Noel Gazzano (2015) La Fine di un'Era. Performance, 133'.
NOEL GAZZANO (2015) THE END OF AN ERA. PERFORMANCE, 133'.
Bernardelli rifle, antique garment, cotton thread and crochet needle.
ARTIST STATEMENT
What is violence? We all have a nearby or distant rifle to deal with. But how do we do this?
I come from a family of men who were violent with women. This is the rifle my father inherited from his father. Now that they have passed, ironically it is mine.
Taboo to speak about it. Taboo to break the omertà protecting public image. Private shame of the victims. Broken women, made passive-aggressive by a culture of impotence: taboo to admit it. Emotionally anesthetized, they gave up being social actors, unwittingly replicating the abusive system that annihilated them. Violent themselves? Taboo to even just think about it.
And what about me? Do I speak only because I am an artist? At which cost? How many relationships get damaged? How much violence do I endure?
This is my father's garage. I am wearing an Early-1900s nightgown like the ones my grandmother and the generations before her wore. Crochet, once symbol of passive domesticity, for me embodies the resilience of those who mute violence with daily patient work, never losing their identity, humanity, imagination, hope. I'm part of a History I want to change.
I did not rehearse. I had never touched that rifle. I did not know I would run out of thread. Real life. I disrobed my body to preserve the integrity of my own life. As a consequence, I inadvertently opened a Pandora's vase of further taboos: what is a woman's body? There's no worse taboo than the one that is unseen because believed obsolete. “A woman's body is to be appreciated, and thus it must have a certain shape”, says mainstream culture; “or it is to have babies”. “It's to express myself and thus it is how it is”, says the artist; “sometimes one has a baby with it, sometimes one doesn't”. Taboo, taboo.
To get naked in the face of violence? Yes, because understanding violence we can become immune to it. And I understood it, at least partially. I observed the dilated pupils of who hated my free mind. I saw that the geopolitical dimensions of violence have an individual, intrapsychic origin: Hannah Arendt's banality of evil, what psychiatrists call lack of affect.
So I give my last bit of beauty to neutralize violence, but then I leave. My job is done. There's a white canvas where folly stood. But that canvas isn't for me. I go elsewhere in my new birth. Free.
Unedited recording of the performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWTuBEAdYpY
Bernardelli rifle, antique garment, cotton thread and crochet needle.
ARTIST STATEMENT
What is violence? We all have a nearby or distant rifle to deal with. But how do we do this?
I come from a family of men who were violent with women. This is the rifle my father inherited from his father. Now that they have passed, ironically it is mine.
Taboo to speak about it. Taboo to break the omertà protecting public image. Private shame of the victims. Broken women, made passive-aggressive by a culture of impotence: taboo to admit it. Emotionally anesthetized, they gave up being social actors, unwittingly replicating the abusive system that annihilated them. Violent themselves? Taboo to even just think about it.
And what about me? Do I speak only because I am an artist? At which cost? How many relationships get damaged? How much violence do I endure?
This is my father's garage. I am wearing an Early-1900s nightgown like the ones my grandmother and the generations before her wore. Crochet, once symbol of passive domesticity, for me embodies the resilience of those who mute violence with daily patient work, never losing their identity, humanity, imagination, hope. I'm part of a History I want to change.
I did not rehearse. I had never touched that rifle. I did not know I would run out of thread. Real life. I disrobed my body to preserve the integrity of my own life. As a consequence, I inadvertently opened a Pandora's vase of further taboos: what is a woman's body? There's no worse taboo than the one that is unseen because believed obsolete. “A woman's body is to be appreciated, and thus it must have a certain shape”, says mainstream culture; “or it is to have babies”. “It's to express myself and thus it is how it is”, says the artist; “sometimes one has a baby with it, sometimes one doesn't”. Taboo, taboo.
To get naked in the face of violence? Yes, because understanding violence we can become immune to it. And I understood it, at least partially. I observed the dilated pupils of who hated my free mind. I saw that the geopolitical dimensions of violence have an individual, intrapsychic origin: Hannah Arendt's banality of evil, what psychiatrists call lack of affect.
So I give my last bit of beauty to neutralize violence, but then I leave. My job is done. There's a white canvas where folly stood. But that canvas isn't for me. I go elsewhere in my new birth. Free.
Unedited recording of the performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWTuBEAdYpY
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