Preface to the Book "Human Inhuman" by Luca Motolese
Poetry, painting, cinema. In themselves, today, they are expressive forms reduced to after-work hours. People spend their time producing and carrying forward their delirious representations, in a knowledge that is wrong, hypocritical and violent.
The transversal gaze of Luca Motolese goes beyond belonging and identification. The artist of the present is always also a little the artist of the future, not yet fully recognised. The artist reduced to essence — poor, perhaps — like those without spirit, heart or money. And so I find a poem dedicated to me. Perhaps because I too am that poor man.
It is in fact from my shack that I write this preface. In the zone where words are flatus vocis, no longer with any transforming force. Luca Motolese, my namesake, represents in some limping, somewhat anacoluthic way, an alter ego. And at the limit there is room for an antagonistic representation, a visual fire, over the cinematic frames of a painter, an exponent of Italian pop art, Mario Schifano. I remember well his film 'Umano non umano.' I had come across it in one of my various periods of obsession with Carmelo Bene, a figure who anticipated this non-belonging to the arts, with his theorising of a cinema that cannot be made with cinema, a theatre that cannot be made with theatre, a painting that cannot be made with painting, and so on for all the arts.
The aim is no longer painting, not even poetry. But a muffled parrhesia, in the mad need to resolve this reality, this limping will that dissolves in the vulgar representations of an ignorant yet powerful everyday. Oppressions and bombardments — where not material — suffered in a destiny that, day after day, we do not choose but that traps us. So that we find ourselves surrounded by those figures Luca Motolese calls the 'retarded.' Who are often the ones who decide who must wear this stigma, because not conforming to the anguished sand of uselessness to which everyone adapts at every moment. This is why Luca says that we 'play.' Because this is art: to vent that immense bitterness on an imaginary plane, while every blessed moment we are crushed by the indifference of those who can no longer even grasp our words. The weapon of fools has become no longer even being able to take offence, and so here are the 'retarded.' Now irrecoverable, they put us in their place, because we ask to be there — the place that common sense would assign to them: that of the island outside the human. And instead here they are, it is precisely they, the humans. That 'beyond' sought by Nietzsche becomes the place of marginalisation, of the squint of those who no longer know which is the direction. Zombies, Carmelo Bene called them. And so on, in a river of contempt that is the only joy of those who feel the chains, for one reason or another.
And yet that paternal teaching becomes so Christian and at the same time so Nietzschean when our man tells his son: 'hate the stupid, help the weak.' Often the mechanism becomes even more intricate when one realises that some of these stupid people are also weak, because incapable of disobedience, relegated to their role, their security, which makes them incapable of understanding. Threatened by those needs that come from below, from those who say words that cannot be accepted, because too true.
Fathers who teach their children to disobey — the most difficult of disciplines.
He even recalls Angiolieri when he finds his personification in the hurricane.
"Hurricane Zakamoto has passed!"
It destroyed everything, even the houses of the wicked.
It weakened the stupid and stupefied the weak.
It found flaws, regrets, evil, ignorance,
and not even a drop of hope.
That desire for catastrophe that glues us to the television sets — between a piece of news on the ground bombings in Gaza, some accelerated sensationalism about the winds of war in the West, just to reawaken some military endorphin in the lizard cerebellum, and then some tremor at the Phlegraean Fields — the only hopes of salvation, as when Motolese's son announces the apocalypse to him. An anxious waiting for catastrophes. And yet the real catastrophe is that, were this apocalypse to happen, it would not be an apocatastasis. The luckiest would still have more escape routes, their own priority. After all, they paid, didn't they? For a half-minute-shorter queue at the airport. Yes, the old refrain: who are the real poor. Those who empty their wallets to depend on office life, from where to listen to Tananai's second-to-last single and plan the next dull act inside the wife.
And, in the end, when Motolese speaks to us of D'io ['of-I' / God], he reminds us of Levinas when he declared that God is the other. And the I too is another — yes, that other one said so. There lies the key. Something that does not belong to us, precisely because it belongs to us. We see it, it accompanies us, guides us, leads us into temptation, like a devil. The I, and that something that belongs to it — hence D'io.
But immersed as we are in dataism, deprived of that unconscious frustration of not belonging to that administrative machine that, in an anti-social chain, binds and divides us. United more by guilt than by responsibility. The cold dependence of the quiet life.
