One day in 1910, on the first floor right of number 11 calle de la Puebla in Madrid, on a day of scepticism and weariness, Ramón carried out an alchemical experiment: he said he had taken every ingredient in his laboratory, bottle by bottle, mixed them together, and out of the precipitate — out of the purification and the radical dissolution — the greguería arose. From then on, he would add, it was for him "the flower of all that remains", that which survives disenchantment.
Ramón used to tell how he had put his hand into the great drum (the urn) of words and drawn out a ball at random — it was "greguería", still in the singular; he planted that ball and got a garden out of it. Chance, he said, must be the christener of the best discoveries.
Ramón said he had kept that word for its euphony and for the secrets it hides. And he would give the old dictionary's definition — algarabía, gritería confusa, a confused clamour — with the joking gloss that is the heart of the fable: in earlier dictionaries, he wrote, it meant the squealing of piglets running after their mother. To which he added the poetic gloss: it is what beings cry out confusedly out of their unconsciousness, what things cry out.

1. 29. Di alcune donne che erano belle, sono rimasti solo i tatuaggi Torino · 2025
2. 182. In tutte le grandi città che visito: i cantonieri sono negri, le donne con le borse della spesa sono grasse, i vecchi ricchi davanti agli alberghi di lusso sono insieme a bellissime puttane. Madrid · 2026
3. 36. Non capiremo mai il senso degli enormi faccioni che la gente si appende in casa. Torino · 2025
4. 37. Volendo immaginare per esercizio, un lato positivo anche del carcere, si dirà che ha il suo vantaggio il fatto di non poter essere visitati inavvertitamente da amici e parenti invadenti. Genova · 2025
5. 23. Le persone che hanno sprecato tempo in un attività, sono più inclini ad acquistarne il risultato. Torino · 2025
6. 56. Astigmatico, presbite, miope, ipermetrope, daltonico, ambliopico, ipoacusico quasi sordo.
   Tutte le donne, sia da lontano che da vicino, gli sembravano interessanti e desiderabili. Milano · 2026
7. 47. Camminando a caso
   solo seguendo i culi delle sconosciute dinnanzi a se
   notava infine che attorno a certe ragazze si formavano bolle di elettricità statica Torino · 2025
8. 193. Invidiamo i giovani perché di norma non hanno ancora grandi sensi di colpa, non hanno abbandonato figli, tradito amici, fatto naufragare grandi amori. Alassio · 2026
9. 9. Il lavoro del poetare, deve fallire inevitabilmente, il poeta deve rimanere sconosciuto, inutile, altrimenti non si tratta di buona poesia. Torino · 2025
10. 174. Come bambini in campeggio arrivano tutti felici alla cerveceria del barrio. Madrid · 2026
11. 41. Finisce in lacrime ogni sogno d’amore, da oggi anche dall’altra parte della strada. Torino · 2025
12. 2. Il coefficiente di imbruttimento generale, va sempre moltiplicato per i kilometri di distanza dal centro. Torino · 2025
13. 10. Chi desidera vincere, desidera almeno altrettanti sconfitti. Torino · 2025
14. 15. Il problema delle persone che hanno la fobia per la pulizia, è quello di dover fare i conti anche con le proprie stesse viscere e deiezioni. Torino · 2025
15. 198. Di alcune donne ci si riesce ad innamorare solo delle scarpe Torino · 2026
16. 181. Gli anziani sono ovunque gli stessi, se stessi. Non si devono atteggiare, non hanno bisogno di presentarsi per ciò che non sono. Bilbao · 2026
17. 27. La purezza è quasi più negativa della coerenza. Piacenza · 2025
18. 176. In Italia è allo studio un nuovo partito trasversale, si chiamerà Forza Italia Viva Torino · 2026
19. 20. In un mondo come il nostro, dove tutte le risposte sono a disposizione, l'intelligenza di pensiero consiste nel porre le domande. Torino · 2025
20. 178. Percorrendo la strada statale ci si rende conto che i paesini tra Lyon e Paris sono fatti con il copia-incolla. Paris · 2026
21. 14. I padri cinquantenni di figlie femmine amerebbero vivere in un mondo dove tutte le giovani ragazze fossero vogliose di sesso con gli adulti, ad eccezzione delle loro figlie. Torino · 2025
22. 24. Nelle birrerie a gestione familiare si può apprezzare la bellezza delle bariste che sfiorisce inesorabilmente ad ogni inizio di campionato. Torino · 2025
23. 34. Ci si riferisce normalmente all'Accademia come luogo nel quale si insegna l'Arte o l'Arte della guerra. L'artista combatte. Torino · 2025
24. 86. Come sarebbe bello se voi rimaneste giovani per sempre
    e io invece no
    per sempre
    Venezia · 2023 · from Luca Motolese, Umano Disumano Vol II, Nulla die, 2025
25. 192. La percentuale di omosessuali, lesbiche, obesi di entrambi i sessi, donne praticamente nude; è maggiore a Barcellona che in qualsiasi altra città che io abbia mai visitato. Barcellona · 2026
26. 6. Madri sposate e spossate, crescono figli che le schifano. Torino · 2025
27. 35. Le persone vengono mantenute in uno stato di perenne insoddisfazione sessuale, attraverso la diffusione di un immaginario iperbolico pornografico da una parte, e la morale sociale dall'altra. Torino · 2025
28. 3. Sul bus parlano urlando per rompere il silenzio, ripetono ossessivamente la stessa frase, parlando altre lingue. Torino · 2025
29. 180. L'arte ci attende solo se stiamo viaggiando o sognando Bordeaux · 2026
30. 5. La ricchezza è una questione di consenso rispetto a quello che si sta dicendo di voler fare.
    Torino · 2025
31. 54. Nei convitti dell'upper class locale
    non manca mai una bellissima ragazzina di colore
    adottata.
    
