Io, Carlo
In Perenne Riserva

Shards of Reality.

"All that was truly lived moves away into representation." (G. Debord)

A. Warhol screen prints Campbell's cans.

1) Pride

The proud person flaunts confidence and culture and belittles the merits of others. However, his psychological position is more complex: he is not always truly convinced of possessing all the qualities he attributes to himself. He fears disappointments and failures because they would reveal the sad truth he himself suspects, that of actually being mediocre, average, of falling within the norm.

2) Sloth

Laziness, indifference: the slothful person lingers voluptuously in idleness and error. He knows his duties, but rather than fulfill them, he downplays their importance, convincing himself that they are trivial and that postponing them has no serious consequences. 

3) Lust

Lust is not merely the dedication to sensual pleasures. The lustful person is especially one who is continuously captivated and lulled by sensual fantasies. Lust becomes a vice when the constant dwelling of thought on desire prevents the normal course of daily tasks.

4) Wrath

Wrath is not the occasional outburst of anger; it becomes a vice when there is an extreme susceptibility that allows even the most trivial of trifles to unleash wild fury.

5) Gluttony

The sin of gluttony is not mere greed or excessive consumption of food, but dietary luxury, a preference for refined cuisine, a tendency to consume only premium and expensive dishes.

6) Envy

For the envious, the happiness of others is a source of personal frustration. He diminishes others' successes and attributes them to luck or chance or claims they are the result of unfairness.

7) Greed

Extreme restraint of expenses not out of necessity, but for the sake of saving itself. The miser sees himself as virtuous and describes himself with delicate and balanced adjectives: prudent, attentive, frugal, sparing.

The miser. (Mara Maionchi and her desire to position art at a record level)

He is a man in his fifties, with very black and curly Afro hair, unkempt mustache, and round, thick glasses.

He dresses like a poor man from the '40s, lives in a house on the outskirts of Rome where he was born and raised, gets up every morning at 6:30, his mother and sister wait for him in the kitchen for breakfast.

Cigarette butts in the dish from the night before. Image: ant. Butts in the ashtray. Butts after a coffee.

He washes his face and shaves, scolds his sister for wasting too much water while squeezing the toothpaste tube from the end.

He takes the elevator with a sleepy face, on his way from home to the metro he already relishes the smell of the morning newspaper, "Metro" the one strictly free for all loyal subscribers. Image: smiling kids showing their metro cards, the metro passing by, pure white.

On the metro, he occupies his little spot without encroaching on anyone else's space, keen to spot potential "pickpockets," he arrives at work just as his colleagues are getting coffee, he pretends to talk on the phone to avoid joining them, but the colleagues walk past without even greeting him.

He passes by the bar, shoots a dirty look at the gypsy woman sitting and begging and catches sight of a girl entering the bar, decides to follow her, she is standing in line turned around, he follows and lines up, image: he making a sign of dissent.

She gets a cappuccino & croissant, he behind, caught in the passion but unwilling to spend a euro except for forced expenses, he buys a scratch card with a trembling hand while from the wallet he pulls out that money, an investment.

SHE HAD DISAPPEARED.

Carlo, Me, an artist known mainly for initially collaborating on some dance tracks has recently emerged as a disheveled and countercultural artist who through a beautiful use of dialectics in his songs expresses a certain dissent to the postmodern collective imagination, where everything is bought, where everything is illusion and simulacrum.

The only terrain of resistance aside from theater, as Baudrillard said, is found still in those who expose their thoughts against the capitalist society spawned by television, against this fetish that traverses our feelings every day the last vestige of reality also compromised by the relentless ideological coercion to which we are subjected every day in our homes.

In 1844 Max Stirner theorized the destruction of society, replaced by a "Union of Unique", (egoistic subjects stripped of all phantasms present in society) and being for nothingness.

In the Twenty-first century, he reintroduces themes now only remaining at the unconscious and subcortical level in the too animalistic soul of man who, overestimating himself, imposes low-paying jobs and filth television just to distract us.

Illusions...

Carlo, Me, German but of Italian origin demolishes these specters through the artful use of dance music but with lyrics that will convince you of the intellectual dissolution to which we are daily subjected.

I recommend listening to and watching his also very nice videos on YouTube.