DON’T MAKE THEM TELL YOU WHERE THEY COME FROM: in conversation with Marco B. Fontichiari
Metronom: The title of the exhibition Don’t Make Them Tell You Where They Come From reflects upon the creative process, and on the relationship between the works and the reality from which they are generated. How do you think your works deal with this reflection?
Marco B. Fontichiari: Alta Fedeltà (2019) was created by processing national anthems from an array of digital tools that leave traces of the original source. For example, the text shown is the result of a translation by Google Translate of lyrics then sung to a cellphone that transcribes the new piece. The background color fades following the sound waves of the song. Therefore, the outcome shows elements closely linked to their origin but masked under a new guise.
M: Alta Fedeltà is a work that reflects upon your dual nationality and your composite cultural baggage: on a screen we read the transcription of excerpts from the American and Italian national anthem written into the rhythm of your singing. Among the many national symbols, why did you choose the anthem?
MBF: In addition to the national anthems, there are also the two flags in the video: this is because they are among the most used mechanisms to spur a sense of belonging to one’s own country. The colors of the background are tied to those of the flags, the shades go from red to green for Italy and from red to blue for the United States; instead the white that unites them is the color of the text. More than anything else I wanted to play with the absurdity of nationalistic concepts.
M: You perform a double translation in your work: you translate an audio passage into a visual feature, and you also translate the language in which the texts are transcribed. Can you explain these choices?
MBF: I work with translation because I find it an effective way to reach a synthesis: after the various steps, it tends to extract pure contents. The chromatic nuances created within the video feature the rhythm of the anthems; in the text, the complexity and limits of the spoken language remain. I use computers because they cannot give any poetic readings of the content, they convert objectively into an ironic but aesthetically satisfying result, establishing the poetic superiority of humans.
© Marco B. Fontichiari / Courtesy METRONOM
17/12/2020