A DREAM CAME THROUGH

“…BEATO PAESE, IL NOSTRO, DOVE CERTE PAROLE VANNO TRONFIE PER VIA, GORGOGLIANDO E SPARANDO A VENTAGLIO LA CODA, COME TANTI TACCHINI.” [1]

L’UOMO BIANCO E L’UOMO DI COLORE, LUIGI PIRANDELLO

Labor and the madness of contemporary times take a strange turn in this performance in which a contract of enslavement ties people to an ideal job, cooling down the planet by fanning themselves.

Le Schiavone is one of ten sections of Lanfranco Aceti’s installation titled Preferring Sinking to Surrender which was conceived by the artist for the Italian Pavilion, Resilient Communities, curated by Alessandro Melis for the Venice Architecture Biennale, 2021. The ten sections are: Tools for Catching Clouds; Preferring Sinking to Surrender, Part I; Preferring Sinking to Surrender, Part II; Sacred Waters; Le Schiavone; Orthós; Seven Veils; Signs; Rehearsal; and The Ending of the End. These sections, singularly and collectively, create a complex narrative that responds to this year’s theme How Will We Live Together? set by Hashim Sarkis, curator of the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale.

The works of art — realized as a series of performances, installations, sculptures, video, and painting contributions — are part of the installation at the Italian Pavilion from May 21, 2021, to November 21, 2021, the opening and closing dates of the Venice Architecture Biennale.

This is a performative project that started in 2006 and in 2008 took place in Romania, as a critique of forms of enslavement, subcontracting and outsourcing.

The artwork has also been selected for the AND Festival in Manchester and a performance with installation with take place at the Cornerhouse as part of the exhibition What I Have Done to (De)serve This? curated by Omar Kholeif (FACT) and Sarah Perks (Cornerhouse).
Produced in partnership with Blank Media Collective.

The performance A Dream Came Through questions the politics of exploitative labour, by paying half-naked men to fan themselves for minimum wage. An advert appeared online and through several news outlets asking people to become part of the project. The images below are part of the performance that took place in Manchester.

Wanted: male participants for performance

A Dream Came Through
Have you ever dreamed of doing nothing but ‘fanning yourself’ all day long? This is the dream come true – you will be paid to sit around and fan yourself for the duration of a working day. There will be a contract signed between you and the artist producing this art project. And yes, you will be the art object, sitting there, fanning yourself, for all to see.

Please send an expression of interest, plus your contact details and basic information about yourself to dream@andfestival.org.uk

Note the performance takes place Wed 29 Aug 18:00 – 21:00 and Thu 30 Aug 11:00 – 18:00, participants absolutely must be available for the entire duration.

After signing a contract of exploitation, the workers are literally paid to do nothing, fanning themselves for all to see. At first glance an ideal situation perhaps, or alternatively the impossibility of any labour to be more than an institutional process of enslavement. How successful is the real promise of a minimum wage, of economic liberation, within a ‘dream’ society? Or indeed, within the context of an art world event?

An article that discusses the issue of art, exploitation and labor titled The Disappearance of Signs in a Landscape of Deceptions was published on the NeMe platform in 2009.

: Lanfranco Aceti, A Dream Came Through – The Signing, 2012. Performance.

: A Dream Came Through – The Signing, 2012, Lanfranco Aceti.

: A Dream Came Through – The Signing, 2012, Lanfranco Aceti.

: A Dream Came Through – The Signing, 2012, Lanfranco Aceti.

: A Dream Came Through – The Signing, 2012, Lanfranco Aceti.

: A Dream Came Through – The Signing, 2012, Lanfranco Aceti.

: A Dream Came Through, Visions of the Future, 2012, Lanfranco Aceti.

: A Dream Came Through, Visions of the Future, 2012, Lanfranco Aceti.

: Fanning Action #1, 2012, Lanfranco Aceti.

: Fanning Action #2, 2012, Lanfranco Aceti.

: Fanning Action #3, 2012, Lanfranco Aceti.

: Fanning Action #4, 2012, Lanfranco Aceti.

: Fanning Action #5, 2012, Lanfranco Aceti.

: Fanning Action #6, 2012, Lanfranco Aceti.

: A Dream Came Through – Rest, 2012, Lanfranco Aceti.

: A Dream Came Through – Rest, 2012, Lanfranco Aceti.

: A Dream Came Through, Proud at Work, 2012, Lanfranco Aceti.

: A Dream Came Through, What Have I Done to Deserve This?, 2012, Lanfranco Aceti.

Le Schiavone is a sculptural installation and performance that, together with drawings and photographs, explores the complexity of labor and women’s condition in the countryside in Italy. It is strictly linked to the notion of water as a life-giving element and to the cult of the Goddess that, although sidelined and pushed aside, still plays a role as part of a rustic religiosity in parts of Italy. The notion of life, according to the Goddess, is also an understanding of reality and as such a socio-political stance that has seen these women resist for millennia the patriarchal structures of life and cling, albeit subconsciously, to notions of matriarchalism that are part of cultural and behavioral traditions passed on within local families.

Le Schiavone explores the meaning of manual labor in the fields and at home in a context in which capitalistic notions of progress and post-postmodern ways of life are dealing the last blows to millennia of socially oriented forms of shared living. It is not an Arcadic presentation of a world bygone, as in much of the Anglo-Saxon revisitation and fetishization of lower classes’ conditions and exploitation, but rather a rebellious display of anger and opportunities embedded in tools made to plant seedlings or to gauge eyes out.

The women here, although enslaved to the land and family, are examples of resilience and resistance, of a stubborn and determined willful vital strength, and of bravery and courage in the face of patriarchal social mores that want them silenced and defeated.

References:

[1] “[…] and I saw in our valleys cretins who because of the length of the skull, the protruding of the face, the thickness of the lips and even the darkness of the skin looked like negroes badly painted white.” The translation is mine. Cesare Lombroso, L’Uomo Bianco e L’Uomo di Colore: Letture su l’Origine e la Varietà delle Razze Umane (Firenze, Torino, and Roma: Fratelli Bocca, Librai di S.M. il Re d’Italia, 1892), 172.

Image Captions:

Lanfranco Aceti, The Insatiable Thirst of the Serpent of the Goddess, 2021. Ooze and soil. Sculptural installation. Dimensions: 20,000 cm. Photographic print from the sculptural installation. Dimensions: 67 cm. x 100 cm.

Lanfranco Aceti, Untitled, 2021. Photographic print. Dimensions: 100 cm. X 67 cm.