    Torino · 2025
32. 186. La quantità di tempo impiegata nelle vicissitudini degli amori romantici è tragicamente enorme. Barcellona · 2026
33. 196. I ricchi sono disposti a pagare cifre assurde pur di non rischiare di incontrare dei poveri. I luoghi esclusivi promettono solo questo. Alassio · 2026
34. 197. Catapultato nella vita di un altro.
    Circondato dalla neve ghiacciata.
    Stringeva suo padre al petto come fosse un figlio. Torino · 2026
35. 30. Tutti devono avere almeno un'automobile per sentirsi liberi (auto-nomi).
    Tutti sono felici di pagare la loro auto a rate con il loro lavoro.
    I parcheggi non sono più sufficienti per tutte queste auto.
    Tutti sono felici di pagare il loro parcheggio, divenuto bene scarso e quindi ambito.
    Potremmo vivere felici, ma siamo nell'epoca della creazione di continui nuovi bisogni. Torino · 2025
36. 195. Madri e figli schiamazzano al tavolo, ma quando parla lui tutti tacciono. L'unico potere del padre che dispensa sganascioni Alassio · 2026
37. 187. Mentre viaggiamo, iniziamo a pensare ai prossimi viaggi Barcellona · 2026
38. 173. In una selva oscura sbagliando strada per recuperare la moto, si alzano da un albero un gruppo numeroso di piccole rondini, formano una specie di cerchio nel cielo e si dividono in due, un gruppo va verso est e uno verso ovest, seguo quello che va verso ovest e incrocio lo sguardo di un piccione che mi guarda perplesso dai fili della luce. Bordeaux · 2026
39. 7. Solo da giovani la morte viene considerata come la peggiore delle ipotesi. Torino · 2025
40. 42. Lo specchio chiede conto del motivo per cui esistiamo.
    Ma io nello specchio non ci sono, perchè non mi sento interessante, non mi interesso.
    Ma lo specchio più terribile rimane quello che riflette senza rovesciare l’immagine.
    Alassio · 2025
41. 183. La fortuna di Goya è stata quella di dipingere per primo il pelo pubLico. Madrid · 2026
42. 44. Per chi si trova nella banale condizione di eterosessualità, ovvero di essere nato da una donna e di amare le donne, la vagina rappresenta uno spazio al confine tra sacro e profano, spazio di adorazione quasi religiosa, mistero, nascita e morte, passato e futuro, genitore e figlio, natura aliena, potenza inspegabile alla quale ci si vuole arrendere con gioia. Genova · 2025
43. 48. Quando tutti gli sembravano idioti finiva per deprimersi, unica soluzione che aveva trovato era quella di entrare in un locale a caso della sua zona fingendo di essere membro di un'associazione di quartiere. Scambiare due chiacchere con i vicini gli faceva bene. Torino · 2025
44. 31. Quando la vita fa schifo, i colori dei quadri tendono ad accendersi. Torino · 2025
45. 39. Capita a volte di sentirsi appartenere a luoghi che non avevamo mai visto, e nei quali non ci fermeremmo mai, e per nessuna ragione al mondo. Genova · 2025
46. 53. Di riffa e di raffa riempiamo di vino la nostra caraffa
    Una continua baruffa in una immacolata concentrazione notturna
    ci onoriamo disonorando il nostro debito con il mondo Roma · 2025
47. 13. La sua moto era stata rapita da una guarnizione fallace Torino · 2025
48. 21. Per quale motivo misterioso era stato scelto come padre di due figli eccezionali. Torino · 2025
49. 11. Quelle due petulanti di Musica e Pittura, ridondano di continuo sul dato di fatto che tutta la bellezza disponibile sia stata esurita tra il 1400 e il 1700, tra Paolo Ucello e Franz Schubert. Torino · 2025
50. 4. I poveri risparmiano da soli, i ricchi si indebitano con gli altri. Torino · 2025
51. 46. La buona poesia neccesita di povertà, mancanza, disgrazia e bestemmie
    Milano · 2025
52. 55. È sempre bellissimo correre nudi ed ebbri nella notte innevata Champoluc · 2025
53. 185. Si mangia per noia, viaggiando posso digiunare per giorni. Madrid · 2026
54. 189. Gli influencer che grigliano passano la loro vita a massaggiare cadeveri che si mangeranno Barcellona · 2026
55. 184. Tutta l'arte del mondo che mi piace maggiormente si concentra tra l'Italia, la Francia e la Spagna. Madrid · 2026
56. 50. Soffriva di una rara patologia che lo costringeva a consumare alcool davanti a qualasiasi manifestazione sportiva. Torino · 2025
57. 40. Viaggiare serve a scompigliare i pensieri, un tempo anche i capelli, mischiare gli atomi del sentire, il viaggio tersa, spazza, ravviva, limpidizza il tutto.
    Per scrivere dovremmo essere sempre in un qualche tipo di viaggio.
    Imperia · 2025
58. 190. Mentre andiamo in barca a vela, o mentre pensiamo di prendere la patente anche per guidare i camion, l'arte ci attende? Barcellona · 2026
59. 194. Nei locali sembra di incontrare gente conosciuta, ma sono solo peronse con facce stereotipate da gente che sembra di \conoscere Alassio · 2026
60. 52. Chi ama il mondo e la vita viaggia, e vive meglio da profugo che da congiunto Roma · 2025
61. 49. Durante i viaggi siamo più creativi, gli atomi si mischiano.
    Viaggiare chiarisce, sposta le nubi dai pensieri, limpidizza, ravvia, spazza. Torino · 2025
62. 32. Gli idioti non sanno fare altro che cambiare il nome alle cose, al solo fine di darsi ragione. Torino · 2025
63. 51. La celicolocalcolatrice computava la maligna malvagità del mondo tutto.
    Inviava i totali al centro di computazione dati della lega dei pianeti uniti. Torino · 2025
64. 38. Ci sono periodi in cui si può essere felici con un buon libro, un buon vino, incenso di mirra e solitudine. Alassio · 2025
65. 168. In cima al palazzo giochi di bimbi tra le nuvole ci osservano Torino · 2024 · from Luca Motolese, Umano Disumano Vol II, Nulla die, 2025
66. 57. Chi desidera vede qualcosa che gli altri non possono vedere.
    La bellezza non è mai né morale né giusta.
    La bellezza è una colpa condivisa
    tra chi guarda
    e chi viene guardato
    entrambi sempre nudi e senza difese. Torino · 2026
67. 45. A little bid incredibol
    a little bit absurd
    this is the story of my tools
    London · 2023
68. 175. Sulla T-shirt della bella ragazza che mi veniva in contro era scritto "Sesso droga e Winnie the Pooh" Barcellona · 2026
69. 25. Darei un rene per poter sapere che musica ascolta la gente che incrocio, nella propria cuffia. Torino · 2025
70. 16. Si può afferamere che il PIL e la buona salute, siano fattori inversamente proporzionali in un sistema ri-tardo capitalista come il nostro. Torino · 2025
71. 22. I grandi campioni che si improvvisano allenatori, spesso producono vittorie di Pirlo. Torino · 2025
72. 12. Quando siamo da soli con noi stessi, ci parliamo in modi particolarmente aggrazziati Torino · 2025
73. 191. Gli anziani mi piacciono perchè sono veri, infatti non riceverebbero nessun vantaggio ad atteggiarsi per quello che non sono. Genova · 2026
74. 8. Il rumore che emetteva durante la frenata, era quello di denti umani che mordevano la rotaia. Torino · 2025
75. 18. A 25 anni avrebbe voluto viaggiare in paesi di mare, avere molti soldi e possedere una casa con un gineceo molto affollato. Torino · 2025
76. 1. L'impeccaminosa, impeccabile e peccaminosa, afferiva nello specifico alla sfera del sogno. Torino · 2025
77. 28. Molte donne usano lo spiritismo come tecnica per cercare di apparire interessanti. Torino · 2025
78. 19. Ogni suo gesto o parola, sembravano voler chiedere scusa. Torino · 2025
79. 33. La vera Italia, i veri italiani, si trovano solo allo stadio. Torino · 2025
80. 188. La maggior parte delle madri pesa il triplo delle loro figlie. Barcellona · 2026
81. 43. Quando nemmeno le grandi inaugurazioni emozionano più, l'unico modo di tirarsi su è quello di andare a giocare come bambini Torino · 2025
82. 26. L'atto creativo è l'unico discrimine tra uomo e animale, per questo siamo tutti artisti, a parte alcuni animali che vengono considerati a torto come bambini dai loro padroni. Piacenza · 2025
83. 17. La maggior parte delle donne islamiche nord africane, se le si immagina senza il velo, si trasformano in donne calabresi. Torino · 2025

Poems

1. 147. EDITTO FUTURISTA Dato il nostro nobile scopo
   di sconfiggere
   i ritardati che affollano il mondo
   e assediano i nostri feudi
   Urge edificare la bellezza
   bonificare la paura
   schiantare il lamento
   Torino · 2023 · from Luca Motolese, Umano Disumano Vol II, Nulla die, 2025
2. 177. P. Zakamoto Stupendo piccione gigante
   dagli occhi di ghiaccio
   al timone del proprio artificio
   pronto ad esplodere
   conia valore dal nulla.
   
   Grande quanto un tacchino
   guida per i mondo un moto a vela
   dal portamento elegante
   Libero dal bisogno
   Splendente Lyon · 2026
3. 163. TRATTORIA Ma i ritardati
   sognano su cuscini
   di lana di pecora mongola?
   In questo locale marittimo
   arredato da un folle
   in stile barca montanara
   baita sommergibile
   caravella valdostana
   con controsoffitto e neon
   da ufficio comunale
   e foto alle pareti
   che ritraggono il proprietario
   assieme a personaggi
   che dovrei conoscere
   Non potevo che trovare
   personaggi ambigui
   Anziane in grembiule
   gambaletti e ciabatte
   Chef magrebini
   che parlano genovese
   Genova · 2024 · from Luca Motolese, Umano Disumano Vol II, Nulla die, 2025
4. 110. INTERNO METAFISICO Su un tavolo ocra
   carciofi di ferro
   su pane carasau
   Un orata incartata
   in giornali d’epoca fascista
   Cagliari · 2023 · from Luca Motolese, Umano Disumano Vol II, Nulla die, 2025
5. 112. Pagliacci ritardati con maschere da porci L’Italia in preda
   alla peggiore crisi isterica
   dopo la guerra del Golfo
   Sono scappato in Belgio
   Le guerre successive
   alla prima crisi del Golfo
   sono state normali e noiose
   non hanno impaurito nessuno
   a quanto pare
   nemmeno l’11 Settembre
   tutti a pensare
   "se la sono cercata"
   Il virus ha mandato il tilt
   il sistema
   Tempo di merda
   ma ottima birra
   Il Kraken del profitto
   si inchina alla “scienza”
   alla farmacia
   inizia un sistema diverso
   forse peggiore
   sicuramente diverso
   Tutto chiuso
   negozi chiese stadi
   parlamenti tribunali
   Sterilizzare le mani
   Scansare gli sconosciuti
   Scopare senza toccarsi
   Stare in casa
   Scemo chi legge
   Avanti a slogan
   urlati da vecchi
   pagliacci ritardati
   che indossano maschere
   da porci
   Tutelare i fragili
   Vigile attesa
   niente poesia oggi
   bisogna sopravvivere
   Bruxelles · 2020 · from Luca Motolese, Umano Disumano, Nulla die, 2024
6. 137. UMANO DISUMANO Umano troppo umano, è un libro spietato che fece il botto nel Milleottocentosettantotto .
   Il film Umano non umano, inizia con un battito del cuore nel Millenovecentosessantanove.
   Umano è l’uno, disumana è la moltitudine di umani come me nel Duemilaventitrè.
   
   Ad un matrimonio notava come, più gli altri facessero schifo e più si agghindassero alla stregua di battone e supereroi.
   Come principesse e conti, passeggiavano per i giardini fioriti, oscena sfilata di obesi incoronati, dolci confetti zuccherati.
   Erano tutti in coppia e avevano tutti la faccia di chi ha sposato la persona sbagliata e vorrebbe fare cambio con i vicini.
   
   Ascoltava le notizie che gli confermavano come i ritardati avessero preso il potere, erano i suoi compagni scemi e grevi delle medie, e le sue compagne rigide dell’università, quelle che chiedevano la castrazione per qualsiasi reato.
   Quelli che non potevano concepire la bellezza dei poveri, perché solo sulle Ferrari erano tutti belli.
   A scuola ancora insegnavano principalmente il sacrificio di sé, mascherato dietro al termine di meritocrazia, sacrificio per lo studio, per il lavoro, in guerra, come se veramente rappresentasse un valore il sacrificarsi per una causa, per un paese, per un'idea, eccellere in qualcosa al prezzo di sacrificarvi la vita intera.
   Ci si stupiva che la maggior parte dei bambini crescessero ritardati.
   
   Avrebbe pagato qualsiasi cifra pur di sapere quale musica ascoltassero in quelle cuffie giganti o invisibili.
   Sarebbe stato così poetico se il grosso metallaro anziano sul tram, fosse stato intento ad ascoltare la Toccata e Fuga in Re minore di Sebastian Bach.
   
   Leggeva: “Sopra noi stessi, solo noi stessi e il gioco di ciò che ci rende felici”.
   
   Chi c'è lassù, sopra di noi?
   solo noi stessi (Der Einzige).
   Homo homini Deus est.
   Il padre come passato
   Il figlio come futuro
   Lo spirito santo come il nostro essere creativo
   Non il paradiso promesso,
   non il circo della società,
   non il denaro del monopoli,
   ma solo il mio piacere di essere felice con voi felici.
   
   Il suo paesaggio interiore si era sempre configurato in modo da avere come unico riferimento al di sopra di se stesso, lo stesso se stesso.
   O per meglio dire, al di sopra di sé:
   solo ciò che lo rendeva felice.
   Solo per il suo piacere di vedervi felici.
   Chiedeva a se stesso e si rispondeva da solo, a costo di sbagliare risposta.
   Non aveva mai avuto religione, stato, loggia, comunità.
   O per meglio dire, le aveva sempre scritte in minuscolo.
   
