urban centars; Hola is
publishad simultaneously in Spain and
in England): many people in rural áreas
fumish their bomas, dress, copy
bahavioral pattems, and acquire
information and gossip tidbits from
glossy magazines. One wondars whether
the rampant consumerism of rural áreas
is the result, in part, of true and real
needs, or whether it is an offshoot of the
willingness to imítate symbolically the
middle and working urban classes.
After romantic populism came
modemity and modem naopopulism,
and later, postmodem "Pop." And thus,
urban popular culture has acquired
enough prestige to leava an imprint on
our century, particularly in the second
half of the 20th century. But, what has
happened to rural popular culture in
Europe? It is difficult to establish what
elements of daily life in a rural área ara
ramnants of oíd and ancient customs, or
which ones result from the imitation of
urban models. If one avoids the extrame
position of categorizing certain
expressions of rural popular culture as
forms of resistance, one can nevertheless
State that, in it, "essential things take
place by the mere fact that it is forced to
function as a ruled culture, that is to
say, unfailingly as a culture of
abnegation and a culture of denial, as
subculture and counterculture." And
"the characterístic difficulty in the
sociology of a ruled symbolism is
founded on the fact that the traits and
the behavior of such are never purely
autonomous ñor purely reactive." Thus
"the neglect of domination is, without a
doubt, only ona of the principies of the
activity of popular symbolization "
(Grignon and Passeron).
To a certain axtent, specially for
these two thinkers, all that happens
within what is known as popular
culture, is "an activity of popular
symbolization." For, after all, and we
strongly agree with Grignon and
Passeron, the "tortured consciance of
cultural indignity" occurs more
frequantly within the middle classes and
appaars less in the popular ones. In
ordar to be hyperobjective one must
analyze tha total "spaca of popular
cultura" (nutrition, domestic culture,
amployment, the establishment, the
culture of adolescence, streat culture, the
culture of the factory, the cultura of the
bar, of tha supermarkets, of sports, of
televisión, of videos, of the automobile,
etc....); perhaps only than can we know
the reasons why popuhsm is seen as a
threat in Europe.
Translated from the Spanish by Doris
Schnabel and the author.
GRASS ROOTS
THE ITALIAN'S
DESERT
BY FRANCESCO BONAMI
After ''Arte Pavera" and the
"Transavanguardia," an "Untitled" and
autonomous generation ofltalian artists
is ready to enter onto the international
contemporary art scene. Mario Airo',
Stefano Arienti, Massimo Bartoliní,
Vanessa Beecroft, Maurizio Cattelan,
Eva Marisaldi, Liliana Moro, Alessandro
Pessoli, Massimo Uberti, Vedova Mazzei
are only some examples of those who
speak a completely transformed creative
language. Despite this energy, however,
no one is able to enter or exit the
"fortress" Italy in order to establish the
international dialogue than can no
longer be put off.
Capucci, Riccardo Cavallo, Amalia
Dal Ponte, Paolo Gallerani, Paola
Gandolfi, Gianni Pisani, Angelo SavelU,
Vito Tongiani, Mino Trafeli, Giuliano
Vangi. Who ara they? Maybe some of
you will get to know them. You will get
to know them if you visit the Italian
Pavilion at the next Venice Biennial.
They are some of the artists invited to
represent (in a theatrical sense, I
imagine) Italian contemporary art. They
must be those Tartars that the second
lieutenant Giovanni Drogo is waiting for
in a distant fortress on the border of an
imaginary country in the beautiful book
written by Diño Buzzati in 1940. They
could be those Tartars who only come
when Drogo, forgotten by all, is already
dead.
To begin a discussion about some of
the artists invited by Jean Clair to
occupy the Italian Pavilion so that we
can embark on the journey into the
interior of this European chimera callad
Italy, is neither simple ñor painless. As a
good ItaUan I am congenitally afflicted
with a polemical spirit, a spirit that
pervades the prívate as well as public
history of every citizen who grew up in
the shadow of the Brunelleschi dome,
among the scents of sage and rosemary,
through the years of terrorísm, to the
days when everyone owns three pairs of
Timberland shoes and wears two
identical Swatch watches on their wrist.
And yet, it is equally important to look
at the facts that surround the
preparation for the next Biennial -which
will mark its hundredth anniversary-before
any other polemic explodes
blinding everyone. The facts must be
analyzed for what they signify as
symbols and examples of a perverse
cultural condition that appears
incurable.
The ñames I have listed, ñames that
will be presented to an intemational
public in competition with artists such
as Bill Viola or Katharina Frítsch, do
not represent Italian contemporary art.
