How will you act?
It is important to recognize that the questions posed in the Subsonica song are about the self.
The point of view of the individual within the world – much like a mirror of Michelangelo Pistoletto, whose ideas and actions have produced an art practice that exists between the person, the society “he-she” lives in and the universe. So from the self I respond to the question posed to me – How will I act?
I’ve had the privilege and opportunity, either out of necessity or from being in the right place at the right time, of living more than one life through a rebirth by immigrating as a child.
With a foot in one country and one in another, one foot in one century and one in another, one foot in one millennium and one in another and the opportunity (and capacity) to practice more disciplines that I could have ever imagined, as when a child imagines what he will be when they grow up.
These transitory stages, these in-between spaces I have occupied, seemed in my youth to be disconnected and unique onto themselves until I reached a level of understanding myself that revealed how important each one was to the other and the arithmetic that resulted:
farmer+immigrant+entrepreneur+founder+organizer+architect+builder+father = artist.
Having this realization made it important to acknowledge the phenomenons that have shaped me (us all) during these transitory stages, because if things are connected on a personal level than everything is interconnected universally.
• I’ve (we have) lived through two significant financial depressions and the biggest economic growth in the history of human activity.
• I’ve (we have) lived in the acceleration of the greatest environmental destruction that has altered the course of 450,000,000,000 years of evolution.
• I’ve (we have) lived in the midst of wars that were more destructive than all of the wars that precede them – combined.
• I’ve (we have) live through the largest number of mass population shifts ever to migrate across the surface of the globe.
How will I act?
Getting COVID-19 in late March provided me with a precious time of introspection I had deprived myself of. In the busy(ness) of living a complex life there is very little room for introspection. The 13 days of convalescence in bed and the four (4) weeks of slow recovery that followed were a gift for me.
A few years before the pandemic I was already on a trajectory to focus on what mattered most in my life’s repertoire:
• making art that breaks boundaries and engages society conceptually, emotionally, critically and socio-politically.
*see my 30 year project using human blood as a primary art-making medium, starting with my own blood for self-portraits and, beginning in 2000, with the blood of donors to make their portraits.
• sharpening my focus towards activities and practices that build a community that has space within a context in which interdisciplinary cross-pollination brings together those who would otherwise be apart – a contamination of ideas and individuals – similar to the basic premises of Terzo Paradiso and Cittadellarte.
*in my case BACAS, which bridges New York and the Italian Sud (where much work of this type is missing).
Only a few days have passed since I was invited to be an ambassador for Terzo Paradiso in New York, me accepting the invitation and sitting down in my studio to write these words hoping to answer – How will you act?
I will act by connecting the world I built in the last decades to this new role as ambassador, and hope to contribute my voice, ideas and energy to making each better at serving that part of society I can make a difference in…
È il tempo che chiama
È l’ultimo tra i sogni
È un colpo di tosse
Della storia, della storia
