The Stars, Like Dust- a headline a day
Marisa Tomei: “We cannot let this happen in London”, September 1
It is curious to see how a work takes a life of its own. This is what has happened to The Inadequate.
I left Venice begin August, leaving in place the following performances: Instant Narrative, now written by Yunied (the only one writing in Spanish – most Anglosaxons cannot make out Spanish from Italian- or most Dutch people), Pietro, Nicola, Monicca and Laura; Visita Guiada, now led by Talía, Patricia and Noemí – guardians of the pavilion evolving to performers and managers; The Artist Without Works, with Michelangelo and Paolo; The Sphinx, played by Margheritta, Roberta, and now Patricia too; Prayers, played by Alba; and the sweet and mistreated Messenger, played by Paolo. This was the system; in September new conversations would come up.
And then it happened – Michelangelo thought that, having to chose each day for The Artist Without Works a new headline as example of best literature (according to Balzac: “Where would you find better literature than this?”), they could, also, use those headlines as:
– a sign of the passage of time, in the best “kidnapping tradition” – someone shows a newspaper to prove he is alive in such day
– a portrait of the audience and the workers of the pavilion
– and I should add here: a construction of a narrative made of many simultaneous narratives, very much like ‘all the stories’, see http://doragarcia.net/allthestories/
August is the cruelest month, Daily Mail, Friday, July 22- name of the model not specified.
And so it began. Some photos are really memorable, indeed the one of Marisa Tomei, and Todd Haynes, courtesy of la Mostra de Venezia,
Todd Haynes, “Why this picture shows everything that’s wrong about modern nursing”, Daily Mail, Thursday, September 1
But also wonderful pictures made with the visitors of the pavilion, like those two young men who wanted to be messengers en lieu de The Messenger:
“Young shun sun cream because it is ‘uncool'”, Daily Mail, Wednesday, August 17. with Trane Mustn’t
and great pictures with the people working at the pavilion:
“Lost in Translation”, Daily Mail, Friday, August 5. (dedicated to “The Messenger” – whom we didn’t bother during his performance, the snapshot was very quick!)
“You’re a disgrace to your country”, Daily Mail, Friday, August 12, with Mari Carmen Villoslada
Other memorable headlines are: “Why a young virgin must not look a lusty man in the eye”, “Breast-feeding makes new mothers fearless”, “Get out of New York”, “Where but in France could a chauvinist sexual predator still be feted as the nation’s savour?”, “Gilded age has only just begun”, “Outrage as Tussaud’s defends its customers’ right to say ‘Heil, Hitler'”, or, finally, “Shop a moron”.
That was the summer. And then Bifo, Franco Berardi, came, and the time for conversations started again, about Guattari and the very significant year 1992, the decade of suicide, the subsequent decade of depression, the awareness of the limit, autonomous thought, independent tv and radical radio. But something had changed, and each day was different, and we can be sure we are still alive because they are begging us: Do not resuscitate.
DO NOT RESUSCITATE, Daily Mail, Tuesday, September 6. Special guest: Franco Berardi
The number of newspapers, magazines and books will grow continually, and one can predict that a time will come when it will be almost as difficult to learn anything from books as from the direct study of the whole universe. It will be almost as convenient to search for some bit of truth concealed in live nature as it will be to find it hidden away in an immense multitude of bound volumes, newspapers and magazines. When there are so many newspapers, their headlines will not be able to prove that we are alive or we can learn something. But we’ll take pleasure in enchantmet and perplexity.