This is an indisputable fact. It is
indisputable because contemporary art is
no longer a parochial phenomenon and
hasn't been for many years. It is no
longer a creative reflection of provincial
pathologies, which are respectable and
justifiable but do not represent a
cultural generation that has been
educated in communication with the rest
of the world. In Italy a generation of
artists exists between the ages of twenty-five
and thirty that is in direct contact
with intemational research and creative
trends. These artists are capable of
producing art works that are fuUy
autonomous and represent a
contemporary culture in transformation.
The ñames selected for the hundred year
celebration of one of the most important
intemational art institutions do not
reflect a transformation but an
embalmed world that has voluntaríly
sealed itself off the rest of the planet and
is thus incapable of understanding
global developments and traumas.
What 1 am saying is neither
polemical ñor arbitrary, but easily
documented. Every crític or curator,
small or large, local or intemational, will
understand what 1 am saying with
regard to the need for cultural evolution
and progress. If he or she doesn't pursue
this he/she favors a specific preparation
towards an objective and honest visión
of the reality in which he should work.
What I am confronting is not a problem
of individuáis but the drama of a culture
and its pattems of progression.
In spite of the political morass that
has govemed and still govems Italy, a
look at the panorama of contemporary
art from the post-war period to the
present reveáis a bipolar structure. On
the one hand there is Germano Celant
and on the other Achille Bonito Oliva.
These two characters, employing both
their strengths and their weaknesses,
have ruled the two largest factions in the
Italian art world. Through domination
and subjugation, they deny even tlieir
own inspiration to an entire generation
of young curators and crítics who could
offer the world a truly contemporary
visión of what has been created,
produced, and researched in Italian art
during the last ten years.
Celant has functioned from within a
politics of filters. The strength of his
extensive historical research allowed him
to occupy positions of power in the art
world, and as he moved from seat to
seat he placed his harmless pawns,
strategically or not, anywhere the system
offered: magazines, marginal museums,
galleries. An understandable tactic, since
Italy is ruled by a patemalistic and
nepotistic mentality to which inevitably
a parrícidal instinct will oppose itself.
Patricide, then, becomes the only
possible action in order to clear the way
towards autonomous thought.
Unfortunately, this system doesn't
produce anything other than clones,
photocopies of the fathers that
surrounded themselves so cleverly with
impotent and uncertain godsons. Celant
is one of these fathers in whom every
future generation identifies itself thereby
eclipsing itself.
Conversely, Achille Bonito Oliva has
operated through his home-made
strategy of chaos and confusión. Instead
of exclusión or filtering. Bonito Oliva has
pursued the poetics of the crowd in
which all valúes, even the most brilliant,
become the same or cancel themselves
out. Bonito Oliva proceeded in an
ecumenical fashion, moving closer,
instead of farther away, as Celant did, to
all. The "Transavanguardia" was his
creation and he continúes to feed off it,
but he is wary of its repetition. The
artists he ingeniously but ingenuously
promoted have obscured him, their fame
and their fortune having squashed his
image. In the future, we will see. Bonito
Oliva will ñor repeat this error and he
will diffuse all of his energy in a
thousand homogeneous projects in which
inevitably his figure will become the
vanishing point. Duríng the last
Biennial, however, this strategy proved
itself to be fatal. Stubbomly refusing to
form an organized work team, fearing
that a restricted number of coUaborators
might produce a possible successor, he
ended up being overwhelmed by the
landslide of criticism directed at him
personally.
It is interesting to evalúate Jean
Clair's cholees in light of the work of
Bonito Oliva. The dynamic of Italian
rule is clearly revealed in all its
intricacies. In order to free himself from
the shadow of the last director, Jean
Clair chose to renounce any type of
informed collaboration, preferring
celebrated but clearly uninformed
intellectuals such as Hans Belting, Cilio
Dorfles or Maurizio Calvesi. In spite of
this anomalous situation, to say that it
would have been better to reappoint
Achille Bonito Oliva as director shows a
lack of comprehension of the drama in
which Italy is consuming itself. It would
be as preferring Chrístian Democrats
and Socialists (who were in power for
more than forty years) over the present
govemment. Any change is better than
none at all. More than ever before, Italy
has become a political and cultural
vacuum with no idea of how a
civilization should organize itself for the
future in order to regenérate the quality
of its own resources. The tragedy is that
great potential exists within the vacuum
but is denied any possibility of
consolidation in a social, intellectual,
evolved European and intemational
project.
Contemporary cultural forces exist.
