| What (I think) I do, and
why (I think) I do it
My transition into the art world has been very subtle and complex.
I had been making music for most of my life when, in 1975, i started
to work in (live and recorded) radio. By the time I realized what
i was doing was heading towards art (Sound art, or more specifically
Radio art), 10 years later, I was a skilled professional. I still
like to make a separation between professional work and art (although
sometimes they merge, and the tools are the same), and I'm happy
I can do both: much of my art has been funded by commercial work.
Since the late 80es I have expanded in two new areas, live performance
and writing. I've done a lot of music gigs, both by myself and
with other bands. But my own live act slowly turned into spoken
word performances with sounds - and recently without any other
sound than my voice. I write for the biggest italian underground
music magazine, Rumore, where I have my own page since 1996; this
is an extension of my art work, not journalism (which I also do,
usually elsewhere). The voice on the page and in the shows is
the same.
There's a basic common trait in most of my art work. It took
me a long while to define it, until I came across the Joseph Beuys
definition of Social
Sculpture, an expression which describes my intentions very
well. What I attempt to do is to produce an effect into the audience's
consciousness (and hopefully unconsciousness). The art is not
"the piece", but the effects of it on the audience,
which happens somewhere between me and them. All my work since
1997 has always included my email (and everyone who has written
to that address has received a reply); I consider this as part
of the artistic process. One of my last pieces is Realcore,
a one hour spoken word show (with 100 images) about amateur pornography.
It has an unusual angle, and at the end I suggest a positive finale,
of richness and variety in the amazing world of self made porno.
Here's what a member of the audience emailed me afterwards:
Hello Sergio,
My name is XXXX and i listened to Realcore in de Waag last wednesday.
I really enjoyed it. I came home with this very relaxed feeling
of acceptance of this beautiful world and its crazy beautiful
people and had really nice erotic dreams that night.
My work often might look like politics, or social work. But there
are big differences: what I do is often dangerous (while politics
nowadays are way too safe), and I usually challenge widely accepted
assumptions (instead of reinforcing people's opinions). And of
course the motivation is different: I'm not very interested in
politics or social issues in themselves. I'm after change, something
at which art should be much better than politics.
"La rivoluzione siamo noi" (The revolution is us
or We are the revolution)
(Joseph Beuys)
Sergio Messina
september 2008 |