   Tutto ciò che poteva scegliere la moltitudine disumana che lo circondava era cosa comprare e per quale squadra tifare.
   Lui, forse l’unico umano rimasto sul pianeta, spettatore mandato da altri mondi, osservava e prendeva appunti, un po’ schifato e un po’ divertito dallo spettacolo dell’apocalisse.
   
   Forse sarebbe stato più felice in un isola senza carta e matite, dove si sarebbe potuto solo pescare, dormire e fare l’amore, avrebbe dimenticato tutto, ma sapeva che sarebbe valsa la pena sorbirsi tutta la merda intorno per giungere al centro e trovare la bellezza del vivere.
   Ne era certo.
   Torino · 2023 · from Luca Motolese, Umano Disumano, Nulla die, 2024
7. 119. 15 Novembre Al 15 di Novembre
   l’agrimensore spaziale
   coglie il grano di corallo
   La stella della gioia
   brilla nello spazio
   Il figlio di Atrio
   danza ebbro del vivere
   Alghero · 2018 · from Luca Motolese, Umano Disumano, Nulla die, 2024
8. 77. Pandemonium Nel 2020 in Italia c'è stata una grande moria (non delle vacche).
   Punto.
   Noi quasi si sentiva la nostalgia di Bettino Craxi,
   perchè era come stare sull'Achille Lauro (la crociera).
   Barattoli sormontati da pere e birilli di divieto ovunque.
   Marx (Groucho) e lo Sputnik (il satellite),
   Bic Gates (Bic, la penna a sfera) e l'elefante superdotato della Pfizer,
   giocarono per mesi con il pallottoliere, mentre noi sognavamo di fuggire.
   E io volevo solo che rimanesse il ricordo di tutto questo,
   che la vita qui può essere più surreale di un quadro.
   Ad imperitura memoria del gioco infinito al quale giocheranno a lungo.
   Torino · 2020
9. 85. LO OSSESSIONAVA Intravedeva le case sopra ad altre case
   I veri ricchi vivevano ad un livello
   architettonico superiore
   Costruivano le loro dimore
   in stile neoclassico
   sui tetti di palazzacci
   che fungevano da trampoli
   da alloggiamento di ascensori
   per vedere dall'alto
   per sputare di sotto
   non visti
   Olimpo nel centro dell'acropoli
   dalla strada invisibili
   intagliate con maestria nei sottotetti
   con giardini e piscine
   frutta esotica e femmine perfette
   Torino · 2023 · from Luca Motolese, Umano Disumano, Nulla die, 2024
10. 90. Dodici Giugno Ei fu fuffa
    fantastico incantatore di folle
    inaudito animatore in acquari di carciofi
    Demiurgo catodico
    Burattinaio di folli pupazzi
    porci e puttane patinate
    Ennesimo unto miracolo italiota
    si amava da morire
    si perdonava tutto
    vinceva senza vergogna
    Campione di coppe
    amatissimo
    solo i pazzi gli tirarono le pietre
    alla fine
    simulacro di se stesso
    Cagliari · 2023 · from Luca Motolese, Umano Disumano Vol II, Nulla die, 2025
11. 104. La prima cosa La prima cosa
    vista prima di addormentarmi
    è un triangolo di cielo stellato
    limpido e nitido
    come in una notte gelida
    Torino · 2021
12. 143. FOLLIE Nell’alba di Dicembre
    sotto i portici
    correva ebbro e sudato
    mezzo congelato
    Poco dopo in un commissariato di polizia
    tre agenti montavano un albero di Natale
    scena surreale
    cosa dovremmo festeggiare?
    Morire pazzi in un eremo
    per scappare dal circo del mondo?
    Torino · 2023 · from Luca Motolese, Umano Disumano Vol II, Nulla die, 2025
13. 117. Vertigo Un effetto vertigo
    manda avanti il cielo
    e indietro il barcone
    devono essere le nuvole
    Il tempo si rallenta
    respiro
    ci dondola il nulla
    Nemmeno un Godzilla gigante
    che distrugga la Giudecca
    Nulla
    Nemmeno un Cristo a pelo d’acqua
    Nulla
    E’ grazie a questo nulla
    mi posso immaginare tutto
    Venezia · 2015 · from Luca Motolese, Umano Disumano Vol II, Nulla die, 2025
14. 82. Pensavo Il mondo è pieno
    di ritardati palestrati
    che male parcheggiano
    parlando da soli
    o con l'auricolare nell'orecchio nascosto
    portano a tutti pacchi di cose
    Comprate!
    
    
    Nella chiesa
    dentro l'ospedale
    tra le attrezzature abbandonate
    c'era la bara più piccola che io avessi mai visto
    non capivo
    sembrava uno scherzo surrealista
    Mi urlava
    è questo come lo spieghi?
    Torino · 2023 · from Luca Motolese, Umano Disumano Vol II, Nulla die, 2025
15. 142. L'OMBRA DELLA STORIA Nell'ombra
    piccole cose sono andate storte
    La storia ha preso altre pieghe
    Lucio Dalla è un gerarca Nazista
    Il Giappone ha sganciato una bomba atomica
    su Phonex in Arizona
    Siamo sotto la dittatura sovietica
    Il capo dello stato fantoccio italiano
    è Umberto Smaila.
    Torino · 2023 · from Luca Motolese, Umano Disumano Vol II, Nulla die, 2025
16. 134. ADORATO Il bambino obeso
    giocava con un pallone dorato
    in mezzo ad una piazza di tavolini
    Abbatteva anziani e gelati
    ombrelloni e bicchieri
    Un cameriere gli andava in contro
    ma invece di cacciarlo
    iniziava a giocare con lui
    strano
    pensava la gente
    forse aspettano
    che se ne occupi la polizia
    che lo portino via
    forse il bambino
    è figlio di un camorrista
    in soggiorno obbligato
    Fuggiva palla al piede
    tra i caruggi
    con il suo pallone adorato
    Genova · 2023 · from Luca Motolese, Umano Disumano, Nulla die, 2024
17. 157. distrazioni La radio accanto al letto
    desintonizzata gracchia sottovoce
    I fogli riempiti di disegni
    mentre il professore spiegava altre materie
    Il libro letto di traverso
    Un aspirapolvere che si avvicina e si allontana
    dietro la nostra porta chiusa
    mentre prendiamo sonno
    Fermarsi immobili durante l’amplesso
    per sentire il rumore del mare
    Svegliarsi presto la mattina
    per spegnere la sveglia
    e rimettersi a dormire
    Distrazioni e fastidi che fanno la vita
    ancora più meravigliosa
    Torino · 2024 · from Luca Motolese, Umano Disumano Vol II, Nulla die, 2025
18. 139. CHLOE La meraviglia di quella bambina
    che
    diciannova anni fa
    scendeva lo scivolo
    in un sogno incantato
    Un miracolo vulcanico
    che apriva una porta
    altrimenti inaccessibile
    Venezia · 2023 · from Luca Motolese, Umano Disumano Vol II, Nulla die, 2025
19. 150. DIO ESISTE Dio potrebbe esistere e noi dovremmo crederci
    Dio potrebbe non esistere e noi sprecheremmo tempo se credessimo in lui
    Dio potrebbe non esistere ma faremmo meglio a crederci
    ma forse
    Dio potrebbe esistere ma faremmo meglio a non crederci
    Nel senso che potrebbe esistere ma essere il primo dei ritardati
    il che spiegherebbe molte cose
    Se Dio invece fosse intelligente
    vivrebbe a Cagliari
    l’unico paese dove c’è amore in ogni anfratto
    si arrabbiano se non possono offrirti abbastanza delizie
    da bere e da mangiare
    e il vento fa viaggiare nel tempo
    Cagliari · 2023
20. 61. Apocalisse Ha appena compiuto quindici anni,
    dice che per quando ne avrà trenta
    non ci sarà più nulla.
    E' tutto papà.
    
    "Apocalisse verrà"
    
    Uragano urlerà e Tempesta soffierà,
    si apriranno come scatole i palazzi di cartone,
    Vulcano brucerà gli inutili soldi di Monopoli.
    
    E non lucevan le stelle,
    ma meteore a cancellar montagne.
    Sublimi le ultime immagini,
    Natura che vince la nostra guerra contro gli stupidi.
    
    "Odia gli stupidi, aiuta i deboli"
    
    Taglio il cartone delle valigie di mio nonno,
    raccolgo quello delle barche perdute,
    che portano al parco giochi i bambini affogati,
    ad abrracciar Godzilla,
    
    "formidabile mostro giapponese, dagli occhi di fucina"
    
    Raccolgo cartone abbandonato,
    veicolo di infinite merci effimere,
    nascondiglio di esuli e droghe.
    Come barbone,
    su cartone e cotone,
    dipingo Apocalisse in accelerazione.
    
    Fossi anch'io uragano,
    che distrugge a caso senza spiegazioni,
    che lancia automobili nel vuoto,
    che ammutolisce i telefoni e spegne le tv,
    che staziona sul pulpito a risucchiare preti e capi, eroi e dotti,
    la saetta nella coppa dei campioni,
    il terremoto nell'idromassaggio delle modelle.
    
    "E' passato l'uragano Zakamoto!"
    
    Ha distrutto tutto, anche le case dei cattivi.
    Ha indebolito gli stupidi e instupidito i deboli.
    Ha trovato difetti, rimpianti, male, ignoranza,
    e nemmeno una goccia di speranza.
    
