Dagli Appennini alle onde (From the Apennines to the waves)

Every Sunday evening I left home, to descend the valley, to cross the plain from West to East and finally reaching Venice. This weekly round trip was of fundamental inspiration for Dagli Appennini alle onde (From the Apennines to the waves). As a young student, already …giovane macellaio all’Accademia di Belle Arti (…a young butcher at the Academy of Fine Arts), for the first time I left home to go to live and study in a big city. In the many journeys I made, I watched, like a film, the strip of landscape that stretched before my eyes as far as Venice. I saw myself as a golden eagle flying from the heights of the mountains towards the sea and finally landing in Campo San Maurizio. An animal with acute eyesight, the same that pervaded me when I looked at that strip of landscape as long as my journey. I preciously kept all the round-trip tickets for my travels and joining them together with a cotton thread I obtained a long strip, the shape and idea of my commuting route.

Standing upright and facing the audience. I wear a crude wire diadem and have an adhesive figurine of an eagle glued to my forehead. The strip of tickets, fixed to the diadem above the forehead, descends flying to the ground like a half-parabola with a horizontal direction, diving into the bowl full of water, few meters from me and containing the bird’s eye view of Venice by Jacopo de’ Barbari. An action of dressing and posture lasting about fifteen minutes.

As was often the case with actions from that period, there is no photographic or video documentation of the project. Only a couple of sketches remain, the eagle sticker and an image of the studio/butcher shop (my studio) where you can see the strip of tickets used in the performance.