Pages full of hope, though not apparent or banal. As when one wishes eternal life for one's children and not for oneself. Because only a condemned man can love. And that love is, deep down, selfish in its self-annihilation, because the beloved always makes little of love. He needs it to live, to have meaning, and nothing else. Questions that seem obvious, but are only brief moments. They cannot last too long. Love is always an instant that lasts a few minutes, that takes us and that we think about for days, for years, for a lifetime, but like a faded memory. And so comes the voice of that father whose only function is to remain. To become eternal in the eternity of his children. Something that is other than himself. Always near Charleville, a poet who has visions, who dreams, who paints perfectly in a metaphysical style, though not being so, though being anti-metaphysical, where in the chaos of rage and frustration there is movement, ardour and confusion. Photons that cannot be gathered by the cornea. Perhaps a few gazes — those of Luca (the other who is me) or of Annalisa, and I imagine those of many others, like Daniele, Giuseppe, Chiara, Alessandro, Hadil, and many more — in the end, the world lit up with gazes before his works. He who does not make painting, because he is an artist. And when one stands beside him, one sees in the room a canvas still to be finished. Now and then he sits down and gives a brushstroke. Incredible how a seated man can do all this. And inhuman, perhaps, because we can no longer bear those noises coming from the street, while the ants stay quiet, by now absorbed in their metaphysics. It is quite true: Luca Motolese is not a painter, but an anti-metaphysical poet. Because having invested in catastrophe means accepting that tomorrow the strong will always win over the weak, and that we have a great freedom — the Leopardian one of dissenting with nature, with the foul planet on which we set our feet, with that ugly power that dominates to the common harm; and, vanity of vanities, your poverty makes me rich.
The transversal gaze of Luca Motolese goes beyond belonging and identification. The artist of the present is always also a little the artist of the future, not yet fully recognised. The artist reduced to essence — poor, perhaps — like those without spirit, heart or money. And so I find a poem dedicated to me. Perhaps because I too am that poor man.
It is in fact from my shack that I write this preface. In the zone where words are flatus vocis, no longer with any transforming force. Luca Motolese, my namesake, represents in some limping, somewhat anacoluthic way, an alter ego. And at the limit there is room for an antagonistic representation, a visual fire, over the cinematic frames of a painter, an exponent of Italian pop art, Mario Schifano. I remember well his film 'Umano non umano.' I had come across it in one of my various periods of obsession with Carmelo Bene, a figure who anticipated this non-belonging to the arts, with his theorising of a cinema that cannot be made with cinema, a theatre that cannot be made with theatre, a painting that cannot be made with painting, and so on for all the arts.
The aim is no longer painting, not even poetry. But a muffled parrhesia, in the mad need to resolve this reality, this limping will that dissolves in the vulgar representations of an ignorant yet powerful everyday. Oppressions and bombardments — where not material — suffered in a destiny that, day after day, we do not choose but that traps us. So that we find ourselves surrounded by those figures Luca Motolese calls the 'retarded.' Who are often the ones who decide who must wear this stigma, because not conforming to the anguished sand of uselessness to which everyone adapts at every moment. This is why Luca says that we 'play.' Because this is art: to vent that immense bitterness on an imaginary plane, while every blessed moment we are crushed by the indifference of those who can no longer even grasp our words. The weapon of fools has become no longer even being able to take offence, and so here are the 'retarded.' Now irrecoverable, they put us in their place, because we ask to be there — the place that common sense would assign to them: that of the island outside the human. And instead here they are, it is precisely they, the humans. That 'beyond' sought by Nietzsche becomes the place of marginalisation, of the squint of those who no longer know which is the direction. Zombies, Carmelo Bene called them. And so on, in a river of contempt that is the only joy of those who feel the chains, for one reason or another.
And yet that paternal teaching becomes so Christian and at the same time so Nietzschean when our man tells his son: 'hate the stupid, help the weak.' Often the mechanism becomes even more intricate when one realises that some of these stupid people are also weak, because incapable of disobedience, relegated to their role, their security, which makes them incapable of understanding. Threatened by those needs that come from below, from those who say words that cannot be accepted, because too true.
Fathers who teach their children to disobey — the most difficult of disciplines.
He even recalls Angiolieri when he finds his personification in the hurricane.
"Hurricane Zakamoto has passed!"
It destroyed everything, even the houses of the wicked.
It weakened the stupid and stupefied the weak.
It found flaws, regrets, evil, ignorance,
and not even a drop of hope.
That desire for catastrophe that glues us to the television sets — between a piece of news on the ground bombings in Gaza, some accelerated sensationalism about the winds of war in the West, just to reawaken some military endorphin in the lizard cerebellum, and then some tremor at the Phlegraean Fields — the only hopes of salvation, as when Motolese's son announces the apocalypse to him. An anxious waiting for catastrophes. And yet the real catastrophe is that, were this apocalypse to happen, it would not be an apocatastasis. The luckiest would still have more escape routes, their own priority. After all, they paid, didn't they? For a half-minute-shorter queue at the airport. Yes, the old refrain: who are the real poor. Those who empty their wallets to depend on office life, from where to listen to Tananai's second-to-last single and plan the next dull act inside the wife.
And, in the end, when Motolese speaks to us of D'io ['of-I' / God], he reminds us of Levinas when he declared that God is the other. And the I too is another — yes, that other one said so. There lies the key. Something that does not belong to us, precisely because it belongs to us. We see it, it accompanies us, guides us, leads us into temptation, like a devil. The I, and that something that belongs to it — hence D'io.
