Vas, October the 23rd: unveiling of “a little song”, new artwork by fabiano de martin topranin

Unveiling of the artwork A little song by Fabiano De Martin Topranin
Friday October the 23rd, 11 AM
Former Vas Paper Mill (Municipality of Quero Vas, BL)
Via Case Sparse, Vas





Dolomiti Contemporanee‘s work continues in the form of the Radici Future project (Eng.: future roots), carried out by the Union of the Basso Feltrino Sette Ville Municipalities – Alano di Piave and Quero Vas, and financed by the Veneto Region (L.R. 11/2014, art.9, “Celebrations in remembrance of WWI Centenary”). The project aims to enhance the value of all those locations which have been part of the Great War – as agents of memory and knowledge, but as possible future scenarios too – as well as the requalification and promotion of strategic points and sites along the Piave river, ones exactly like the former Paper Mill of Vas.

And thus, after the collective exhibit Paper weight, inaugurated this past September, on the 11th, in the extraordinary spaces of the former Paper Mill, up next is Fabiano De Martin Topranin, on Friday, October the 23rd, at 11 AM.
The artist, wood carver born in Padola di Comelico, in the past few years has been acclaimed as one of the best exponents of contemporary wood sculpting in Italy, being able to combine in an original way technical capability, strenght of plastic dynamism, and an imaginative poetic that is both intimate and subtle.
The unveiling of the artwork will take place at the Lacharta Association headquarters, in the former Vas Paper Mill, will be open to the public.

The artwork, created by the artist in the context of the activities promoted by Dolomiti Contemporanee in Radici Future, is permanently acquired by the Municipality of Quero Vas, which, in the next few months, is going to give it a spotlight by presenting it in various locations linked to paths of the Great War, like the dedicated museums present in the Union of the Basso Feltrino Sette Ville Municipalities.

The artwork:
A little song is a piece that opens up and suggests a complex series of themes linked to war, and in particular to the figure of the child in the face of it, and to the different kinds of mechanisms that it puts into function, and imposes of everyone involved.
The child, every child, plays war, and in that part of an instinct typical of the human already exhibites itself, one of predation. Partly innate, the instinct of defence/attack, the instinct to hunt and to attack. And yet, at the same time, the game of war looks nothing more than, indeed, a game, and the child is innocent and pure in their motions inside the automatic processes of psychological and cognitive growth that the political regime of death, instrumental to the interests of factions, forces upon them, morphing them in a devoted, convinced (to which extent?) and efficent antagonising machine. There is, in this coactive development, “an oblivious inclination to atrocity”, that hits, in the body and mind of the ashen child, which lack any war-like experiences. And there are many other things in this artwork; the traces of grave coming motions, like for example the “firepower as anticipation of the imminent ormonal blast”, represented by a stage made of weapons on which the child himself is standing. The symbolic gesture that he performs, singing the national anthem, is directly linked to the manifestation of the patriotic spirit, which brings into play and legitimates the chain-link of truculent reactions inside the context of war. Thus, while the child sings his little song for my little country, he is playing, and at the same time declaring himself unwitting part of the destructuve mechanism which incapsulates him, morphing his defenceless natural state in an aggresive weapon fed by the inner shadows lurking in the hearts of all humans, since the dawn of time. The patriotic spirit, then, born from the indistinguishable, the primodrial, of the belly and the fear inflicted upon humans by the eternal strategists of the politics of conflict, and never born from a rational decision, or a free moral choice. “Everyone with the generals’ guns pressed against their backs”. And what does the youngster sing, of what does he sing the praises, so resolute, in the stance of a tiny warrior, the closed fists and the raised chin? He sings the heoric gestures that he learnt from the propagandistic texts, those ones chosen to teach to his young, powerful, fighter heart how right it is to perish, in enemy or friendly fire, whichever it might be. Instilling it in his fertile mind, taking advantage of the grounds of his infantile mental plasticity, as to strike it with techniques that are instrumental for the supremacy of humans over other humans, through idolized death; that, is what has been done, consciously.
“In the smoke of space, the child plays. And sings a little song”. And the tension of his muscles and fibers seems almost a possession. And his body exits iself to cross the treshold of the slaughterhouse, and he’s not himself anymore, but he’s them, and perhaps he won’t be able to go back inside.
Soon, pictures will be provided.