这次意外事件造成的损失，让我回想起了 14 世纪，当时欧洲突然遭到瘟疫，或者说黑死病——人类历史上最致命的流行病的摧残。 那是一个前科学时代，对死亡的宗教与精神性质的阐释仍占主导地位，两个紧密联系的艺术主题在这个基督教的大本营已经确立: memento mori （拉丁语“记住你终有一死”）和 danse macabre （“死亡之舞”）。
虽然 memento mori 与基督教对来生的解释紧密相连，但 danse macabre 采用了更世俗的视角来反思生命的 sine qua non （“必要条件”）：死亡。 为了试图在当代重现死亡舞蹈，我创作了一首童谣，融合了视频图像，油画和图形元素。 不同媒介的并置——就像一个梦境的凝固画面——创造出一种类似歌曲或舞蹈节奏的结构。
Humanity is facing real —and yet still vague— existential threats: the atomic bomb, the climate change, or artificial intelligence are all good examples. But the global pandemic we are experiencing gave us all a palpable sense of the impermanence of our lives.
The disorientation derived from this unexpected event made me look back at the 14th century when Europe was suddenly devastated by the plague, or Black Death, the most fatal pandemic in human history. It was a pre-scientific world and the religious and spiritual interpretation of death was still dominant. Two strictly connected artistic themes were already well established in that Christian stronghold: the memento mori and the danse macabre or dance of death.
While the memento mori is strictly connected to the Christian interpretation of the after-life, the danse macabre adopts a more secular perspective to reflect on the sine qua non condition of life: death. In an attempt to re-create a contemporary danse macabre I composed a nursery rhyme that blends with video images, oil paintings, and graphic elements. The juxtaposition of the different media —like frozen frames of a dream— creates a sort of structure like in the rhythm of a song or a dance.
The analysis of the pandemic through an artwork can not be reached exclusively through a scientific or technical approach. The surrealistic aesthetic of the work embraces the mysterious nature of death and it is an attempt to embark on a difficult journey towards its acceptance. Which stage of grief has been reached with this artwork is still to be determined but I suspect that behind these images there is an ongoing unconscious denial and this rejection is probably caused by the impossibility of grasping the idea of ’not to be’ while we still exist.
在艺术品中找到意义
Finding meaning in the artwork
巴士末排
万里行
《巴士末排》（The Last Row of the Bus）是意大利艺术家 Filippo Cardella 的作品，他用这个多媒体作品来反映他对流行病的体验，同时在表达了普遍的人类主题的层面的隐喻: 死亡。 这件作品包括一个视频，和这个系列同名，还有三幅油画: 否认、愤怒和接受。 视频是艺术品意义的关键容器。 它以一个军事葬礼的场景开始: 一个士兵站在一片看似无尽的墓地中央，吟唱着 il silenzio（“寂静”)的旋律，这首著名的歌曲经常伴随着官方对那些为更高事业而牺牲的人的庆祝。 然而，不一会，这个看似壮观的场面变成了非常不同的东西，即对生命的无意义的怪诞叙述。 一个类似机器人的声音背诵着一首童谣，让我们想起了虚无主义者的独白，就像我们在《猜火车》的开头，丹尼 · 博伊尔的杰作。 为什么我们如此挣扎，为什么我们如此认真对待自己，如果等待我们的是，不可避免的，死亡的虚无？
The Last Row of the Bus is a work by Italian artist Filippo Cardella, who used this multimedia piece as a way to reflect on his experience of the pandemic, while at the same time drawing implications at the level of a universal human theme: Death. The work includes a video, which carries the same title of the series, and three oil paintings: Denial, Anger, and Acceptance. The video is the key vessel of the artwork’s meaning. It begins with a scene from a military funeral: A soldier standing in the middle of what appears as an endless field of tombs intones the melody of Il Silenzio (“The Silence”), the famous song that often accompanies official celebrations of those who have fallen serving a higher cause. And yet, after a few bars, this seemingly dignifying spectacle turns into something very different, that is, a grotesque narration of the meaninglessness of life. A quasi-robotic voice recites a nursery rhyme that reminds us of nihilist monologues such as the one we can here in the opening sequence of Trainspotting, Danny Boyle’s masterpiece. Why are we struggling so much, why are we taken ourselves so seriously, if what awaits us is, inescapably, the nothingness of death?