But immersed as we are in dataism, deprived of that unconscious frustration of not belonging to that administrative machine that, in an anti-social chain, binds and divides us. United more by guilt than by responsibility. The cold dependence of the quiet life.
Pages full of hope, though not apparent or banal. As when one wishes eternal life for one's children and not for oneself. Because only a condemned man can love. And that love is, deep down, selfish in its self-annihilation, because the beloved always makes little of love. He needs it to live, to have meaning, and nothing else. Questions that seem obvious, but are only brief moments. They cannot last too long. Love is always an instant that lasts a few minutes, that takes us and that we think about for days, for years, for a lifetime, but like a faded memory. And so comes the voice of that father whose only function is to remain. To become eternal in the eternity of his children. Something that is other than himself. Always near Charleville, a poet who has visions, who dreams, who paints perfectly in a metaphysical style, though not being so, though being anti-metaphysical, where in the chaos of rage and frustration there is movement, ardour and confusion. Photons that cannot be gathered by the cornea. Perhaps a few gazes — those of Luca (the other who is me) or of Annalisa, and I imagine those of many others, like Daniele, Giuseppe, Chiara, Alessandro, Hadil, and many more — in the end, the world lit up with gazes before his works. He who does not make painting, because he is an artist. And when one stands beside him, one sees in the room a canvas still to be finished. Now and then he sits down and gives a brushstroke. Incredible how a seated man can do all this. And inhuman, perhaps, because we can no longer bear those noises coming from the street, while the ants stay quiet, by now absorbed in their metaphysics. It is quite true: Luca Motolese is not a painter, but an anti-metaphysical poet. Because having invested in catastrophe means accepting that tomorrow the strong will always win over the weak, and that we have a great freedom — the Leopardian one of dissenting with nature, with the foul planet on which we set our feet, with that ugly power that dominates to the common harm; and, vanity of vanities, your poverty makes me rich.
La poesia, la pittura, il cinema. Di per sé sono oggi forme espressive ridotte agli orari dopolavoristici. Le persone passano il tempo a produrre e portare avanti le loro rappresentazioni deliranti, in un sapere sbagliato, ipocrita e violento.
Lo sguardo trasversale di Luca Motolese, va oltre l’appartenenza e l’identificazione. L’artista del presente è sempre anche un po’ quello del futuro, non ancora riconosciuto a pieno. L’artista ridotto a essenza, forse povera, come quelli senza spirito, cuore e denaro. Così mi ritrovo una poesia dedicata. Forse perché sono anche io quel povero.
È infatti dalla mia baracca che scrivo questa prefazione. Nella zona in cui le parole sono flatus vocis, senza più forza trasformatrice. Luca Motolese, mio omonimo, rappresenta per qualche verso zoppicante, un po’ anacoluto, un alter-ego. E al limite ci sta una rappresentazione antagonista, un incendio visivo, sui frame cinematografici di un pittore, un esponente della pop art italiana, Mario Schifano. Ricordo bene il suo film “Umano non umano”. Ci ero capitato in uno dei miei vari periodi di ossessione per Carmelo Bene, figura che anticipava questa inappartenenza alle arti. Con il suo teorizzare un cinema che non può farsi con il cinema, un teatro che non può farsi con il teatro, una pittura che non può farsi con la pittura e così via per tutte le arti.
Il fine non è più la pittura, nemmeno la poesia. Ma una sorda parresia , nel bisogno folle di risolvere questa realtà, questa volontàclaudicante, che si scioglie nelle rappresentazioni volgari di un quotidiano ignorante, ma potente. Oppressioni e bombardamenti, laddove non materiali, subiti nel destino che giorno dopo giorno non scegliamo ma ci incastra. Così che ci ritroviamo circondati da quelle figure che Luca Motolese chiama i “ritardati”. Che sono spesso quelli che decidono chi deve indossare questo stigma, perché non conformi alla sabbia angosciosa di inutilitàcui tutti si adeguano ogni momento. È per questo che Luca dice che noi “giochiamo”. Perché questo è l’arte. Sfogare quell’immensa amarezza in un piano immaginario, mentre ogni santo momento siamo schiacciati dall’indifferenza di chi non può più nemmeno cogliere le nostre parole. L’arma degli stupidi è diventata non potersi più nemmeno offendere, così ecco perché i “ritardati”. Ormai irrecuperabili ci mettono nel loro posto, perché noi chiediamo di starci. Nel posto che sarebbe loro assegnabile dal buon senso. Quello dell’isola fuori dall’umano. E invece eccoli, sono proprio loro, gli umani. Quell’oltre ricercato da Nietzsche, diventa il luogo dell’emarginazione, dello strabismo di chi non sa più quale sia la direzione. Gli zombie li chiamava Carmelo Bene. E così via, in un fiume di disprezzo che è l’unica gioia di chi senta le catene per una ragione o per l’altra.