    Intanto ce ne andiamo a vedere la fine del mondo ad ovest,
    sperando che Colombo non sia mai partito,
    Ulisse non sia mai tornato,
    e che il Kraken o Gamera appaiano all'orizzonte.
    Lisboa · 2016 · from Luca Motolese, Umano Disumano, Nulla die, 2024
21. 91. Incoerenza creativa Appena terminato di costruire il nuovo studio
    con tutte le postazioni per gli assistenti
    colori pennelli cavalletti
    mi sono seduto al centro
    e ho iniziato a scrivere sul mio taccuino.
    Fa parte del processo misterioso
    si tratta di perdere tempo
    Torino · 2023 · from Luca Motolese, Umano Disumano Vol II, Nulla die, 2025
22. 154. fanciulli Come dipinti
    sulla spiaggia
    fanciulli innamorati
    dormivano abbracciati
    mentre l’orizzonte si riempiva
    di nuvole tempestose
    Torino · 2024 · from Luca Motolese, Umano Disumano Vol II, Nulla die, 2025
23. 167. ZKM SULLA SPIAGGIA L’infanzia dorata
    tra nuvole e balocchi
    in spiaggia a sentire il vento
    Torino · 2024 · from Luca Motolese, Umano Disumano Vol II, Nulla die, 2025
24. 113. Maiamai Nelle piazze d’Italia
    moltitudini
    di facce da culo
    
    Negli stadi del mondo
    si innalza l’inno
    dei campioni
    
    Mai amai tanto
    mio amore
    mare di miele
    Torino · 2008 · from Luca Motolese, Umano Disumano Vol II, Nulla die, 2025
25. 162. REGIONALE Il treno regionale
    con porte verdi fosforescenti
    e strisce bulgare sulla fiancata
    azzurro carta da zucchero e giallo acido
    tendine azzurro sporco
    a incorniciare finestrini bloccati
    sedili plastico-termo-pressati
    decorati con texture di fine millennio
    Tutto gli ricordava
    il gusto social-futurista
    del glorioso tempo passato
    del paese locomotiva del mondo
    e notti magiche inseguendo un gol
    Torino · 2024 · from Luca Motolese, Umano Disumano Vol II, Nulla die, 2025
26. 179. Louvre Una delle cose più belle del Louvre
    sono gli occhi commossi di Irene
    davanti ad Amore e Psiche Paris · 2026
27. 84. Il mio cavalletto finestra su altri mondi Un teatro di acrobati ambulanti
    con dentro nuvole come pensieri e specchi
    a terra l'isola di Böcklin sulla copertina di un catalogo
    una lampada di Zanotta
    Poesia che mi urla nel cervello senza sosta
    la mia perenne inquietudine è malattia mentale
    Cieli di fuoco arancio antiruggine
    vita di sogni
    Isole metafisiche fuori contesto
    statue mascherate in luogo di esseri umani
    pezzi di muri scarabocchiati
    da poeti appena nati
    giornali strappati
    palmizi sfrangiati
    Oggetti incomprensibili
    inspiegabili inquietanti
    Sul pelo del mare un idrovolante portoghese
    L'orologio fermo, il tempo congelato
    Il mio cavalletto finestra su mondi
    creati dal mio cervello
    Torino · 2023 · from Luca Motolese, Umano Disumano, Nulla die, 2024
28. 111. Continuo a vedermi Continuo a vedermi
    guardando dentro
    ai tuoi occhi
    
    Quello che scrivo
    accade
    se lo leggete in tanti
    
    Stanotte il gazebo è volato via
    rubato in volo da Michael Jackson Cervo (IM) · 2008
29. 132. MEGLIO AMARE CHE COMPRENDERE Meglio la bellezza della verità
    Meglio ridere che conoscere
    Meglio amare che comprendere
    Inventiamo il reale
    per non farci ammalare
    fateci sognare
    Saremo felici lo stesso Torino · 2023 · from Luca Motolese, Umano Disumano, Nulla die, 2024
30. 165. ALL’ARMI Migliaia di anni
    che ci applichiamo
    nel costruire armi
    che distruggano
    le armature
    dei nemici
    mentre i nostri nemici
    si applicano
    a costruire armi
    per distruggere
    le nostre armature
    Torino · 2024 · from Luca Motolese, Umano Disumano Vol II, Nulla die, 2025
31. 98. Ippocampi cinesi Con voi
    amici cinesi
    nel sole di Viareggio
    Siamo come ippocampi volanti
    in un mondo che non può vedere
    nessun altro
    Viareggio · 2022
32. 135. Se / Allora Se
    tutte le persone che sono passate da qui
    tornassero qui ora
    per un inceppo del tempo
    Se tutti
    da tutti i tempi
    ogni noi stesso
    ogni voi stessi
    uno per ogni giorno della nostra vita
    tornasse per passare un giorno qui
    insieme a noi
    Allora
    non ci sarebbe spazio per tutti
    altro che i profughi
    finiremmo schiacciati dai nostri stessi noi stessi
    ancora prima di alzarci dal letto
    Se
    però per un caso fortunato
    ci trovassimo durante l’inceppo
    aggrappati ad un pennacchio
    sul quale nessuno si era mai arrampicato
    Allora
    vedremmo la moltitudine di umani
    di tutti i tempi affollare le strade
    con auto carrozze cavalli e mammut
    uno sopra l’altro
    eserciti massacrarsi in ogni dove
    e anche
    i nostri mille noi stessi
    inciampare e scontrarsi
    sulla strada di tutti i giorni
    Torino · 2023 · from Luca Motolese, Umano Disumano, Nulla die, 2024
33. 149. PEZZI DI ME Improvvisati pugilatori stradali
    corrono nell’alba gelida
    Pazzi spazzano le strade
    dalle nostre bugie quotidiane
    La sensazione di essere piacevolmente solo tra voi
    che tutto ciò che mi sta intorno
    sia sotto il mio completo dominio
    in quanto ognuno di voi sia un mio riflesso
    contenga anche un alito di me
    Torino · 2023 · from Luca Motolese, Umano Disumano Vol II, Nulla die, 2025

Other writings

1. 69. Life is a game — Introductory text to the series "Anconette del cuore" Life is a game independent of reason,
   it crosses the physical limits of reality to flow out into the spirit.
   Life is a free game, and art is a toy
   that abandons the role of fetish
   to return to its playful and sacred nature,
   because only "serious" play (the play played by children)
   can raise us to those heights of beauty and holiness
   that are barred to reason.
   
   We must not take it too seriously, it is only our life,
   a dance with plenty of stumbles,
   a fury full of caresses,
   a sublime game that cannot be lost.
   
   If our whole social, cultural and artistic construct is born in the first instance as
   play, we may imagine that playing and living are the same thing.
   
   Life is the game of knowing nothing,
   where one comes from and where one is going,
   an open world, open outcome game.
   
   Playing ought to be the first commandment; Italy ought to be a
   republic founded on the courage to play at life.
   In Toy Story 2, Stinky Pete is an old prospector doll who has never been taken
   out of his original box, has never lived, and sees his display in the museum
   in Tokyo as the only possibility of redemption for his existence.
   
   If we do not play our life,
   no one will be able to enjoy it,
   not even afterwards,
   even if kept in mint condition,
   never used.
   
   The game and the toy are a metaphor of our power over the world around us, the memory of our being omnipotent and creators of the future that awaits us.
   The little altarpieces I have made are caskets of our past playing, in perennial memory of our having been children, of our having created ourselves around that child who still dwells in us.
   The little altarpieces are caskets of memories, space-time windows able to stop time at a precise instant, in a moment of intimate contemplation and meditation.
   They can lend themselves to holding the owner's objects or icons of a time that is no more; they are boxes of past time, immortal icons, vows to profane divinities, little flags on the line of time, ex-votos, with images, music, perfumes, words, whispers; they are suggestions, evocations of time past.
   Their sacredness lies in their being born closed, secret, hidden from everyone's eyes but ours. Their interior, gilded and lacquered, represents the heart, the child inside us, the music and the sound of that breath of time of our life.
   The little altarpieces are strongboxes of the heart's memories.
   The box that contains our heart has suffered the weathers of life, like the Romanesque church; the box that contains our heart has nothing beautiful about it, it is rusted, and only with the right key can it be opened.
   
   Cult arose and grew as sacred play, poetry was born in play and continued to live in play-forms, music and dance were pure play, wisdom and knowledge manifested themselves in sacred contests, the conventions of noble life were founded on forms of play; culture in its earliest phases is played, culture develops in play and as play.
   Johan Huizinga
   
   After you have held your child lovingly in your arms, you will be able to look deeply.
   Thich Nhat Hanh
   
   Visualise yourself as a child of five, and invite that child to be with you — the boy or girl who is still alive in you
   Thich Nhat Hanh
   
   A thing that contains neither usefulness nor truth nor any value of comparison, and has no harmful faculty either, is best judged according to the grace it has and the pleasure it gives.
   Such a pleasure is play.
   Plato
   
   In the Platonic dialogue Nomoi (The Laws), it is said: […] man […] is only a plaything made by the gods, and indeed this is his best part. In consequence of this conception, every man and every woman must live playing this game as well as possible.
   Plato
   
   Wherever there is working and producing, we are not together with the divinities and we are not ourselves divine. The gods do not produce, nor do they work.
   Byung-Chul Han
   
   In the midst of the financial crisis, something happened in Greece that looks like a sign from the future. Some children discovered a large bundle of banknotes in a ruined house and put them to a wholly new use: they began to play with them and to tear them up.
   These children somehow anticipate our future: the world is in ruins. Among these ruins we play — like those children — with banknotes, and we tear them up. Those Greek children profane money, capital, the new idol, by putting it to an entirely different use, namely by playing with it. Profanation suddenly turns money, so fetishised today, into a toy.
   Byung-Chul Han
   
   Qui nolet fieri desidiosus, amet.
   (Let him who would not become idle, love.) Torino · 2018 · from Luca Motolese, Umano Disumano, Nulla die, 2024
2. 79. Dataism The present is continuously being calculated.
   Says Byung-Chul Han in "Saving Beauty"
   
   Data have something pornographic and obscene about them: they possess no interiority, no reverse side, no false bottom, and in this they differ from language, which admits of no total definiteness.
   Just as information is a pornographic form of knowledge: it lacks that interiority which distinguishes knowledge.
   
