The Tactilist
2020
4K Video, 4-channel sound, 07’35’’, loop.
Inkjet prints (5), 70 x 100 cm, framed.
Newspaper, Napkins, Plastic, Asphalt, Water.
Installation views, Inter Arts Center, Malmö.
The video installation, The Tactilist and the publication, AT THIS LATE HOUR (2020), both depart from the manifest “Il Tattilismo”, written in 1921 by poet, futurist and fascist, F. T. Marinetti. My visual and textual work on this late futurist manifesto, attempts to reveal and saturate nuances of violence and control within Marinetti’s seemingly romantic writing, thinking of ways in which text both expose and conceal meaning and how language in general, construct realities. Embedded in the fabric of this utopian piece on touch, sensibility, closeness and love – one also finds ideals of purity, supremacy, cure and optimization; resonating a totalitarian ideology, underlining the futurists infamous connection with “The Italian Fasces of Combat”, (Later The National Fascist Party). Centered around subjects of disease, pain and healing, the installation, as well as the published work, uses ideas of ‘the symptomatic’ and study the body as image – considering a surface for projection, a prop and clearly politicized; operating as a strong metaphor of society at large.