Eppure diventa così cristiano e insieme nietzschiano quell’insegnamento paterno che ci racconta il nostro, quando dice a suo figlio “odia gli stupidi, aiuta i deboli”. Spesso il meccanismo diventa ancora più intricato quando si capisce che alcuni di questi stupidi sono anche deboli, perché incapaci di disobbedienza, relegati al loro ruolo, la loro sicurezza, che li rende incapaci di capire. Minacciati da quei bisogni che vengono dal basso, di chi dice parole che non possono essere accolte, perché troppo vere.
Padri che insegnano ai loro figli a disubbidire, la più difficile delle discipline.
Così ricorda addirittura l’Angioleri quando trova la sua personificazione nell’uragano.
"È passato l'uragano Zakamoto!"
Ha distrutto tutto, anche le case dei cattivi.
Ha indebolito gli stupidi e istupidito i deboli.
Ha trovato difetti, rimpianti, male, ignoranza,
e nemmeno una goccia di speranza.
Quel desiderio di catastrofe che ci incolla ai televisori, tra una notizia sui bombardamenti a terra su Gaza, qualche accelerato sensazionalismo sui venti di guerra in occidente, giusto per risvegliare qualche endorfina militare nel cervelletto lucertolino e poi qualche scossa ai Campi flegrei, uniche speranze di salvezza, come quando il figlio di Motolese gli annuncia l’apocalisse. Un'attesa ansiosa delle catastrofi. Eppure la vera catastrofe, è che qualora accadesse questa apocalisse, non sarebbe una apocatastasi. I più fortunati avrebbero comunque più vie di fuga, una loro priorità. D’altronde hanno pagato, no? Per fare una fila all’aeroporto di mezzo minuto più breve. Già, il tormentone, chi sono i veri poveri. Chi si svuota il portafoglio per dipendere dalla vita in ufficio, da dove ascoltare il penultimo singolo di Tananai e pianificare la prossima tonta sborrata dentro la moglie.
E in fondo quando Motolese ci parla di D’io, ci ricorda Levinas quando dichiarava che Dio è l’altro. E anche l’io è un altro, si lo diceva quell’altro. È proprio lì la chiave. Qualcosa che non ci appartiene, proprio perché appartiene a noi. Lo vediamo, ci accompagna, ci guida, ci induce in tentazione, come un diavolo. L’io, e quel qualcosa che gli appartiene, dunque D’io.
Ma immersi come siamo nel dataismo, privi di quella inconscia frustrazione di non appartenere a quella macchina amministrativa che in anti-social catena ci lega e ci divide. Uniti più che dalla responsabilità, dalla colpa. La dipendenza fredda del quieto vivere.
Pagine piene di speranza, seppure non apparenti e banali. Come quando si augura la vita eterna per i figli e non per sé. Perché solo un condannato può amare. E quell’amore è in fondo egoistico nel suo autoannullarsi, perché l’amato sempre se ne fa poco dell’amore. Gli serve per vivere, per avere senso e nient’altro. Questioni che paiono ovvie, ma che sono solo brevi momenti. Non possono durare troppo. L’amore è sempre un attimo che dura qualche minuto, che ci prende e ci pensiamo per giorni, per anni, per tutta la vita, ma come un ricordo sbiadito. E così arriva la voce di quel padre la cui funzione è solo quella di restare. Di diventare eterno nell’eternitàdei suoi figli. Qualcosa che è un altro da sé. Sempre nei pressi di Charleville, un poeta che ha le visioni, che fa sogni, che dipinge perfettamente in stile metafisico, pur non essendolo, pur essendo anti-metafisico, laddove nel caos della rabbia e della frustrazione, vi è movimento, ardore e confusione. Fotoni che non possono essere raccolti dalla cornea. Forse pochi sguardi, quelli di Luca (l’altro che sono io) o quello di Annalisa, e immagino quelli di tanti altri, come Daniele, Giuseppe, Chiara, Alessandro, Hadil, e ancora tanti altri, alla fine il mondo acceso di sguardi davanti alle sue opere. Lui che non fa pittura, perché è un artista. E quando gli si sta accanto, si vede nella stanza un telo ancora da finire. Ogni tanto si siede e da una pennellata. Incredibile come un uomo seduto possa fare tutto questo. E disumano, forse, perché non ne possiamo più di quei rumori che provengono dalla strada, mentre le formiche stanno quiete, ormai assorbite dalla loro metafisica. È proprio vero, Luca Motolese non è un pittore, ma un poeta anti-metafisico. Perché avere investito sulla catastrofe ha il significato di accettare che domani sempre i forti vinceranno sui deboli, e che abbiamo una grande libertà, quella leopardiana di dissentire con la natura, con l’immondo pianeta su cui mettiamo i piedi, con quel brutto potere che domina a comun danno e vanitàdi vanità, la vostra povertàmi rende ricco.