   *Numerandia is the homeland of dataism, the country where graphs govern lives.
   Everything must be measured and compared for the attainment of some established objective.
   The God of merit quantifies numerically even what cannot be measured.
   Numerical indicators with English-language acronyms attempt to explain reality and to stop the moment, with colours and great surges upward followed by immense plunges into the abyss.
   An electroencephalogram, a coronary syncope, a heart attack and a new summit conquered, a series of candles, a quantum, a performance, a ranking, a podium, a winner, a great new objective reached, a sequence of numbers losing themselves in the nothingness of the rust of time.
   Dataism measures the surface of nothing.
   The graph is already old while it is being drawn: machines count and measure the operations of other machines that obey the orders of men who consult machines that count and measure other machines in order to know what to advise ordering.
   Dataism counts.
   Someone ought to invent a value worth nothing, not even 0, a value that cannot be worth any value at all. A value with which to evaluate what cannot and must not be evaluated.
   A value worth exactly: "I don't give a fuck how much it's worth".
   Human beings grow rich and grow poor, trying to foresee the graphs of the minutes, days, months, years and decades to come. The value of things in future time determines their imaginary economic status.
   The game is played on the prediction of the numbers to come, of results, of the appreciation or depreciation of an asset, of a performance, of an idea that will yield money, of a resource that will run short and so increase its own value while starving those who need it.
   
   *Numerandia is the name that, in a video made in 2007, my son Mattia — then six years old — gave to the earth.
   Torino · 2020 · from Luca Motolese, Umano Disumano, Nulla die, 2024
3. 78. Vecchia Mistica Fica Zione Our world now is weak and old, the spilled blood stinks, it is infected. (CCCP)
   
   Vecchia — Old
   The society of the twenties is old; power is in the hands of old people who are not wise at all, and who resist their destiny by shielding themselves with the bodies of children and grandchildren.
   In the bank accounts of this multitude of octogenarians lies buried, blocked, hibernated, the energy to build the future.
   They tell us the fairy tale of how good things were in their day — they who have buried their soul, their memory, who have sold freedom in the hope of receiving a life and an eternal pension.
   They live an imaginary life, a surrogate one, an idea of the life they did not have the courage to live, and they cling for as long as possible to the walking frame of survival.
   In reality these are our parents: is it their fault if we have not worked twenty hours a day and have not had five children each, as they once did?
   The society we live in, the one in which our children are growing up, was conceived by and is managed by old people who live in a world of privileges to which the less old have no access.
   Social disparities between classes have given way to generational disparities; the measures taken during the Covid crisis made it even clearer what the government's priorities are and who the people are that it has chosen to protect.
   Schools, gyms and nightclubs closed, movement of people forbidden, small shops closed and the economy stopped, art and culture treated as useless frills — all in order to protect the bracket of the elderly.
   Meanwhile the children of covid sleep in a tent city behind Termini station.
   
   Mistica — Mystical
   From the man of the twenties the soul has been taken away: the mystical impulse towards the search for an otherworldly truth. Spiritual searching is considered a puerile activity, a residue of popular credulity.
   The idea of happiness is reduced to holding an enviable position, at any cost, an external recognition that allows us to feel better than others; the poor and the desperate serve to affirm our capacity to be superior. "Others" are kept at the margins on the grounds that they would be worse than us, incapable of "raising themselves" to our level, and in this way they represent the one absolute certainty of our own relative affirmation.
   Even the human being who has succeeded and grown rich goes on working strenuously to try to "raise himself" further, in order to build a new level from which to marginalise others less rich and less popular, and to demonstrate his own further relative greatness.
   The successful are venerated like Saints, they become Masters; their biography, their philosophy, their actions — ethical or otherwise — are studied in search of the philosopher's stone that made them what everyone would like to be.
   The recognition of society represents the approval of God.
   Mysticism, as contemplation of the divine by means of which the soul rises to its highest perfection, has been replaced by "elevation" in economic terms and in terms of social role, of merit, of the capacity to produce wealth and to generate consensus.
   Recognition by society occupies first place in people's satisfaction; being popular is considered the only way of "rising", of leaving a mark, of earning immortality.
   The role of art in taking part in the viewer's search for inner truth turns out, in this context, to be entirely useless, naïf, puerile — as much as spiritual elevation, religion, witchcraft.
   No inner search is necessary if the only possible elevation can happen outside and from outside, if truth exists only as a sum of mystifications.
   In this paradigm, the thrust upwards must occur by means of a pyramid of other human beings, the first ones crushed beneath the feet and the bodies of others, who must lift us up by their toil, happy to take part in our success and eager to slip into the same path.
   We trample one another hoping to choose the right side of the pyramid and to get as close as possible to the summit of the corpses and slaves beneath us, towards the glory and the recognition of the social God.
   In this picture the work of art has a strictly economic value, an investment for the purpose of future gain. The artist has a capacity to produce works of value as a function of his own notoriety. The role of the gallerist and of the collector, like that of the museum curator, is reduced to an analysis of the economic prospects of the artist and of his works.
   
   
   Misticazione — Mystification
   History has always been written by the victors, by political and military power.
   Today the past, history, the present and the idea of the future are written through the technological and media power to mystify reality, to gratify the ego of the recipients of a message, until they are brought to believe that the surrogate of reality they are observing is reality itself.
   Recourse to the surrogate is ever more present in every aspect of human life, and is experienced by most people as innovative, ecological, emancipating, healthy, improving, safe.
   Pets, robots, silicone dolls are used as surrogates for children, husbands, wives, lovers and grandchildren; plastic surgery is used to produce surrogate bodies and sexual identities; pornography and safe sex allow the sexual act itself to be surrogated; synthetic foods, vegan foods, nutrition bars, medicines that make it possible to obtain performance in every field — human beings themselves are surrogates of themselves.
   Towards the most intimate and fundamental spaces of our existence, products, ideas and behaviours are promoted which seek to take us away from real life, towards a fictitious, virtual, synthetic life, in which inner experience is replaced by the mystified image that society has of us.
   A lie repeated endlessly does not become true, but it makes mystification a socially acceptable practice; the sense of the true is lost behind the awareness that every truth might contain, wholly or in part, a mystification.
   The ablest and most generous person may appear, in this context, too good to be true; the most despicable person may appear sanctified by invented truths.
   By accepting to delegate the power of defining truth to the technological and media system, we accept to live in a vortex of information produced to sustain one mystification rather than another.
   The pandemonium caused by the coronavirus made the idea of a surrogate, masked life-experience all the more appreciable — one in which we seek the recognition of the group without having to meet the individuals.
   The history of our days will again be written by the victors of a war made of lies, but the technological capacities we have reached will allow us to create mystifications on a scale never seen before.
   We lie to ourselves, and every day it is harder to catch ourselves doing it; the surrogate life devours the real one.
   
   Fica — Cunt
   Pornography has replaced and surrogated sexuality; porn is also the first field of application of new technologies, which establish themselves and find their standards in this domain, by reason of the high budgets available.
   The pornographic industry today concentrates on the one hand on the maniacal categorisation of the various pornographic genres — including, besides race, bodily proportions, number of participants, age, hair colour, sexual orientation, and so on — and on the other on the possibility of making the experience of consuming the content more immersive, at a cost accessible to everyone.
   The objective is to create a perfect surrogate of the sexual act by eliminating the act itself, through the elimination of the other, replaced by a monitor, a headset, a doll, a robot: the experience of sexuality must not be shared, and it can answer the specific expectations of the user.
   The user can choose exactly what must happen or what he wishes to watch; there are no surprises or risks of any kind.
   Sexuality as a deep union with another human being, and as an instant of beatitude, is to be replaced by an act that is realistic and mechanical, essentially false but closer to our preferences, easier, safer.
   Sex as a primary and indispensable function of human experience can be set aside and replaced by a mystification that satisfies the drive without compromising our aseptic solitude.
   Contact with another human being is experienced as potentially dangerous on the physical and psychological level; the satisfaction of our primary drives must occur without consequences and without guilt, by interfacing with a machine that has no conscience, that can neither choose nor suffer. The sexual organs, once venerated and used as a symbol of virility and abundance, have already lost part of their function and consequent importance: the sexual act, the presence of a male sex and a female one, the fertility of both people involved, are no longer necessary for conception.
   The act itself has moved from the genital zone to the cerebral zone; the sex of the twenties is pure metaphysics.
   
   aZione — Action
   The artist of the twenties must SHOUT that at least ONE of us is not willing to see himself reflected in the lies we are told every day.
   Roma · 2020 · from Luca Motolese, Umano Disumano, Nulla die, 2024
4. 75. Megamix The kaleidoscope of imagined images
   
