MUSEO DEL RISORGIMENTO E DELLA RESISTENZA
Corso Ercole I d'Este 19
tel. 0532/205480
critical text by di Angelo Andreotti
The television screen in the entrance hall of the Museo del Risorgimento e della Resistenza in Ferrara is divided in four parts, each showing, in turn, the images recorded in the rooms by the electronic eyes that watch the museum. Normally the images are recorded on a VHS, kept for a certain period of time and then cancelled ( that's the law ). In this case the process has been inverted. The video-recorder does not record but broadcasts an event that happened only once, but that happens again each time anyone looks at the screen. ( The image is true, but reality is false; the show goes on, but it's up to the viewers to decide whether it exists or not ).These images depict an event that someone has created once and for all. They show a Bersagliere del Po with his light blue uniform and the yellow cross on his breast wandering through the museum rooms. Probably he's looking for something, maybe his place, his caption, maybe the case where he can lie and be a memory.In an inset on the screen there's a mobile phone inside a case near a feminine figure, a kind of sentry or a velina. Maybe the mobile is ringing because someone ( you? ) has dialled the number and the Bersagliere del Po is looking for it to answer the call. But the phone is ringing in vain because no one, not even him, will be able to lift the case and answer and so we'll never know what he could have said ( maybe we won't even know what we could have asked ). But it doesn't matter. This is the game, and that's a serious game, so serious that it frightens. Think of it. ( Museo del Risorgimento e della Resistenza, video-surveillance, the ghost of an ideal, a call without an answer, maybe an answer without a call ).
