Urbanautica

OF IMAGES AND ARCHAIC HUMANITY

by Steve Bisson

«Precisely what today should manifest itself, or expiate itself in the light of dialogue, is instead consumed in solitude. So the pain sinks into the darkness of indifference when it is not taken for granted through the media spectacle of the words that they cannot say.»

© Edoardo Pasero from the series 'Heart Repetition'

There are images that survive history, like archetypal figures that reproduce in the constant evolution of man and civilizations. Jung argued thus: that there was a common ground capable of resisting time, an ancestral stadium capable of being handed down through the elements. A symbolic thought ingrained in the human being that precedes language and discursive reasoning. Each child is proof of this. There is something that holds their scribbles together, often labeled trivially as reveries, and that on adults produce the effect of seeing a world much larger than that historical moment that they usually inhabit. Almost as if it were the experience of a lost paradise, which is not so much a picturesque and colorful animal kingdom but the memory of a richer, more cosmic experience (in the mythological perspective). These images manifest themselves differently throughout history, also molding themselves with the whims of time, coming to influence the dynamics of the psyche. Today Earthly Paradise becomes a postcard of a Pacific island (ask Google if you like), where the inhabitants live free and unconditional from the martyrdom of modernity, mostly barefoot, half-naked, feeding on the fruits of the sea and vegetation. Thus "perennial" images reproduce themselves, as invisible presences that determine and feed a sort of collective (unconscious) memory.

© Edoardo Pasero from the series 'Heart Repetition'

© Joao Linneu from the series 'Heart Repetition'

© Edoardo Pasero from the series 'Heart Repetition'

© Joao Linneu from the series 'Heart Repetition'

© Edoardo Pasero from the series 'Heart Repetition'

Take for example the presence of the feminine in the evolution of civilizations. It constitutes a primordial image, that of the Mother Goddess, who embodies fertility in Venus. It attests to the existence of matriarchal organizations already in antiquity respectful of its transforming power. The Moon is associated with it, cyclicity and fruitfulness depend on it. The Woman, the Moon, and the Waters have always been held together by symbolic images that manifest their mystery and the power of change. The Moon that shines in the night illuminating the darkness, and what is hidden from sight, or perhaps from the mind. So much so that the so-called "enlightenment" society must invent the electric current to reduce night to daylight. What runs in the copper wires is, first of all, a current of thought, the offspring of capitalist ideology which reduces everything to the mere exhortation of profit. To the gospel that puts individuals in competition, between themselves, and with nature. Thus the enlightened bourgeois who no longer sees beyond his nose, or his individualistic being, is falsely emancipated, exalted by a Machiavellian temperament, and sails boldly to own a benefit, slipping adrift in the pond of alienation, and of libertine schizophrenia.

© Edoardo Pasero from the series 'Iperborea'

© Edoardo Pasero from the series 'HK'

In his eyes, everyone is merchandise. Thus the body, no longer nature to be elevated to divinity, but a resource to be exploited without too many scruples. It follows a degeneration of physicality that becomes something to possess, dispose of, enjoy. But the Nymph hardly gets trapped and insinuates itself rather like a thorn in the mind, to the point of possessing the predator who becomes a victim of his actions. And then the Protestant attempt to desecrate its iconography is vain, since what is no longer mediated becomes individual property which leads to the exasperation of relativism and subjectivism. The private faith that ultimately denies any possibility of "community essence". All that remains of the Mother Goddess is a seductive, commodified, post-produced, easily available hypothesis. Yet, although degraded and a mirror of a psychic crisis, the image retains a symbol that does not cease its function from behind the mask that has been placed on it to conceal its meaning. Like a piece of music capable of suddenly awakening a buried past or that intimate dimension (which does not mean personal), in which a distant reminiscence of a collective identity is enclosed.

Some time ago Edoardo Pasero sent me photographs, images. They opened up to a scenario of indiscretion which, however, raised a need for interiority based on being there rather than appearing. He starts a conversation about illness, poverty, pain, the last lonely border of the intimate. Precisely what today should manifest itself, or expiate itself in the light of dialogue, is instead consumed in solitude. So the pain sinks into the darkness of indifference when it is not taken for granted through the media spectacle of the words that they cannot say. On the threshold of such disturbing silence, the memory of a "natural habit" resurfaces from the images, which contrasts with the despotism of reason that pushed the social condition beyond the limit, marginalized the human being from his own history and reduced the species to a mass of atoms whose freedom is measured by credit card. Therefore, taking the Pasero's photographs into account, the essential question of our era is how to fill the nihilistic void, in the absence of alternative ideological hinges and at the mercy of the winds of chrematistics. It is necessary to restore a horizon of social planning, a new field of possibilities for human action finally aware of its frontiers. It is perhaps necessary to redeem the etymology of dissident looking from the ordinary banal, rediscovering the need to take care. Therefore all that remains is to recognize the atrophy of the mythical capacity that characterizes modern times. It could be a first step.

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