They are crushed on one side by a
Celant-type of pragmatic censure and
squeezed on the other by the savage
crowding of a Bonito Oliva-type. Should
they survive, they will be stepped upon
by shortsighted altemates like Jean Clair
whom tomorrow could have another
ñame, perhaps better, but probably
equally inclined to exploit the
pathological vice of the Italian system. k
is impossible to believe that a solution to
the malfunctioning of a country's culture
can be found during an aftemoon in
which ñames are substituted for other
ñames and where ideas are only slightly
altered. It is improbable that by
substituting the nature and the origin of
the charlatans, the results or the
operational systems will change. What
will be transformed is the visión of
reality, which does not mean the
distortion of the nature of this reality,
but the beginning of its perception in its
right scale of valúes and through the
quality of its realization.
In Italy, anxiety is confused with
passion, and the communal good
corresponds to that which is good for the
individual determining the communal
good. Thus the wait for the true Tartars
is once again prolonged. The group of
artists who will occupy the Italian
Pavilion for three months next summer,
is not the populace so awaited and
geared, giving meaning and identity to
the fortress we occupy. No, this bunch of
people is none other than a group of
pilgrims who lost their way in the Italian
desert and have been taken in by a
generous Frenchman who does not know
what the true Tartars look like. Italian
contemporary art is desperately awaiting
its Tartars while, like the second
lieutenant Drogo, it is dying. It knows
that over there on the horizon its
enemies and saviors rise and fall,
waiting for the door to the fortress to
open for them, thereby transforming the
enervating expectation into tin
extraordinary, inevitable, confrontation.
(Translated from the Italian
by Jenny McPhee)
NOTES
AFTER
THE SHOOT
BY B E R N A R D - H E N R I LÉVI
THE TITLE
"Bosna!," like Sarajevo, Gorazde,
Maglaj, Büíac, Breko and Prjedor.
"Bosna!," like Bosnia-Herzegovina,
which has been dismembered by the
Great Serbia's henchmen for years, and
at the same time sacrificed by most of
the so-called civilized nations. "Bosna!,"
like an inquest about this monstruous
-and enigmatic- abandonment. And
"Bosna!," like a combat film, alongside
men, women, who, by defending their
country, defending our valúes. "Bosna!,"
like Bosnia in Bosnian. This film could
bear no other ñame than "Bosna!"
THE DATE
There is no film that is not dated. This
one is more so than any other, since it
was hot, and then edited while the war
contínued. It is a fihn inscribed in time,
sometimes hounded by the events. A film
that is inscribed by the forcé of things in
a period of the war. This had to have an
effect -both on what it says and on how
it says it. Meaning: Some 6 weeks shoot
(foUowing the location scouting and the
preparation) that is broken down as
follows: First shooting of the fihn in
Bosnia: September '93. Second shooting
in Bosnia: December, then January '94.
Filming (París and Warsaw) the main
interviews outside Bosnia: March '94.
Final mix: Apríl 20, '94.
WHAT THE FILMS SAYS
The story of the war in Bosnia. The
story of how Europeans -and on a wider
scale, us Westemers- have perceived it,
thought it and Uved it. A film on them
and US. As much about the West as it is
about Bosnia. A film in which one sees
only Bosnians, but which only taiks
about Europe after all. Why they are
fighting? Why we did not fight?
THE STYLE
Godard: "Documentaries are what
happens to others, fiction is what
happens to me." "Bosna!" is a
documentary. But it is a subjective
documentary.
TIME ONCE AGAIN
It is known that more war movies are
made after the fact. So much that the
"after the fact" may sometimes take a
long time to happen, and has even been
known never to happen. War without
images. War without memory. Such is
the oíd etemal problem that wars have.
The idea, this time: to film right away.
The challenge: to make a film on the
war while the war was still going on.
"Bosna!," because the war is not over,
and because one can not always wait for
it to be over to tell it.
THE GOAL
Neither a history film (to tell what
happened), ñor a mouming film (to
break loóse from the past that has
happened). But a combat film (with, for,
the Bosnians -being at their service).
The Bosnians often told us: throughout
the story they had no other friends than
the opinions. Meaning the indignant
citizens. And the joumalists in the field.
And sometimes the intellectuals. The
joumahsts did their duty. They carried it
out with a constancy, strictness and
courage, which often saved their honor.
Here, some intellectuals modestly try to
do their job in their own way. The
work? No, it of course does not mean
taiking in place of the Bosnians (they do
not need us for that: one only has to
look at the admirable work of Adhemir
Kenovic, who has followed the tragedy
from its start with his friends of Saga),
but it means furthering the Bosnian
speech (in order to think what one can
about this inconceivable tragedy with
words and images.)
US
In the film I say "us." Who is this "us"?
It is the film crew, of course. Meaning,
first of all, Alian Ferrari, who has
already directed "Les aventures de la