FOOTBATHS AND QUANDRIES OF THE CONSCIENCE
A Revolution in Roxy in the Box’s Sitting Room
By Anita pepe
More, more and still even more salt… Salt is good for you … Mmm, how annoying, like everything that comes from deep within us: our egos, our ids, our superegos and all the innermost feelings associated with our psyche. For over a hundred years, people have attempted to delve deep down within themselves. What they find, however, is almost never anything they like. Let alone if they find themselves in the middle of a full-blown, sacrosanct depression, where they run into a grotesque, circus-like face (which, of course, is their own). Then there’s that little inner voice: mocking, nagging, in a grating, mixed cacophony of accents and inflections. Simply unbearable. In the past, you needed a mallet to kill Jiminy, and make the talking cricket stop. Nowadays, all you need to do is turn off the TV, the constant presence in the background of our times. Who listens to it anyway? It stays on and you do other things: cook, study, soak your feet in a foot-bath. Some people even try to escape with their feet soaking in a basin. More, more and still even more … In the meantime, the voice in the background is becoming more and more exasperating. And yet, she remains seated and doesn’t bother to get up and turn the TV off. Perhaps she doesn’t even hear that voice from within, reeling off the causes, the pretexts, the same old reasons insisting that she snap out of her inertia. Ah, the benefits of salt, symbol of knowledge. But what does this insistent conscience want while we are blissfully wallowing in defeat? Why does try to distract us from revelling in the rapture of a foretold failure (for which, of course, we are in no way responsible)? More, more … The artist doesn’t move, she doesn’t go out, she doesn’t go to her patron (where do you even find one nowadays?), at any rate, it’s no use. She lets everything go adrift. It’s useless anyway, the country is falling to pieces, let alone the world of art. What purpose does art serve in a country that is falling apart? Perhaps another touch of salt would be better, and making drowsing in the small, dim sitting room even more enjoyable. After all, what good is going out, struggling? Or, perhaps, staying at home, soaking our feet is, in itself, a form of protest. Yes indeed, passive resistance. After all, everyone knows that revolutions are born in living rooms or, at any rate, that’s where they end up. Now what we have to decide is whether to save Italy or soak our feet.
photo by laura d’astolto
LA PERFORMANCE DI ROXY IN THE BOX GROS SEL: PEDILUVIO E COSCIENZA SI È TENUTA IL 5 MARZO 2011 DURANTE SO EXOTIC!,
EVENTO CURATO DA CHIARA VIGLIOTTI NELL’AMBITO DELL’INTERVENTO CULTURALE RELOAD,
PRESSO LE EX OFFICINE DI VIALE ARCANGELO GHISLERI 44, A ROMA.