Page 32 - Studio International - September 1971

Signals for the This is true. But if we interpolate an image average man by consumer civilization.
determined by artistic concern into the sea of I didn't have long to do it in, four months,
imagination dreary forms that tend to degrade serious things, and I worked day and night. I had as my
we find that a challenging change of rhythm collaborators an electronics engineer and two of
Eugenio Carmi occurs. his assistants.
That is to say, man considered as non-man I worked out in my studio a series of images
is challenged by an unexpected image, that could be broken down into parts, in such
treated as a man. In a traditional sense this a way that their superimposition would give
reasoning could be valid for a painting hanging rise to new images. I also used the onomatopoeic
on a wall; in a contemporary sense the same words from comics, with which I had just
concept could be transferred to a machine which completed the images for Stripsody with Cathy
produces art-images instead of mass products Berberian.
for the masses. At my request the engineers worked out an
To come back to my invitation to the electronically operated system which made
Biennale, what I thought of was, indeed, a possible the rapid formation of 864 images.
machine that would produce images : mine, of This was done automatically by means of a
course, completely non-serviceable in any device which registered near-by noises, or by
utilitarian sense, but recurring with a the spectator, by means of control buttons.
rhythm imitating the rhythms proffered to the I spent all the money I had and was

Does it still make sense to talk about art ? I Eugenio Carmi
find it particularly difficult, and especially in Syng
relation to what I myself do. 2 PPCC/PPCM/PVC/
I have jumped from one experiment to ULP
another, always in pursuit of something and 1970
each time sensing that there was an even more PVC relief and aluminium
75 X 97.5 cm
interesting something still to be discovered,
and discovered right away. Of course, there is a 3 Triangelo ribelle 2 1971
Mixed media on canvas
thread of continuity in all this, but it is hidden 100 x 100 cm
in the bushes at the roadside.
In 1966 I believed much more firmly than I 4 Invito alla festa 3 1971
do today in the future of the human race : Mixed media on canvas
100 X 100 cm
when I was invited to the Venice Biennale, I
took the opportunity of carrying out a piece of 5 Prima alba in una città
research I had been wanting to do for some time, immaginaria 1971
Mixed media on canvas
and I set myself to it with that measure of 100 x 100 cm
recklessness typical of the believer. For some
time I had been interested in the new 6 Segnale in tension I 1970
Mixed media on canvas
relationship between man and image which our 110 x 150 cm
civilization was making increasingly difficult—
that is, in the time available to the observer to
perceive or somehow to enter into an emotive
relationship with an image.
In the civilizations of the past the decision
to embark upon this relationship was a privilege
of the individual; today, with the arrival of
the technological era and the invention of the
`mass', the image can reach the individual
everywhere, in the countryside, in the town, in
the street, in the home.
The determining of the time available for a
possible contemplative relationship is no longer
our affair, but that of the image which is
simultaneously proffered to us and withdrawn
from us.
Cinema and television are the most
sensational examples, but the same applies to
the whole of the urban image. How far does
man passively submit to such treatment, and
what are the limits within which he releases
his liberating mechanisms ?
Dwight McDonald writes that 'the masses
are both man and non-man, i.e. man in a
particular relation with other men which makes
it impossible for him to function as a man (one
of the human functions being the creation and
enjoyment of the work of art)'.

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