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Interview - Angelo Flaccavento
by Domenico Costantini




[Domenico Costantini] Are origins a point or a line? Are they genealogy or pure artifice?

[Angelo Flaccavento] Origins are a point, because without that there can be no line. I would speak of genetics rather than genealogy.

[DC] And in fashion, do origins still exist, or are they only well-executed disguises?

[AF] In fashion everything is camouflage and disguise, even truth.

[DC] If fashion were a body, from which organ would its critical dissection begin: the heart, the genitals, or the brain?

[AF] From the skin: in fashion, depth lies on the surface.

[DC] If the body has become content, where has desire gone?

[AF] Into the gaze—indeed, into gazes: each one its own.

[DC] If power today is aesthetic, who are its martyrs?

[AF] The purists, the opponents of postmodern muddling and patching.

[DC] Is criticism a form of love or of sadism?

[AF] Each man kills the thing he loves…

[DC] Every season promises a beginning. But who promises the end?

[AF] The season itself: when it draws to a close, everything ends up beginning again.

[DC] Is drawing a language or an exorcism?

[AF] Drawing is a gesture that, by exorcising the horror of the blank page, writes a language.

[DC] When you speak of graphic automatism, do you feel you are creating, or being traversed by something that precedes you?

[AF] I let myself be traversed, but by something that is already there, and that drawing awakens. Possession? Perhaps.

[DC] Is Ubi M. a character or a natural force?

[AF] A priapic force of nature, blissful in its primordiality.

[DC] In these works, is sex still flesh, or has it already become sign?

[AF] It is already sign; it has dematerialized, but its particles retain memories of flesh.

[DC] Can a penis—glorified, blessed, drawn a thousand times—cease to be an organ and become an icon, a talisman, a word?

[AF] It can, absolutely. Above all, it can utter prophecies, because it sees perfectly and never gets it wrong.

[DC] Are orgasm and enlightenment distant relatives?

[AF] I wouldn’t say so distant. On the contrary, they are close kin.

[DC] Is automatism—of the body, of desire, of the hand—perhaps the only true origin left?

[AF] Yes: action without thought, by pure instinct or higher illumination. It is the rational that forgets the brain and becomes gesture.