Lo sguardo trasversale di Luca Motolese, va oltre l’appartenenza e l’identificazione. L’artista del presente è sempre anche un po’ quello del futuro, non ancora riconosciuto a pieno. L’artista ridotto a essenza, forse povera, come quelli senza spirito, cuore e denaro. Così mi ritrovo una poesia dedicata. Forse perché sono anche io quel povero.
È infatti dalla mia baracca che scrivo questa prefazione. Nella zona in cui le parole sono flatus vocis, senza più forza trasformatrice. Luca Motolese, mio omonimo, rappresenta per qualche verso zoppicante, un po’ anacoluto, un alter-ego. E al limite ci sta una rappresentazione antagonista, un incendio visivo, sui frame cinematografici di un pittore, un esponente della pop art italiana, Mario Schifano. Ricordo bene il suo film “Umano non umano”. Ci ero capitato in uno dei miei vari periodi di ossessione per Carmelo Bene, figura che anticipava questa inappartenenza alle arti. Con il suo teorizzare un cinema che non può farsi con il cinema, un teatro che non può farsi con il teatro, una pittura che non può farsi con la pittura e così via per tutte le arti.
Il fine non è più la pittura, nemmeno la poesia. Ma una sorda parresia , nel bisogno folle di risolvere questa realtà, questa volontàclaudicante, che si scioglie nelle rappresentazioni volgari di un quotidiano ignorante, ma potente. Oppressioni e bombardamenti, laddove non materiali, subiti nel destino che giorno dopo giorno non scegliamo ma ci incastra. Così che ci ritroviamo circondati da quelle figure che Luca Motolese chiama i “ritardati”. Che sono spesso quelli che decidono chi deve indossare questo stigma, perché non conformi alla sabbia angosciosa di inutilitàcui tutti si adeguano ogni momento. È per questo che Luca dice che noi “giochiamo”. Perché questo è l’arte. Sfogare quell’immensa amarezza in un piano immaginario, mentre ogni santo momento siamo schiacciati dall’indifferenza di chi non può più nemmeno cogliere le nostre parole. L’arma degli stupidi è diventata non potersi più nemmeno offendere, così ecco perché i “ritardati”. Ormai irrecuperabili ci mettono nel loro posto, perché noi chiediamo di starci. Nel posto che sarebbe loro assegnabile dal buon senso. Quello dell’isola fuori dall’umano. E invece eccoli, sono proprio loro, gli umani. Quell’oltre ricercato da Nietzsche, diventa il luogo dell’emarginazione, dello strabismo di chi non sa più quale sia la direzione. Gli zombie li chiamava Carmelo Bene. E così via, in un fiume di disprezzo che è l’unica gioia di chi senta le catene per una ragione o per l’altra.
Eppure diventa così cristiano e insieme nietzschiano quell’insegnamento paterno che ci racconta il nostro, quando dice a suo figlio “odia gli stupidi, aiuta i deboli”. Spesso il meccanismo diventa ancora più intricato quando si capisce che alcuni di questi stupidi sono anche deboli, perché incapaci di disobbedienza, relegati al loro ruolo, la loro sicurezza, che li rende incapaci di capire. Minacciati da quei bisogni che vengono dal basso, di chi dice parole che non possono essere accolte, perché troppo vere.
Padri che insegnano ai loro figli a disubbidire, la più difficile delle discipline.
Così ricorda addirittura l’Angioleri quando trova la sua personificazione nell’uragano.
"È passato l'uragano Zakamoto!"
Ha distrutto tutto, anche le case dei cattivi.
Ha indebolito gli stupidi e istupidito i deboli.
Ha trovato difetti, rimpianti, male, ignoranza,
e nemmeno una goccia di speranza.
Quel desiderio di catastrofe che ci incolla ai televisori, tra una notizia sui bombardamenti a terra su Gaza, qualche accelerato sensazionalismo sui venti di guerra in occidente, giusto per risvegliare qualche endorfina militare nel cervelletto lucertolino e poi qualche scossa ai Campi flegrei, uniche speranze di salvezza, come quando il figlio di Motolese gli annuncia l’apocalisse. Un'attesa ansiosa delle catastrofi. Eppure la vera catastrofe, è che qualora accadesse questa apocalisse, non sarebbe una apocatastasi. I più fortunati avrebbero comunque più vie di fuga, una loro priorità. D’altronde hanno pagato, no? Per fare una fila all’aeroporto di mezzo minuto più breve. Già, il tormentone, chi sono i veri poveri. Chi si svuota il portafoglio per dipendere dalla vita in ufficio, da dove ascoltare il penultimo singolo di Tananai e pianificare la prossima tonta sborrata dentro la moglie.