“Just like the virus, death doesn’t care about social classes, ethnicities, political affiliation, wealth, and so on. Death, just like Covid-19, treats us all equally”
In this sense, Cardella’s work significantly connects with traditional genres in the history of western art, and in particular the danse macabre, which the artist explicitly mentions. A memento mori, the origin of the “dance of death” is uncertain, but many trace it back to the Black Plague, a disease that also broke the Medieval World into pieces. The earliest pictorial example of a danse macabre is a mural painted in 1424–5 in the cloisters of the Cimitière des Innocents in Paris. Destroyed in 1669, we know of its existence thanks to a publication of the Parisian printer Guyot Marchant, who in 1485 published an illustrated book: the woodcuts in the book were often reprinted, and this in turn was instrumental for the circulation of the genre throughout Europe. The dance of death is a representation of a procession or a dance where the dead and the living share the stage. Traditionally, works in this genre are a commentary with a distinct social message: Death treats all of us equally. Just like the virus, death doesn’t care about social classes, ethnicities, political affiliation, wealth, and so on. Death, just like Covid-19, treats us all equally.
Denial is the part of Cardella’s work that more closely connects to the tradition of the dance macabre. In the picture, the dead and the living are dancing together. A woman in a red dress occupies the center of the canvas, while facing the viewer. With her hands pointing in the direction of her neck, she seems to ask: “Why me?” But there’s no answer: There is no reason for death, which is an ineluctable fact of human life. Her eyes seem slightly reddish, a feature that makes one wonder whether she had just cried, desperate in facing her destiny, which can’t be but nothingness. To her right, a skeleton is smoking a cigarette: The smoke pervades her whole surrounding, in what appears as a mortal hug.
In the words of the artist, denial is perhaps the only stage where we are always confined, not only during the pandemic, but in our daily lives. As Damien Hirst suggests in The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, humans can’t fathom their ultimate doom. And yet, perhaps this is not to say that human life is meaningless.
Cardella doesn’t provide us with exact answers: He believes that artistic creation is unconscious and generally open to the interpretation of the viewer. Art, in his words, does not come with a fixed or clear message to be decoded by using some kind of IKEA instruction manual. Art, as life, is always about “misunderstanding,” as in the aberrant communication in Umberto Eco’s semiotic. Is our life meaningless? Perhaps, just like at the end of Trainspotting, by “looking ahead, to the day you die,” you can still find meaning in your everyday.
I am an Italian artist and designer based in Beijing.
I studied graphic and industrial design at the Institute of Artistic Industries of Florence under the teachings of design masters like Paolo Deganello, Giorgio Berretti (Archizoom), and Biagio Cisotti (Cisotti Laube Studio). I later started a 4 years apprenticeship at the studio of the Italian photographer Oliviero Toscani, where I specialized in graphic design.
After the apprenticeship, I left Italy and traveled around the world (Buenos Aires, Singapore, New York, and Beijing) working as a graphic and exhibition designer. I worked for studios like Ralph Applebaum, Gallagher & Associates, and with clients like the Singapore Art Museum.
From a young age, I developed a keen interest in urban subcultures and graffiti in particular. I studied the topic and personally interacted with these underground communities, I curated and contributed to several publications about graffiti and organized a series of events and art exhibitions dedicated to the topic.
During the last few years, I participated in a series of art exhibitions with a body of works mainly focused on the urban environment and its subcultures. My main medium is oil, acrylic, and spray paint but I also produced art installations, sculptures, and videos.
In 2019 I founded Difforme, an art and design studio based in Beijing (difformestudio.com).
