Emilio Fantin

Virus 

the word

A cultural “repositioning” is necessary to understand if those words which belong to a certain critical thinking still preserve their original meanings: this is very difficult because it requires a continuous verification. Not all words betray their identity, but just paradigms and those that are more often used and repeated. Actually, it is only a matter of using words without consuming them. Sometimes we use certain words in relation to an ethic, moral, religious and ideological creed just to reassure ourselves.

This provides a fertile ground for the birth of a device similar to the one which in the commercial sphere is called “trend”. A cultural “trend” leads us to share the political, social, philosophical and religious sphere. Don’t let you be tricked by the apparent banality of this brief analysis. Automatic and self-referential devices generated in the economic sphere, are more powerful when they are applied to the cultural or juridical sphere. The effective appeal to these pedagogical devices is given by repetition of words, emphasis of communication, allusion to certain demagogical values and sentimental redundancy.

These tools activate devices which belong to propaganda, that is a language contaminated by ambiguity and malice. Propaganda was introduced as an expression of power/mass relationship, but nowadays its attributes spread quickly inside every interpersonal dialectic relationship. As masters of language, we become our worst enemies. Our identity is fogged. No pedagogical emergency is more impellent than this one. Whatever our best intentions and most innovative pedagogical experimentations are, everything will be useless if we do not constantly pay attention to this aspect. 

Propaganda is the relationship between power and mass. It has been used to mass people. Of course, those people who join uncritically a political, economic or religious thinking are more exposed to such a danger. Nowadays, propaganda mechanisms, used to have oceanic crowds’ consent, emancipate and gain a complete independence. I mean that it is possible to unchain the consequences of propaganda not only by affecting the emotional sphere, but also by letting certain linguistic automatisms substitute the language itself. After the advent of the Net, propaganda devices, such as slogans, clichés, platitudes, have become more autonomous and self-referential. The irresistible appeal on people of such a mixing of acts, improves the action of the rhetorician on duty.

Do not believe it will be easy to free ourselves from this yoke. Especially for those who use a certain language and precise references, for those who use words that refer to unequivocal images as it happens to many of us. In different “ecoversities” meetings, to which I luckly took part in, the words that resound more often, are those indicating attitudes, historical facts, prejudgments and cultural clichés as hierarchy, patriarchy, capitalism, colonialism, racism, gender, and chauvinism. These words have been and are still useful for the creation of an oligarchical structure, at the top of which the White Man has been sitting for centuries, as well as for the development of the historical and cultural events by which the dominant western culture was originated. 

This hierarchical asset is often attributed to a mono-directional culture based on the idea of monotheism as the true seed of its growing. The idea of multiplicity is counterpointed to that of unicity. It is said that transversality and horizontality lean various subjects on the same level, confuting the idea of a scale of values, which is a direct consequence of verticality. It is said that this oligarchical and hierarchical idea, degenerates nucleus of our society, claims odious values that find their worst expression in racism. It is said that there is a relationship between individuality and hierarchical asset. So, the idea of consciousness strictly connected to individuality, is criticized because it presupposes an evolution, and consequently, an idea of an oligarchic asset (according to a materialistic vision).

Consciousness is defined as a particular state of mind. The materialistic philosopher is critical of any idea of spiritual nature. He interprets spirit, which cannot be completely explained by reason, as an absolute value and criticizes it for its unilateral aspect, antagonist to the reason which necessarily should have a relative approach. In the critical thinking which rises from this conception, the prefix “uni” has been individuated as a coercive, predetermined, indisputable element. I myself defend the word universal because even in this case prefix” uni” is read as unique or mono. Consequently, I had to defend word “essence”, because it is an expression of something unique and therefore inevitably connected to the prefix” uni”. This is the core of a word conflict between plural (multi) and singular (uni), by which some cultural values, expression of our roots, are omitted or even worse denied. If we carefully read the etymological roots of the western cultural words, as they are the expressions of Greek and Latin culture, Judaism, Catholicism and Protestantism, we will find unexpected answers.