E in fondo quando Motolese ci parla di D’io, ci ricorda Levinas quando dichiarava che Dio è l’altro. E anche l’io è un altro, si lo diceva quell’altro. È proprio lì la chiave. Qualcosa che non ci appartiene, proprio perché appartiene a noi. Lo vediamo, ci accompagna, ci guida, ci induce in tentazione, come un diavolo. L’io, e quel qualcosa che gli appartiene, dunque D’io.
Ma immersi come siamo nel dataismo, privi di quella inconscia frustrazione di non appartenere a quella macchina amministrativa che in anti-social catena ci lega e ci divide. Uniti più che dalla responsabilità, dalla colpa. La dipendenza fredda del quieto vivere.
Pagine piene di speranza, seppure non apparenti e banali. Come quando si augura la vita eterna per i figli e non per sé. Perché solo un condannato può amare. E quell’amore è in fondo egoistico nel suo autoannullarsi, perché l’amato sempre se ne fa poco dell’amore. Gli serve per vivere, per avere senso e nient’altro. Questioni che paiono ovvie, ma che sono solo brevi momenti. Non possono durare troppo. L’amore è sempre un attimo che dura qualche minuto, che ci prende e ci pensiamo per giorni, per anni, per tutta la vita, ma come un ricordo sbiadito. E così arriva la voce di quel padre la cui funzione è solo quella di restare. Di diventare eterno nell’eternitàdei suoi figli. Qualcosa che è un altro da sé. Sempre nei pressi di Charleville, un poeta che ha le visioni, che fa sogni, che dipinge perfettamente in stile metafisico, pur non essendolo, pur essendo anti-metafisico, laddove nel caos della rabbia e della frustrazione, vi è movimento, ardore e confusione. Fotoni che non possono essere raccolti dalla cornea. Forse pochi sguardi, quelli di Luca (l’altro che sono io) o quello di Annalisa, e immagino quelli di tanti altri, come Daniele, Giuseppe, Chiara, Alessandro, Hadil, e ancora tanti altri, alla fine il mondo acceso di sguardi davanti alle sue opere. Lui che non fa pittura, perché è un artista. E quando gli si sta accanto, si vede nella stanza un telo ancora da finire. Ogni tanto si siede e da una pennellata. Incredibile come un uomo seduto possa fare tutto questo. E disumano, forse, perché non ne possiamo più di quei rumori che provengono dalla strada, mentre le formiche stanno quiete, ormai assorbite dalla loro metafisica. È proprio vero, Luca Motolese non è un pittore, ma un poeta anti-metafisico. Perché avere investito sulla catastrofe ha il significato di accettare che domani sempre i forti vinceranno sui deboli, e che abbiamo una grande libertà, quella leopardiana di dissentire con la natura, con l’immondo pianeta su cui mettiamo i piedi, con quel brutto potere che domina a comun danno e vanitàdi vanità, la vostra povertàmi rende ricco.
Poetry, painting, cinema. In themselves, today, they are expressive forms reduced to after-work hours. People spend their time producing and carrying forward their delirious representations, in a knowledge that is wrong, hypocritical and violent.
The transversal gaze of Luca Motolese goes beyond belonging and identification. The artist of the present is always also a little the artist of the future, not yet fully recognised. The artist reduced to essence — poor, perhaps — like those without spirit, heart or money. And so I find a poem dedicated to me. Perhaps because I too am that poor man.
It is in fact from my shack that I write this preface. In the zone where words are flatus vocis, no longer with any transforming force. Luca Motolese, my namesake, represents in some limping, somewhat anacoluthic way, an alter ego. And at the limit there is room for an antagonistic representation, a visual fire, over the cinematic frames of a painter, an exponent of Italian pop art, Mario Schifano. I remember well his film 'Umano non umano.' I had come across it in one of my various periods of obsession with Carmelo Bene, a figure who anticipated this non-belonging to the arts, with his theorising of a cinema that cannot be made with cinema, a theatre that cannot be made with theatre, a painting that cannot be made with painting, and so on for all the arts.
The aim is no longer painting, not even poetry. But a muffled parrhesia, in the mad need to resolve this reality, this limping will that dissolves in the vulgar representations of an ignorant yet powerful everyday. Oppressions and bombardments — where not material — suffered in a destiny that, day after day, we do not choose but that traps us. So that we find ourselves surrounded by those figures Luca Motolese calls the 'retarded.' Who are often the ones who decide who must wear this stigma, because not conforming to the anguished sand of uselessness to which everyone adapts at every moment. This is why Luca says that we 'play.' Because this is art: to vent that immense bitterness on an imaginary plane, while every blessed moment we are crushed by the indifference of those who can no longer even grasp our words. The weapon of fools has become no longer even being able to take offence, and so here are the 'retarded.' Now irrecoverable, they put us in their place, because we ask to be there — the place that common sense would assign to them: that of the island outside the human. And instead here they are, it is precisely they, the humans. That 'beyond' sought by Nietzsche becomes the place of marginalisation, of the squint of those who no longer know which is the direction. Zombies, Carmelo Bene called them. And so on, in a river of contempt that is the only joy of those who feel the chains, for one reason or another.