   There is, in my brain, an immense quantity of images stored away, more or less usefully, which leap out at the most unforeseen moments: visual notes filed in the vain attempt to sate my need to know things. Images deformed, worn out by time, revised and reconsidered in the light of later events, dissociated, isolated from their context, distorted by the inevitable amnesia that life brings, by the perpetual assault and looting of the mythical little camels of memory. Images from my life, from films and television programmes, from music videos, from exhibitions and museums, from advertisements, from the icons of the human race, from books and stories, all the way to the images of my dreams.
   The dissonant elements find their visual and conceptual, chromatic and formal, comic, cosmic and surreal accord again in the painted fruit.
   Characters and landscapes, interiors and spaces, of one great crossover episode, born of my "volupté de voir", of my strolling through the secret rooms of my brain, like a flâneur inside Asimov's fantastic voyage.
   Through this game of searching, the collage of visual references becomes a continuous intellectual sublimation, full of speculation on the iconic value of the images and symbols that interact with one another, creating a tale that cannot do without the natural placement of the images themselves, yet cannot help tracing new
   narratives and new paths of meaning. The kaleidoscope of images imagined by oneself and by others reflects, in a distorting mirror, the image of what we have seen, what we believed we saw, what we see after time has passed, in a continuous looking-experimenting-considering-reinventing-looking-again, endlessly. We create out of what we have seen and experienced, endlessly recreating the world in which we imagine we would like to live.
   Bari · 2021 · from Luca Motolese, Umano Disumano, Nulla die, 2024
5. 62. Apocalipse fantástico On the road sign pointing to the airport I saw the drawing of an aeroplane that mysteriously resembled a flying mackerel. I imagined it had been drawn by a surveyor at the town hall, some poor wretch who had scribbled the final layout for the printers on his sandwich wrapper; or perhaps the poor man had copied it from the signs of other countries or, more likely, of other planets, where aeroplanes could fly and plunge into the sea as they pleased.
   I was travelling next to an old Ukrainian woman, two young girls, the wolf man and a family of Egyptians; they were all going away, far away, perhaps to find a hurricane.
   We had to go past the ugly houses built in the sixties, a time when architects enjoyed planetary immunity and were omnipotent, a time when Italy was full of empty space and nobody knew how to fill it, so long as the nothing was annihilated — "better ugly than grass", they thought — a time when everyone was asking God to open them a hiding place outside nature.
   We grow fonder of an ugly artifice than of a fine piece of shit.
   Anarchic Nature frightens us more than aseptic ugliness, and so we build ugly things to reassure us.
   The immortality of nature, its being there always and forever, its eating the asphalt with the roots of trees, its destroying and generating force that feeds the universe, makes us uneasy; but it is the unease of feeling ourselves passengers on this earth, the awareness that nature will sooner or later take us back into itself…
   [ Continues in the PDF, 13 pages ] Lisbona · 2016 · from Luca Motolese, Umano Disumano Vol II, Nulla die, 2025
6. 76. Quarantined Quarantine, as a state of isolation and precautionary exclusion, is the basic mental state of Western societies.
   From the spread of Aids (1981) to the attacks on the Twin Towers (2001) to Covid 19, people have gradually but inexorably excluded themselves from social life, so as to run no risk to their own survival.
   Human beings, in this part of the world, have chosen to live inside their houses, inside their gates, behind their walls, inside their brains, elaborating extraordinary fantasies about what should magically happen in the future, entrusting themselves to the vain possibility that technology might fill the void of meaning and of warmth in their hearts.
   My work, and the Quarantined series in particular, centres on the vision of contemporary man in the opulent Western civilisation: a being who, for fear of dying or of not living long enough, would rather imagine living, surrounding himself with reassuring, safe surrogates of real life.
   This state of mind seeks to exclude the body in favour of the mind.
   The experience of life becomes virtual, displaced, addressed mainly to the sense of sight and to the cerebral organ alone.
   I paint my models headless, with a great sphere in place of the head: a sphere crammed with unsayable, unattainable desires, with fears and hopes placed in a wonderful future in which it will once again be possible to live truly.
   In a condition close to confinement, in a situation where our freedom of movement is restricted — whatever the reason — our mind has only one possibility: to travel through the imagination, towards new worlds, in order to remain in its natural state of freedom.
   Torino · 2020 · from Luca Motolese, Umano Disumano, Nulla die, 2024
7. 60. A112 The Autobianchi A-112 has a tuned four-cylinder in-line engine with a side camshaft,
   903 cubic centimetres of displacement and 44 horsepower of maximum output.
   It takes 13.7 seconds to go from 0 to 100 kilometres an hour.
   From which one deduces that the engine may have more power than the manufacturer declares — perhaps 47 horsepower.
   It has a 4-speed manual gearbox that pushes it to nearly 140 kilometres an hour, but past 100 it drinks outrageously, and super is at 1,510 lire a litre.
   Which is why Aldo has decided that tomorrow we shall get up early and go back to the main road.
   It is 7 p.m. now; we are sitting on a bench in the park, and I have just finished going round every stand of the Venice Biennale.
   Since ten o'clock this morning Aldo has been waiting for me here; he has read the newspaper from the first page to the last and has found a way to avoid spending a fortune on fuel — he looks very pleased with himself.
   Outrageous consumption is not the A112's only problem: the 47 horsepower generate a vibration that lulls the passenger to sleep and numbs the driver's arms.
   For this reason, during the journey along the main road, we stop every 100 km for a coffee, an unfiltered Gitanes and a quick read of the local papers.
   We choose bars that look aristocratic but cheap.
   Every bar has its terrace with ashtrays, its dialect and its history.
   Aldo tells me everything he knows about these places.
   It seems to us that having a history makes the existence of this endless series of villages with absurd names more acceptable.
   Ca' Sabbioni, Fiesso, Selvazzano Dentro, Oppeano, Trevenzuolo, Goito, Acquanegra, Pizzighettone…
   Noble houses intermarried, giving rise to envies and wars; apparitions of alleged madonnas struck by lightning; lands invaded by the Krauts, retaken by Garibaldi's men, occupied by the partisans.
   Villages that housed mastodontic factories, theatres of Napoleonic wars, headquarters of merchants, traffickers, fugitives, Istrian exiles.
   Aldo goes on telling me why what surrounds us exists; I am watching the world build itself around me through the little quarter-light window with its curious triangular shape. Everything mixes together in my head while I let myself be rocked by the 47 horsepower, galloping through a dream.
   In the future I shall always avoid the motorways of life.
   Thank you, Aldo. Milano · 2016 · from Luca Motolese, Umano Disumano Vol II, Nulla die, 2025
8. 80. A thought unknown to silicon The machine of 2023 is "intelligent".
   It can create, even though it cannot say why it is doing so.
   The machine is a puppet of ours to which we want to attribute intelligence; we want to be able to say we were so clever as to instil an intelligence superior to our own into a creation of ours.
   Instagram's artificial "intelligence" discriminates between posts on the basis of the symbols they contain; this recently happened to a post showing a painting of mine.
   Paradox number one in the matter is that the darkened (censored) post meant to make people reflect on the role of the media in recent history and on their capacity to manipulate the truth in favour of power.
   The work depicts Toei's Super Mario wearing a Nazi cap, painted in oils on an original page of the Corriere della Sera of 13 April 1945.
   In that historical moment Italy had surrendered to the Allies two years earlier, yet our main daily ran the headline: "Iron will to fight until victory", next to a photograph of Hitler and Mussolini intent on planning their military moves on a map.
   The articles on the page recount a reality of hyperbolic fantasy, in which it is taken for granted that the fascists will shortly win the war in Italy and in the colonies, together with their German ally.
   In the excellent series set in a reality parallel to ours, "The Man in the High Castle", directed by David Semel (Amazon Prime Video), the Axis has won the war and Germany and Japan have divided up the world; the Italian fascists are not mentioned in any of the 40 episodes. The Corriere headline of '45 finds no foothold even in a work of dystopian fiction eighty years later.
   In reality, on 13 April 1945 the Germans were losing Vienna to Stalin's troops; twelve days later Italy would be liberated by the Americans, and fifteen days later Mussolini would be executed by the partisans.
   The editor of the Corriere, Ermanno Amicucci, chose in those days to manipulate reality because power was still in the hands of the Nazis (who had occupied Milan) and of the Fascists of the Italian Social Republic.
   
   
   Today, even more than in '45, the only power that moves all the others is economic power. For this reason the internet is no longer the place of freedom of expression and free circulation of information that we had helped to build at the beginning of the millennium: the economic kraken has taken possession of our toy and turned it into a money machine.
   Instagram and the other social networks are no exception: they do not serve to meet one another, to share or to communicate, but to create a market.
   Censorship in this context is carried out by anonymous artificial "intelligences", with the aim of favouring exchanges and the consequent creation of economic value.
   The attempt is to reduce as far as possible controversial material, discrimination, alternative information, violence and so on, so as to create a space that is as inclusive as possible, in which one may sell and buy in complete trust and safety; culture and art should therefore bend to this imperative.
   One sells better by entertaining, by talking of trifles, by keeping the level of the narrative comprehensible to everyone; for this reason most of the posts we see tell of tragicomic accidents, seductive women and, naturally, products purchasable with a single touch of the fingers.
   Anyone born in Italy in the seventies, as the writer was, remembers among the various squalors we have witnessed the birth of private television, in which for the first time stupidity, trifles and large breasts were the dominant theme of most programmes. Advertising revenue worked so well with these themes that RAI had to bow to the evidence, so much so that today there is no difference between the two broadcasters apart from the licence fee.
   One might say that Berlusconi was the first to understand it, therefore the best from the entrepreneurial point of view, consequently the richest, and later also the most voted for.
   President of the Council of Ministers of the Italian Republic, spoken of as a future President of the Republic — if only he had realised that the electorate adores trifles and large breasts, tolerates prostitutes, but does not forgive whoremongers.
   
   
   A second paradox of the internet in 2023 is the bureaucratisation of its use.
   Today, in order to access Instagram we must provide our data and accept all the clauses, which the network may change at will; to request the review of a decision to censor our content we must specify the complaint number; if our complaint is not taken into consideration — we do not know whether by a human being or by another artificial "intelligence" — we may appeal to the "Oversight Board", a group that declares itself independent of Instagram, providing once again the number of a new request for review.
   The board points out that it takes into consideration only some of the requests it receives, and asks us to accept further clauses about our personal data.
   In Douglas Adams's novel "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", the Vogons are a race of bureaucratic aliens: a Vogon, seeing his own grandmother attacked by a ravenous bugblatter beast, would not lift a finger in her defence without an order signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public inquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat for three months and recycled as firelighters.
   
   
   
   Football is another market that we stubbornly call by a different name (a game), in order to satisfy the economic power that has taken possession of the toy. Artificial "intelligence" tries to reduce the margin of human error (error that might cause substantial economic losses to the owners of the teams-games) through automated mechanisms. Human error is part of the game, and whoever makes the error takes it upon himself; whereas when we entrust the machine with the task of deciding, we witness the paradox of the inconceivable error of the machine, or of the human referee who disavows the machine and confirms his own mistaken assessment. The only error is the underlying one: treating a game as a game of chance, an amusement as a job, a contest as entertainment.
   