For instance, in the word universe, prefix “uni”, etymologically speaking is associated with “all” (universe from latin universus which means “all”, “whole”. Unus=one with versus= wrapped (particular past of vertere). All wrapped up in itself. “All” is a set and at the same time it is a whole.

The prefix "uni" can have different and opposite meanings depending on the word used, e.g. unidirectionality points to just one and only direction while the word universality refers to all possible directions.

Many universes (multi-universes) are said to exist and that ours is one among many others. This has been interpreted as the possibility to avoid considering the concept of universe as an absolute value.

The idea which underlies “multi-universes” is only apparently a relative idea, confronting it with what we intend as “universus”. Paradoxically the idea of multi-universus refers to the idea of singularity, to many different universes, while universe evokes the idea of infinite possibilities, where singularity and plurality do not have reason to be defined.

I was challenged for using the word essence, because from this word inevitably the concept of consciousness and consequently of evolution arises. 

Evolution leads to differentiation and differentiation leads to that hierarchical order that we would like to abolish. 

But the “essence” which inhabits us,  can be individualized, and at the same time be an absolute. Individualized because it marks the difference among human beings, absolute because it is a condition of existence shared by all.

These reflections are the result of a thinking process that I am used to call “repositioning”. It arises from a logical process that, according to me, is necessary nowadays to fight against a propagandistic thinking system. Through “repositioning” we can individuate the degenerated seed of words in order to reconstruct their meaning. “Repositioning" works around the identification of altered meanings and their appropriate positioning.

It implies not only the analysis and the reconstruction of the meanings of some words, but even the consideration of actions and practices to which those words refer. The alteration of meanings of words is a true pathology which can be read as a viral one.

Viruslessical

Lessical virus is a meaning hidden in a linguistic container that reproduces itself only inside a hosting word. An Infected meaning is specialized in binding or overlapping itself on a given original meaning that is inside the hosting word. Some lessical virus inject into the hosting words only attributes, some others, penetrate entirely into the word and subsequently they get rid of its container, that can be digested by the world itself. Infected signifier integrates with that of the hosting word. At this point, the original meaning of the word changes into a new meaning, that is itself a virus which can infect other words. Viruses are parasites and they become poisoning carriers. Language control is needed, even if it is difficult in our everyday life: virus lurks in sophisticated words, but it doesn't disdain common words, those that are usually spoken and listened at home, at work, and above all at school. How can we fight these pathologic forms?
We can continue this metaphorical relationship between language and physiological pathology talking about the consciousness immunity system. We might say that what fights lessical virus is the immunity system (which is contained in our consciousness). We should be able to analyze and recognize when a word is in excess, when it is used only for our own advantage, when it enables us not to challenge our certitudes.

We must control words both when we are listening and when we are talking. First of all we should learn to listen entirely to everything, no matter if we don't agree with what people are saying. We should also try to overcome the discomfort that some ideas, linguistic expressions and words cause on us, and in a patient way, we should look for pure living forms that are part of each speech, provided that we believe in that. We should think that in every speech we can always find something true. Secondly, when we talk, we should try to leave apart preconceptions, cliché or ideological sureness. We should try to bring out through words those vital forces that belong to our being.

This means to pay attention not only to "dangerous" words, but also to those words that reassure us. Words like solidarity, freedom, love, hope or participation hide the same pitfalls. 
The problem is to understand how these words are used or better "consumed". They cannot be said without a precise heart and consciousness correspondence. Repeating words many times make them fragile and attackable from the lessical virus action. We should try instead to use a language rich of metaphors, symbolisms, parables that is to say: an imaginative and poetic language.