And yet that paternal teaching becomes so Christian and at the same time so Nietzschean when our man tells his son: 'hate the stupid, help the weak.' Often the mechanism becomes even more intricate when one realises that some of these stupid people are also weak, because incapable of disobedience, relegated to their role, their security, which makes them incapable of understanding. Threatened by those needs that come from below, from those who say words that cannot be accepted, because too true.
Fathers who teach their children to disobey — the most difficult of disciplines.
He even recalls Angiolieri when he finds his personification in the hurricane.
"Hurricane Zakamoto has passed!"
It destroyed everything, even the houses of the wicked.
It weakened the stupid and stupefied the weak.
It found flaws, regrets, evil, ignorance,
and not even a drop of hope.
That desire for catastrophe that glues us to the television sets — between a piece of news on the ground bombings in Gaza, some accelerated sensationalism about the winds of war in the West, just to reawaken some military endorphin in the lizard cerebellum, and then some tremor at the Phlegraean Fields — the only hopes of salvation, as when Motolese's son announces the apocalypse to him. An anxious waiting for catastrophes. And yet the real catastrophe is that, were this apocalypse to happen, it would not be an apocatastasis. The luckiest would still have more escape routes, their own priority. After all, they paid, didn't they? For a half-minute-shorter queue at the airport. Yes, the old refrain: who are the real poor. Those who empty their wallets to depend on office life, from where to listen to Tananai's second-to-last single and plan the next dull act inside the wife.
And, in the end, when Motolese speaks to us of D'io ['of-I' / God], he reminds us of Levinas when he declared that God is the other. And the I too is another — yes, that other one said so. There lies the key. Something that does not belong to us, precisely because it belongs to us. We see it, it accompanies us, guides us, leads us into temptation, like a devil. The I, and that something that belongs to it — hence D'io.
But immersed as we are in dataism, deprived of that unconscious frustration of not belonging to that administrative machine that, in an anti-social chain, binds and divides us. United more by guilt than by responsibility. The cold dependence of the quiet life.
Pages full of hope, though not apparent or banal. As when one wishes eternal life for one's children and not for oneself. Because only a condemned man can love. And that love is, deep down, selfish in its self-annihilation, because the beloved always makes little of love. He needs it to live, to have meaning, and nothing else. Questions that seem obvious, but are only brief moments. They cannot last too long. Love is always an instant that lasts a few minutes, that takes us and that we think about for days, for years, for a lifetime, but like a faded memory. And so comes the voice of that father whose only function is to remain. To become eternal in the eternity of his children. Something that is other than himself. Always near Charleville, a poet who has visions, who dreams, who paints perfectly in a metaphysical style, though not being so, though being anti-metaphysical, where in the chaos of rage and frustration there is movement, ardour and confusion. Photons that cannot be gathered by the cornea. Perhaps a few gazes — those of Luca (the other who is me) or of Annalisa, and I imagine those of many others, like Daniele, Giuseppe, Chiara, Alessandro, Hadil, and many more — in the end, the world lit up with gazes before his works. He who does not make painting, because he is an artist. And when one stands beside him, one sees in the room a canvas still to be finished. Now and then he sits down and gives a brushstroke. Incredible how a seated man can do all this. And inhuman, perhaps, because we can no longer bear those noises coming from the street, while the ants stay quiet, by now absorbed in their metaphysics. It is quite true: Luca Motolese is not a painter, but an anti-metaphysical poet. Because having invested in catastrophe means accepting that tomorrow the strong will always win over the weak, and that we have a great freedom — the Leopardian one of dissenting with nature, with the foul planet on which we set our feet, with that ugly power that dominates to the common harm; and, vanity of vanities, your poverty makes me rich.
The transversal gaze of Luca Motolese goes beyond belonging and identification. The artist of the present is always also a little the artist of the future, not yet fully recognised. The artist reduced to essence — poor, perhaps — like those without spirit, heart or money. And so I find a poem dedicated to me. Perhaps because I too am that poor man.
It is in fact from my shack that I write this preface. In the zone where words are flatus vocis, no longer with any transforming force. Luca Motolese, my namesake, represents in some limping, somewhat anacoluthic way, an alter ego. And at the limit there is room for an antagonistic representation, a visual fire, over the cinematic frames of a painter, an exponent of Italian pop art, Mario Schifano. I remember well his film 'Umano non umano.' I had come across it in one of my various periods of obsession with Carmelo Bene, a figure who anticipated this non-belonging to the arts, with his theorising of a cinema that cannot be made with cinema, a theatre that cannot be made with theatre, a painting that cannot be made with painting, and so on for all the arts.
