Gianfranco Baruchello
Loss of Quality - Loss of Identity

Gianfranco Baruchello realizes a new project in Livorno, conceived for Carico Massimo. The work starts from the study of a series of documents from the State Archives of the city as a recovery of a personal and collective memory.

An album of photographs of people placed under surveillance by the police for political reasons, whose faces have been changed and erased by time and wear. A writing by Antonio Gramsci for the Congress of the Socialist Party which was held in Livorno on January 15, 1921, entitled “The Congress of Livorno” and published in the New Order, January 13: Gramsci announces the historical importance of the congress thanks to which the autonomous party of the working class will be born, the only one able to place itself at the head of the working people and lead them beyond the yoke of capitalism.

These are the elements of the exhibition that Baruchello titled “loss of quality - loss of identity”

The artist worked on enlarging the photo-cards and modified the grammatical structure of Gramsci’s original text by eliminating articles, auxiliaries and prepositions to transform it into a sort of poetic telegram, which he then recited and recorded. He thus returns to the assembly of elements placed in comparison, images or what remains of them and the use of the word as a use of language beyond vision.

photo: Federico Cavallini