   
   Artificial "intelligence" deduces from a symbol present in the work that the work in question has something to do with Nazism; it recognises the symbol and compares it with the same symbol present in a relational database compiled by humans, in which the swastika is put into relation with terms such as Nazism, violence, antisemitism, Second World War, and so on.
   In order to decide whether the symbol extols Nazism, condemns Nazism, ridicules Nazism, or whether it is the Buddhist swastika (practically identical but with wholly different meanings), the machine would have to know Italian history, read the article, know the author, know the meaning of Super Mario for the author — but above all make a quantum leap that is at present impossible for a machine: it would have to think.
   The only hope in this field of study is that the level of human critical thought should fall so far, thanks to the control of technology, as to approach artificial non-thought, making the two "intelligences" more or less identical.
   The process has been under way for years and the results are well documented; it would be more fitting, however, to speak of natural stupidity rather than of artificial intelligence, however much the two terms are destined to become synonyms. Santo Stefano Roero, CN · 2022 · from Luca Motolese, Umano Disumano Vol II, Nulla die, 2025
9. 73. Italic pigeons I was obsessed by the mystery of pigeons and of their coming to earth, of their purpose.
   I supposed they might be multidimensional creatures, incorporeal spectres impossible to grasp;
   then I understood that they were alien animals reproducing by means of a self-explosion that left the old pigeon's body splattered on the road, and a new pigeon, identical but young, fluttering about the city.
   
   This is why nobody has ever seen a baby pigeon.
   What remains to be understood is their function, since nobody eats them or would eat them, and they are no aesthetic advantage whatsoever to our balconies.
   The only hypothesis has to do with the fact that in antiquity populations had great trouble disposing of breadcrumbs.
   In the course of history certain goats, pigeons, pigs and monkeys have "evolved" into a semblance of human beings, and dressed up as functionaries of this decomposing system.
   They are the zealous gears of a system of caretakers and bureaucrats of every kind.
   They are the ballast that tries to hang off every project of ours, every leap towards the future.
   They are deeply stupid beings, shrivelled in brain and in soul, small inside and wide outside, and their only purpose is to keep alive the system they have clung to in order to survive.
   Instead of serving, they eat the crumbs of power and shit litanies of complaint.
   They are a terrible mix of Douglas Adams's Vogons and Dostoevsky's petty bureaucrats,
   in triplicate, forever blocking everyone else's way.
   They bleat, they grunt, they snort and they shout, all together in unison.
   
   We are not the gears of any system, we come from nowhere and go nowhere, we do not defend the past of the deceased, its borders and its customs posts; we write the future with our ears plugged, dodging your flying shit as it rains down from the sky.
   Torino · 2022 · from Luca Motolese, Umano Disumano, Nulla die, 2024
10. 66. Spam (Article for the magazine Effetto Arte) There are days when the "young" artist checks his email inbox to clear it of the 8,723 messages from self-styled gallerists, promoters, organisers, excipients and flavour enhancers.
    Deep ecology begins here too.
    For every person who proposes an interesting initiative to promote our work, there are 8,722 proposing unpronounceable vulgarities at hyperbolic prices.
    It is in this context that the "young" artist must turn into a latter-day gold prospector, sieving and throwing back into the muddy swamp of the art far west the unspeakable offers, and slipping into his pocket the flakes and nuggets that will make his fortune.
    Patiently our hero must leave his beloved easel and let himself be flooded by this dense river of bombastic promotional information, also known as spam.
    The practice of spam consists in sending unwanted messages through any communication system. The term originates from a comic sketch in Monty Python's Flying Circus, set in a café where every dish proposed by the waitress contained an unspecified ingredient called Spam, corresponding to a brand of tinned meat produced by the American Hormel Foods Corp.
    The tin of Spam is therefore the Campbell's soup of this beginning of the century.
    Would it not be better to escape this martyrdom by destroying at a single stroke all unwanted emails and those from unknown senders?
    Absolutely NOT.
    The artist, as such, must force himself into curiosity, must dig deeper, must get his hands dirty, must carry out the alchemical process that turns shit into gold — Manzoni dixit.
    Over the years, in the junk mail I have found the best collaborators, the best work opportunities and the most uninhibited girlfriends.
    So the sieving must go on, starting with the elimination of the mails whose subject line carries explicit sexual proposals — these come from harlot senders — and those enthusiastically informing us that YOU HAVE WON! a competition we had never entered.
    Last of all remain the mails that might contain something interesting.
    Our prospector must open them and, reading them askance in the shortest possible time, assess their reliability and decide whether to reply or to bin them.
    Last days to join … BINNED, artists do not like working in a hurry.
    Exceptional exhibiting opportunity at… BINNED, too showy.
    Have you ever thought of exhibiting at the Louvre for only … BINNED, good night.
    Dear "young" artist, we have viewed your work and would like to include you in this initiative curated by the famous critic … in the famous city of … during the famous festival of … I REPLY.
    A few minutes go by and our hero receives a telephone call from a self-styled Promoter Doctor who, extolling the artistic work she has examined together with the famous critic (in the previous two minutes, we imagine), urges him not to delay, because there are only a few places left.
    From the telephone one gathers only that the Promoter Doctor is Milanese, has a fine patter, is offering the chance of a lifetime, and is heavily made up and perfumed.
    If only for the perfume, the "young" one agrees to receive an email, which arrives three seconds later with all the relevant information.
    Dear Young Artist,
    further to our telephone conversation, I hereby send you the proposal to exhibit your works in the city of … during the event curated by the famous critic … The services we shall provide you are as follows:
    1) General organisation and secretariat;
    2) Presentation by the famous art critic;
    3) Attendance at the opening of well-known intellectuals and art critics;
    4) Presence, during the Event, of figures from the world of culture and television;
    5) Installation and dismantling;
    6) Security guarding;
    7) Insurance of the Works on site;
    8) Drafting of the critical text by the famous Art Critic, to be included in the exhibition catalogue;
    9) Fine printing of the Festival catalogue;
    10) Graphic design and printing of invitations and posters;
    11) Promotion of the events on the web;
    12) Design and printing of the roll-up;
    13) Application for various patronages;
    14) Graphic design and printing of your biography and of the colophon, to be displayed during the exhibition on forex panels;
    15) Distribution of the promotional material;
    16) Press office;
    17) Coordination of contacts with the Authorities (Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities, Region, Province and Municipality);
    18) Organisation of the cocktail for the opening evening;
    19) Invitations to collectors and sector experts;
    20) Professional cameraman to film the vernissage;
    21) Organisation of a press conference attended by newspapers, radio and television;
    22) Advertising space for the event in specialised magazines;
    23) Professional photographer for the opening evening and delivery of a CD with the photos;
    24) Production and editing of a video of the opening;
    25) Gala dinner after the opening of the Exhibition;
    26) Hotel room for the night of the opening.
    
