EXPLICATING AND REGULATING
Being in the world. Creating the tools for legislating.
“On this occasion, I disciplined my thoughts. I was forced to observe something in its entirety. But I already know that I will soon revert to my bad old ways. We cannot organise our disordered thoughts with an effort of will.”
(From Carlo Cassola’s diary, 19 December 1972)
“Art is not an attempt of the artist to reconcile existence with his vision; it is an attempt to create his own world in this world.”
(From Katherine Mansfield’s diary, November 1921)
‘Will the order here, the internal one and the one of organised men for living, manage to avoid the infinite disorder that lies out there?’
(From Gilles Clément on-board diary, 18 September – 18 October 2004)
First comes the direct relationship with the substance and then comes the word.
It is a reality made of colour and emotionality that a form of containment and a structure for presenting it externally are created for.
I decide to use all of those elements usually considered as equipment, tools, systems which transmit the work, such as the caption, the site, the archive etc., as an integral part of my work.
It is almost as though I were going to define a sort of ecosystem, a world that is capable of defining itself.
This chapter picks up on also the list of the elements created one by one, to organise the internal bureaucratic system of my archive and to regulate it in relation to the external world.
Some of these entities are only tools for governing, others have assumed the status of work and others have in turn given rise to other works.
(Written 2017. Modified in 2024)
