Commissioned by the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Rome
In collaboration with the Museo Nazionale Etrusco de Villa Giulia, Rome
To create the work Dead Book a performance took place in the Garden of the Nymphs of Villa Giulia in Rome; a space inaccessible to the public exceptionally used to create this project. In the performance a book is condemned to death, to be torn to pieces with a mechanical saw and then buried while a prayer is read in its memory. The cut book, published in 2009 by MV Editions, is entitled The Museum of the Victim (a novel by Paco Cao). It consists of a volume of three hundred empty pages; a novel to be written. Dead Book, contrary to what it might seem, is not an explicit denunciation of censorship, but a reflection on the book as a fetish in dialectical relationship with violence in general and particularly with nature, which is used to produce the book.
The final format of the project is a short film and a photographic series.
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PRAYER
We bring it back to you, Mother Earth, from whom we received it. The roots of the tree howled when they lost their trunk, which, sacrificed to make the pulp, was transformed into paper that joyfully received the trace of slick pigment. We bring it back to you, Mother Earth, from whom we received it. But just as when you delivered it to us, you did not forfeit it, we will not forfeit it either when we deliver it to you. The undesired death of the tree blessed the birth of the book that today lies dead, devoured by the ravenous, oblivious saw. Who has caressed your spine, smelt your entrails, oh, dead book? Those who read you shall perpetuate your existence beyond your death. We bring it back to you, Mother Earth, from whom we received it. But just as when you delivered it to us, you did not forfeit it, we will not forfeit it either when we deliver it to you. Mother Earth: prepare a place in your welcoming womb to receive this dead book. |
SHORT FILM-TRAILER
Premiered on March 21, 2023 at the Sala della Fortuna, Museo Nazionale Etrusco in Villa Giulia, Rome
EXHIBITION
Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Rome
From March 4 to July 30, 2023
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Thanks to: Mario Daniele Alonzo, Adriano Mura, Daniele Bracci, Chiara Anguissola D'Altoe, Jorge Andrés Guzman Livia, Maddalena Santeroni, Daniele Haver, Valentino Nizzo, Anna Tanzarella, Francesca Montuori, Ilaria Mulas, Giulia Lotti, Giuseppe Demasi and Liselotte Corigliano.
PRECEDENT
As a precedent for this work, the artist made a similar performance with the book The Homosexual in America (Donald Wester Cory, 1951) in the library of the Andrew Freedman Home in New York, as part of the program of the Bronx Latin American Art Triennial 2016.
In 2019 two images resulting from that performance were presented in the solo exhibition entitled Attribution presented by Paco Cao at the Leslie-Lohman Museum in New York. In the same year, from the photographic materials resulting from that performance, Cao creates a photographic installation, composed of three images and the text of the prayer. This work is part of the permanent collection of the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Rome. Its title is Trial and Execution of a Book-Prayer for a Dead Book
In 2019 two images resulting from that performance were presented in the solo exhibition entitled Attribution presented by Paco Cao at the Leslie-Lohman Museum in New York. In the same year, from the photographic materials resulting from that performance, Cao creates a photographic installation, composed of three images and the text of the prayer. This work is part of the permanent collection of the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Rome. Its title is Trial and Execution of a Book-Prayer for a Dead Book
LINK TO INTERVIEW ON THE PROJECT (Italian only): https://lagallerianazionale.com/blog/trial-and-execution-of-a-book-prayer-for-a-dead-book