The aim is no longer painting, not even poetry. But a muffled parrhesia, in the mad need to resolve this reality, this limping will that dissolves in the vulgar representations of an ignorant yet powerful everyday. Oppressions and bombardments — where not material — suffered in a destiny that, day after day, we do not choose but that traps us. So that we find ourselves surrounded by those figures Luca Motolese calls the 'retarded.' Who are often the ones who decide who must wear this stigma, because not conforming to the anguished sand of uselessness to which everyone adapts at every moment. This is why Luca says that we 'play.' Because this is art: to vent that immense bitterness on an imaginary plane, while every blessed moment we are crushed by the indifference of those who can no longer even grasp our words. The weapon of fools has become no longer even being able to take offence, and so here are the 'retarded.' Now irrecoverable, they put us in their place, because we ask to be there — the place that common sense would assign to them: that of the island outside the human. And instead here they are, it is precisely they, the humans. That 'beyond' sought by Nietzsche becomes the place of marginalisation, of the squint of those who no longer know which is the direction. Zombies, Carmelo Bene called them. And so on, in a river of contempt that is the only joy of those who feel the chains, for one reason or another.
And yet that paternal teaching becomes so Christian and at the same time so Nietzschean when our man tells his son: 'hate the stupid, help the weak.' Often the mechanism becomes even more intricate when one realises that some of these stupid people are also weak, because incapable of disobedience, relegated to their role, their security, which makes them incapable of understanding. Threatened by those needs that come from below, from those who say words that cannot be accepted, because too true.
Fathers who teach their children to disobey — the most difficult of disciplines.
He even recalls Angiolieri when he finds his personification in the hurricane.
"Hurricane Zakamoto has passed!"
It destroyed everything, even the houses of the wicked.
It weakened the stupid and stupefied the weak.
It found flaws, regrets, evil, ignorance,
and not even a drop of hope.
That desire for catastrophe that glues us to the television sets — between a piece of news on the ground bombings in Gaza, some accelerated sensationalism about the winds of war in the West, just to reawaken some military endorphin in the lizard cerebellum, and then some tremor at the Phlegraean Fields — the only hopes of salvation, as when Motolese's son announces the apocalypse to him. An anxious waiting for catastrophes. And yet the real catastrophe is that, were this apocalypse to happen, it would not be an apocatastasis. The luckiest would still have more escape routes, their own priority. After all, they paid, didn't they? For a half-minute-shorter queue at the airport. Yes, the old refrain: who are the real poor. Those who empty their wallets to depend on office life, from where to listen to Tananai's second-to-last single and plan the next dull act inside the wife.
And, in the end, when Motolese speaks to us of D'io ['of-I' / God], he reminds us of Levinas when he declared that God is the other. And the I too is another — yes, that other one said so. There lies the key. Something that does not belong to us, precisely because it belongs to us. We see it, it accompanies us, guides us, leads us into temptation, like a devil. The I, and that something that belongs to it — hence D'io.
But immersed as we are in dataism, deprived of that unconscious frustration of not belonging to that administrative machine that, in an anti-social chain, binds and divides us. United more by guilt than by responsibility. The cold dependence of the quiet life.
Pages full of hope, though not apparent or banal. As when one wishes eternal life for one's children and not for oneself. Because only a condemned man can love. And that love is, deep down, selfish in its self-annihilation, because the beloved always makes little of love. He needs it to live, to have meaning, and nothing else. Questions that seem obvious, but are only brief moments. They cannot last too long. Love is always an instant that lasts a few minutes, that takes us and that we think about for days, for years, for a lifetime, but like a faded memory. And so comes the voice of that father whose only function is to remain. To become eternal in the eternity of his children. Something that is other than himself. Always near Charleville, a poet who has visions, who dreams, who paints perfectly in a metaphysical style, though not being so, though being anti-metaphysical, where in the chaos of rage and frustration there is movement, ardour and confusion. Photons that cannot be gathered by the cornea. Perhaps a few gazes — those of Luca (the other who is me) or of Annalisa, and I imagine those of many others, like Daniele, Giuseppe, Chiara, Alessandro, Hadil, and many more — in the end, the world lit up with gazes before his works. He who does not make painting, because he is an artist. And when one stands beside him, one sees in the room a canvas still to be finished. Now and then he sits down and gives a brushstroke. Incredible how a seated man can do all this. And inhuman, perhaps, because we can no longer bear those noises coming from the street, while the ants stay quiet, by now absorbed in their metaphysics. It is quite true: Luca Motolese is not a painter, but an anti-metaphysical poet. Because having invested in catastrophe means accepting that tomorrow the strong will always win over the weak, and that we have a great freedom — the Leopardian one of dissenting with nature, with the foul planet on which we set our feet, with that ugly power that dominates to the common harm; and, vanity of vanities, your poverty makes me rich.