Today on the stage: Cesare Pietroiusti, Nicola Valentino, Maria Rita Prette, myself, and artist Rosella Biscotti.
This morning as usual, 10:00, an enormous flow of visitors, punctual as always, comes in. I am busy organizing our new vitrine with the treasures, in the format of colour photocopies, that Daniela Rossi and Bianca Tosatti brought last Thursday. Wonderful works by Horst Ademeit, Rino Ferrari, Antonello Stupino and others.
However, as I was extremely busy fighting my way among crowds of visitors, a specially angry middle-aged -or perhaps just aged, gentleman, started to insistently talk to me in Italian:
– ” Who is responsible for this? who wrote these lies?? you cannot print those things!”
I thought, another too passionate member of the audience – I told him I was busy, we’d talk later. Surprise when he comes back carrying almost by the hand Mrs. M.S., the main coordinator of the Biennale. I start listening to him more attentively:
– “You cannot print those lies. In Italy, since the fall of fascism, there have been no political prisoners. No political prisoners, just criminals. Terrorists. Italy is a democracy”
I dawned on me then that he referred to the label attached to the archive of Sensibili alle foglie, very specifically their “Dreams of Prisoners”, Dreams that had been collected and edited by “political prisoners during the 80’s”- according to the label provided by Sensibili alle foglie themselves.
– “I will correct that immediately, sir. I am on my way to buy tippex and cover those offending words, “political”, I will just leave “prisoners”. is that ok?”
He seemed to relax. I just remember the words of my friend (?) Alexander – he has no family name because he is afraid the police will come after him-, who runs the magazine “fire to the prisons”
http://firetotheprisons.com/
When I asked him what was, according to him, the definition of political prisoner, he said “every prisoner is a political prisoner. The concept “common criminal” does not exist”
Then, at three o’clock, Sensibili alle foglie took their place on the stage of the pavilion.
And we listened to them. More on that tomorrow.
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