Word and Action

What makes us infected words carriers is the lack of consciousness.
Being overwhelmed with instinctive forces, being anchored to our own reason and confessional rigidity, help lessical viruses to reproduce themselves. If we were aware of words meanings, without being overwhelmed by prejudgment, cliché, complacent expressions, we would give less space to instinctive and primitive forces that overshadow our discourse. If we were aware of our lessical, we would not compromise our conversation, that, if left to itself, generates automatisms which springs to polemic, quarrel or plebiscite.
It is very difficult to identify and control these automatic devices, which manifest themselves not only through words, but also through facts. Our attitude to technology has compromised our attention to consciousness. The delegation of many of our actions to technological devices induces us to act unconsciously. The shocking statistics of accidents due to the use of mobile phones in traffic (and not only), shows it clearly. Lack of consciousness can be very dangerous and can bring us to death. It is enough to think to a more harmless gesture to realize that. When we “copy and paste” - this makes life easier for us, we abdicate to our consciousness and delegate the commitment to an external factor. If we don't transcript by hand, word by word, we are not totally aware of the connection between our gesture and our thinking. The lack of this connection makes the coherence of the new text more fragile. There are many other behaviors in which our consciousness is replaced by automatic devices. Artificial intelligence applications, so charming, produce automatic tools that subtract us our consciousness. In order to be aware of their function, it may help us, at least to know how they work.

Repositioning in art

Words evoke past and yearn future. Duplicity hosted by some words doesn’t not only infect the discourse, but it also reveals itself with aesthetic and artistic facts.
It happened to me to discuss about the relationship between art, society and people. In second postwar time, the idea that art had to break its elitist and hieratic aura took place, because art is a heritage of all. It was said that art could be part of our everyday life, provided that we were aware of that, in a rituality in which imagination and invention could be expressions of human culture. This determined behaviors and attitudes which helped the participation and the sharing of sensibility. Cooking and eating together, sharing a text or walking together became "artistic things". This sharing and spreading aspect, which refers to mental and social openness, has begun to inhabit the word "art". Nowadays, the word art means something of communicable, within reach, sometimes difficult to interpret but easy to access in term of "spaces", which are not only galleries and museums. This was also my point of view and many of my artworks demonstrate it. 

Nowadays, the word art contains many references to other words: culture, interest, critical thinking, aesthetics, entertainment, glamour, rebellion, sharing, provocation, sociality, politics. In the meantime the new communication strategy that has become more abstract and virtual, has brought to the rise of digital platforms and digital sociality and has changed the relationship between the individual and the multitude. The sharing of information and moods, trivialized by technological devices and by algorithmic bulimia, has generated new ambiguous and suspicious spaces. In these spaces the true and its contrary are woven in a spiral which generates hate report, discrimination and propagandistic sub-mental slogans.

We have to consider that some aspects such as communication and sharing, have deeply changed, this is why we have to respond to them. How? By repositioning ourselves in order not to fall again in those relational ambiguous forms, which have been grafted as viruses into the word art. We should defend what we are fighting for: "that art could be part of our everyday life, provided that we are aware of that, in a rituality in which imagination and invention can be expressions of human culture". To preserve that, according to me, we have to find those boundaries which defend this value. This means not to let the art concept to be infected by degenerated communication meanings so that it will not become a surrogate, a useless and aleatory tool of circulation.

Customs and social transformation forms, are at the beginning, imbued with inspiration, beautifulness and reflect the human soul. In a short time these forms are assimilated by the economic / political system that manages desires and needs, deceiving people

that beauty belongs to them and pushing them towards a rapid consumption.

An aesthetic idea diluted in a thousand of appearance rivulets, lives instants of intensity to be then continuously changed. To possess the moment in which beauty appears and disappears is the bulimic pleasure of our age, always neurotic and schizophrenic. It is a huge wave, a tsunami which involves everybody, even who thinks that art is a life tool. Because of that, beauty has to be defended and hidden, preserved, nourished with not replaceable values. An idea far from the one of diffusing aesthetics to which I was referring for many years. A clandestine aesthetics, always tenses and alerts.