video
2015
The work is a reflection on a dream, that of the Communist ideal that has always been oriented toward the future. It is a moment that never arrived, a projection broken from the end of the “Grand Narratives,” a future that had to stop in front of a present that did not want to wait any longer to become only past.
Through a double reversal, my work analyzes the song “Bandiera rossa”, one of the most famous songs of the Italian labour movement, a symbol of the socialist and communist movements. During the action in a square, the recorder plays the song backward, thus becoming indecipherable in its political message. Meanwhile the performer climbs on a stepladder and mimicking an ideal monumentality of the action, “sings” the song using sign language. The performer follows the original text (not the reverse track), transforming lyrics created for the masses into a niche discourse that only a few can understand, shifting the message to the performer’s body language.
