SANTE SCARDILLO
RIGHTS INN
APOLOGIES FOR THE WORDY, PREACHY TEXT: READ FOR CONTEXT, OR
GO DIRECTLY TO THE FREELY DOWNLOADABLE IMAGES. PRINT THEM, FRAME THEM, HANG THEM; DIFFUSE THEM, DISTRIBUTE THEM WIDELY, PLASTER THEM EVERYWHERE, ESPECIALLY IN “RED STATES”
(BUT NOT ONLY).
IF YOU CARE TO CREDIT AUTHORSHIP, ASCRIBE IT TO MY ART NAME: MY FIRST NAME (NO ACCENT, PLEASE) I AM INCREASINGLY SIGNING MY WORK THUS
AND LET'S HOPE FOR THE BEST
Some propaganda can be art; most good art is propaganda for provocative ideas, not necessarily only political ones. Art is one of the forms of political action I can engage in: I am not a US citizen, if I voted, I would be committing a crime. I will consider becoming a citizen when the USA becomes a Democracy; right now, it is a Republic, a statement “right-of-center” thinkers and commentators are increasingly coming out with lately, even in the mainstream. That, I think, is the main philosophical, as well as semantic, difference between the two mainstream political parties vying for power: most people don't pay much attention to this subtle difference, because the USA is supposed to be both, a Democracy in the form of a Republic. But herein lies the core of the differences between the two main political parties, and the ideological roots of the present internecine struggle that is tearing the Nation apart today.
I have been very active in local politics, at the community board level and interacting with elected representatives (all forms of political action available to all, under the Constitution); in 1998 I co-founded a neighborhood association, active on a “as needed” base(“in case of a struggle” could be our slogan), in what, (not only) I call the Cincinnatus model.
As a result of my ideological firmness vis-a-vis American politics, I have “sat out” the last nine general elections, including the upcoming one, and the plethora of intervening local ones. I vote in my native Italy, the only country I have ever been a citizen of: the only ballots I have used in the Last four decades, are mail in paper ballots. On one occasion, I did what I am doing for this work: in a general election (perhaps the latest one), in which the political landscape was particularly fractured, and the [Italian] Democratic Party (whom I only for vote since it “embraced” Democracy: it was founded on the ruins of the former Italian Communist Party, PCI, the largest in Western Europe, which disbanded in the aftermath of Perestroika, Glasnost, and the dismantlement of the iron curtain), took ambiguous, borderline racist and anti-immigrant positions to soothe a reactionary electorate, swayed to the right by the equivalent of a white-suprematist-group-become mainstream political party, which was gaining in the polls. I'd send a futile message: the ballot would be invalidated, and only the government poll workers in charge of sorting it and tallying it would see it; I decided to do it anyway. I put the ballot through my computer printer, it emerged with the image of Garibaldi, the national hero equivalent to Washington (but only as military leader: Garibaldi was a true, worldwide Freedom Fighter who never wanted to be a politician, though in his old age he was drafted in the first Italian Parliament, as a merely symbolic figure) and the aphorism I made up: COGLIONI IN POLITICA: AVERNE, NON ESSERLO (“balls, in politics: to have them not to be them”). A ball, intended as testicle, in Italian popular parlance define a boob, a stupid person; to have balls has the same meaning it has here)
For this 2020 “Ballot Box”, I decided to use the flag, the most overused symbol in American Life and politics, as my ballot and background to aphorisms I could have written on paper ballots (invalidating them) I would have requested in the nine American general elections I missed. I made my version of the flag in 2014, somewhat presciently, “Tarnished Glory - Reversed, Upside Down and Fading”: the Obama administration was already germinating some of the laws and attitudes that are being brought to “maturity” today, and inspired me thusly. “Tarnished Glory [...]” was born as a small mixed media matrix (as I call them), and enlarged in a digital file into a wall-size painting, an archival inkjet print on stretched gessoed canvas that hangs over my bed: a reminder, when I wake up or go to sleep, of “where” I live (should I ever forget). This process is similar to Warhol's: I punt he'd be using it if he were around today, in stead of the silkscreens, perhaps the reason some critic, at some point called my process, and the resulting work, “Trans-Pop”. I discovered the technique in the late 1980's (if not invented it outright, I am not sure enough to claim “authorship”) and I refined it over the following decades. I have since learned that some aspects of it are used in restoration of ancient murals and mosaics, but as far as I know, I am the only one using it to generate stand alone images. Happy debating and proselytizing, don't forget to
VOTE!