Witness of Ordinary Facts

I have decided to write in the first person, without delegating to another voice. I do not intend to justify any of the work, for the simple reason that any explanation might limit the potential of the work. It is always difficult to talk about the work, I think probably because it is made up of images, which, by their very nature, are difficult to describe.

Everything comes from the world, but not as an external process. They are instead like “intimations” that can only be mentioned; to investigate more deeply would be both too difficult, and useless. Still, an explanation is necessary concerning the performance in connection with a work on display that involves the presence, among the performers, of those close to me, always present during my work. These are my giants. I have asked them to make a useless effort, inconclusive and certainly fallible.

I perceive this action to be a sacrifice. A sacrifice is, in the etymological sense of the word, the produc- tion of sacred things; at the same time, according to Georges Bataille, it is a sort of violent consuming, dispersive. I believe that my thought situates itself between these two definitions.
In my work I am constantly searching for new archetypes, which is, in itself, a contradiction in terms. The archetype, by definition, is something already existing in the collective consciousness and beyond the direct knowledge that one has of a specific thing. An archetype, finally, cannot be invented; at the most it can be discovered.

I have never tried to invent anything, if not that which already exists: a phrase of Walter Benjamin occurs to me, “Everything made by man can always be remade by man.” Something begins to exist in the moment it is conceived, beyond its materiality and its motivation. To quote Benjamin once more, “Artistic production begins with figurations that are in service of worship. Out of these figurations, one can allow that the fact that they exist is more important than the fact that they are seen.”

I have always been attracted by limits, beyond which there is only uncertainty. The images I choose contain this principle. Each of the images in this show come from my archive: some are made, and some are found. All of them are characterized by containing indefinite actions that cannot be located in a specific temporal sphere

Alessandro Piangiamore