    For this package of services an expenses reimbursement of € 28,000.00 + VAT is required, plus one of your works of our choosing from among those exhibited at the Festival.
    Certain that you will appreciate this interesting opportunity, and awaiting a kind reply, I send my cordial regards.
    Promoter Doctor
    Our artist immediately realises that, being "young", he does not possess even the smallest part of the sum requested by way of "expenses reimbursement"; and, wondering about the very meaning of the term, he also realises that he is wasting time analysing a useless email when he could more profitably devote himself to sending his own 20,000 emails to tell everyone that his new painting is nearly ready.
    Thus is completed the natural cycle that generates that constant production of junk information which, slowly rotting down, generates the humus on which Art sprouts and grows, inexorable. Torino · 2017
11. 81. Kitty die Katze I thought I liked sleeping.
    Instead, I like falling asleep — and if I can do it several times in the same night, better still.
    My ideal journey is on a vehicle driven by others through the night: the wonder of letting oneself be carried.
    Opening one's eyes for a moment, one glimpses flashes.
    In the dream one sees the night journey of the unconscious.
    From today I shall always travel like this. Even Switzerland looks more beautiful, even Germany — which in Italy is considered the worst country along with France, I believe out of footballing hatred, or because of films about the Second World War, or out of envy.
    You only have to look at Italy from outside to realise it is a country of shepherds governed by pigs; conversely, the moment you enter Italy you fall prey to a special enchantment that makes it seem a normal country.
    Frankfurt looks like Milan, which, again out of envy, is the city most hated by all non-Milanese Italians and even by a few Milanese who support Juventus.
    I had to wait two years of pandemonium to come and prepare this exhibition; I had to await the sweet convenience of the gentlemen of "Better stay home" and the ladies of "Let's wash our hands" before resuming my normal apocalyptic and integrated life. I came out of it less revolutionary and more uskok, thinner, and convinced that there are in the world slaves and fools happier than I am.
    At last I start moving again at the centre of my own picture; for two years I have been looking at an empty picture in an ugly frame.
    The European Central Bank towers over the exhibition space — a fine coincidence, I thought it was elsewhere. I already knew mine would be an exhibition centred on the game of life; and the Bank, after all, is the best-selling game of the last hundred years. Once the game of God and the Pope was much in vogue; today the game of finance has infected everyone: the rich who play at becoming richer, and the poor too, who play like someone playing Monopoly with no money, hoping to be lucky and land only on Chance.
    This flood of losers is the only thing guaranteeing that there be a single super-winner.
    As if the dice were a random variable of the game, as if in the long run they did not turn up the same number the same number of times. We know that chance does not exist even in a throw of dice, but we pretend not to notice.
    I too, like Gundam, hate fools: they slow me down. I repeat inside myself that I am not afraid, not ashamed and not in a hurry, but into my heart there enters a little pain along with all this colour.
    We never take sufficient account of the fact that life is a zero-sum game.
    To reach the Kunstverein Familie Montez I passed through Bahnhofsviertel, Frankfurt's red-light district. For us that is inconceivable: it would mean admitting that whores exist. We know they have existed for two hundred thousand years, but for the last seventy we have put this too into the category of things we pretend do not exist.
    Another game in vogue for some time now is sex toys: playthings for adults in search of the enthusiasm they had when young. The increase in pornography is inversely proportional to desire; we need new stimuli for this too.
    The young and the very young have started using sex toys as well, and the design of these games of love looks more and more like that of the games of twelve-year-olds.
    In Pixar's film Toy Story, the toys come to life in the absence of Andy (their owner), weaving relations of friendship, love and hatred among themselves. In the room of today's fluid pre-adolescent, toys and sex toys are mixed together: the dolls walk through forests of vibrators, massagers, cock rings, artificial vaginas and dildos, like astronauts on an unknown planet in search of the lost road that leads to their owner's identity.
    Hello Kitty is an icon both childish and erotic. Created in Tokyo by the designer Yuko Shimizu in 1974, Hello Kitty merchandising — licensed and otherwise — turns over a billion dollars a year: from stationery to aeroplanes, from toys to clothes, condoms, vodka, underwear, and on to vibrators.
    To an Italian who does not know German, "Kitty die Katze" (Kitty the cat) sounds ironically like "Kitty il cazzo" — Kitty the prick.
    Francoforte sul Meno · 2022 · from Luca Motolese, Umano Disumano, Nulla die, 2024
12. 63. Distractions of art (Article for the magazine Effetto Arte) Perhaps poets and writers work in silence. To tell the truth I do too: when I write for you or for myself I usually do it without visual or acoustic distractions. But for what strange reason does the visual artist, in the act of bringing his idea onto the canvas or into the material, feel the innate need to distract himself?
    A scientific inquiry ought to be conducted to understand the reasons. Perhaps the anxiety of seeing a good result turns into the fear of finishing too quickly; perhaps we are seized by the childish habit of doing our homework while watching cartoons; or perhaps, quite simply, working is tiring.
    In any case, in art studios one can observe various ways in which the artist likes to distract himself, from the most classic to the boldest and most creative.
    Coffee is certainly the first and universal distraction of any art studio. The essential thing is to use the moka pot and not the modern capsule machines: the time needed for the water to pass from the boiler through the coffee and down into the cups allows us a brief rest and a chat with assistants, gallerists, visitors — or, failing those, with imaginary characters. Besides, we remain certain that after a good coffee our work will proceed more briskly.
    In reality, at the eighth coffee of the day the habituated body derives no benefit at all; and many like to smoke interminable cigars precisely after a good coffee, which makes art studios rather smoky and almost entirely devoid of oxygen, and this contributes to a mild, widespread drowsiness.
    So coffee is good for nothing, we are led to think.
    The telephone, like coffee, is a continuous blessed source of distraction: it chirps at every message, every share on facebook, every message from the operator, every appointment and reminder; it shrieks to announce friends, relatives, colleagues and unknown numbers wanting to charm us with offers and incredible stories — evidently inspired by some angel who has taken pity on our bored condition as executors of our own creative idea.
    The last classic cause of distraction is the questions of your assistants and collaborators: questions almost always pertinent, and due to the fact that you deliberately did not explain the work to be done properly, so that they might disturb you as soon as possible.
    To settle doubts about the shade of gesso to spread on the canvases, or the shade of monochrome to use, there is nothing better than stopping for a moment and, first of all, making a good coffee.
    And so the cycle starts again.
    But for many all this is not enough, and so, next to the easels, there arise self-propelled stilt-houses made of art books, bearing on their summit sixty-inch televisions, surround systems with amplified subwoofers capable of overturning or exploding every glass in the neighbourhood, more or less elaborate systems for listening to music, audiobooks, lectures, watching football matches, dictating memoirs, weaving relations of love and of work.
    All in order to be distracted a little and not to have that terrible sensation of being at work.
    The need for distraction is a pathology which, sooner or later, strikes every artist and creative person; one may as well resign oneself and choose the distraction one prefers. I recommend readings of the classics and live music: having somebody behind your back who reads, plays or talks will also help you get on with your work, if only as a matter of ego.
    The atrocious price paid for this syndrome consists, naturally, in spending Saturday and Sunday alone in the studio, finishing the work you have been carrying on limply all week — a price that, in the end, one pays willingly, because it makes us feel truly passionate about our work.
    Torino · 2017 · from Luca Motolese, Umano Disumano Vol II, Nulla die, 2025
13. 65. Photocracy (Article for the magazine Effetto Arte) Summer.
    The time when we abandon our dwelling for some other place, any other place.
    The artist travels too, among the other fugitives, and observes the post-atomic exodus.
    Along the lovely Italic alleys it is all one film set of men and women photographing one another, striking poses by dint of shouting; the images so produced set off from the telephones to reach other people's devices — people presumably busy, in their turn, immortalising relatives in front of exotic landscapes.
    If one could trace this traffic in visual souvenirs, one would discover that we are accidentally present in many other people's holiday photos, and that our images are used to describe the imaginary holidays of call-centre employees.
    From the Alps to the Pyramids the instantaneous seizure infects everybody: we must produce the proven proof of having really been in this place today; everyone must know that we are enjoying life, today.
    We clog our digital memories, we fill our hard disks with images of our worldly happiness!
    Although it is certain that everything has already been photographed at least once, we are sure it has not been photographed by us, and that is enough for us.
    We document for posterity, for history, for future digital memory.
    Virtual spaces of sharing are born, in which we can narrate our holiday life in images, our exploits, our conquests, our gaze on the world at rest; we sell the imaginary image of ourselves.
    We try to show it to as many as we can, we share, we promote the images of our holiday as though they were products, we bewitch strangers in order to turn them into our followers: let him who loves me follow me.
    My happiness, my fun, my amusement, I sell at the price of a moment of your time — the moment you need to say you like it, that you appreciate it, that you would like to know me.
    What remains of this enormous traffic in visual information of the worst taste?
    Nothing.
    We ourselves delete most of the shots that had seemed fantastic to us: in one you can see we have put on weight, in another the little niece has made bunny ears, and in this one some idiot artist walked in front of the setting sun.
    Only a tiny part will end up on our social networks, where it will remain for ever and ever, indelible, Amen.
    More than the fifteen minutes of fame, it is a whole life spent describing how we would like to be, how we would like to live, how we would like others to see us.
    Once upon a time one could poison the existence of friends and relatives with the projection of twenty slide magazines; the boldest had produced a VHS video on holiday, with a sound commentary read out by the tour guide. Today photography and documentary video are free, like democracy.
    Everyone can photograph, film, vote, found political parties — and they really do, without shame, regardless of their culture or competence.
    The observing artist, analysing the situation thoroughly, realises that there are only four solutions for enjoying a view or visiting a monument in this age:
    A) Look up the photo of the view or the monument on the internet.
    B) Get up at five in the morning — and some do, but not artists, who are too lazy.
    C) Go to a bar and read a good science fiction book.
    D) Go and live in North Korea.
    While we meditate on what to do, a girl takes a photo of a friend who is photographing herself; the bells peal out; today another art has died, and photographers join painters in the eden of the useless, marvellous, stubborn people of yesteryear.
    Will some young virgin arrive to rethink the very idea of photography from scratch?
    Will a providential solar rain destroy the digital world, giving back dignity to the photographer-artist?
    We can simply take comfort in the certainty that the digital memory on which we save our images will not reach the archaeologists of the year 4000 intact, preventing historians from branding our epoch as the most pathetic of all.
    At school we are forced to swallow harrowing readings and aberrant visions of buried epochs, and this only because of the immortality of paper and papyrus; our epoch, by contrast, produces disproportionate quantities of useless information which self-destructs in an
    unconscious act of deep ecology. Siracusa · 2017 · from Luca Motolese, Umano Disumano Vol II, Nulla die, 2025
14. 58. D'IO Having finished exploring the near world around him, the child turns his gaze for the first time upon himself.
    In the deep pool made by Nemesis, or in the bathroom mirror at home,
    he sets his eyes inside his own eyes, to discover that he is looking at someone else: God.
    For a moment he stands nonplussed, observing himself upside down in the colour of his iris.
    The forever changing landscape around his own pupil tells him of extraterrestrial landscapes.
    Distracted by an animal behind the bushes, or by the telephone ringing in the hall,
    the child returns to the world, forgetting what he has just seen.
    A friendly God so close at hand seems too easy to find, and cannot be true.
    The child destroys and builds, seeking God in other people's eyes, and, now become a man, he finds himself looking into his own
    eyes and discovering in his iris a landscape altered by craters, wounded by collisions with other heavenly bodies, warmed
    by suns or frozen by the death of imploded stars.
    Once again the child become a man sees God and, with gooseflesh, begins to speak to him: he wants to know who he is, and where he must go.
    God stares at him blankly from the mirror without giving any answer, and the adult has the feeling of talking to himself.
    A crying baby, or an alarm clock going off, brings the adult back into the world.
    A God who does not answer is a deaf God, a wicked God, and a God who does not exist.
    Until the adult, now grown old, finds himself in the morning before himself, washing his face:
    the extraterrestrial landscape of his eyes, from which he comes and to which he is about to return, has changed again;
    the God who dwells there awaits him impassive among tangles of flowers, shadows of mythological animals, rainbows of coloured yarn.
    The child become a man become an old man will set out to meet, in his own eyes, D'Io — God, and of I. Alassio · 2008 · from Luca Motolese, Umano Disumano, Nulla die, 2024
15. 64. Zoolatry The beings I paint, in glamorous selfie settings and clothes, are stereotyped people crushed by the gears of the system for which they perform a function: enthusiastic functionaries of the very system that tramples them.
    The animal character of the head stands for a deminutio of being human, in favour of an animal "quality".
    A terrible mix of Douglas Adams's Vogons and Dostoevsky's petty bureaucrats, in triplicate, forever blocking everyone else's way.
    They bleat, they grunt, they snort and they shout, all together in unison. Venezia · 2017 · from Luca Motolese, Umano Disumano, Nulla die, 2024