I’m Nobody! How are you? by Marco Giordano lies between and plays with the boundaries of nobody and somebody, private and publics two spheres that today are evermore gloomy.
Embracing a performative action far from auto-proclamation and closer to vulnerability and self-exposure, Giordano’s performance – exhibited the first time at Glasgow International – develops both inside and outside a car that crosses the city while broadcasting a poem written by him through a megaphone installed on the car’s roof. The poem is also printed on flyers which Giordano hands out to pedestrians he encounters on the ride.
During ArtVerona 2018, Il Colorificio presents “I’m Nobody! How are you?”, steming from the reflection on utopia proposed by the curatorial board of the fair. The project addresses the necessity to exit the canonical art spaces and explore a city freed from regularisations where everyone can show both weaknesses and vulnerabilities. The car runs through Verona without any fixed and predetermined route, the journey becomes anti-functional and open to changes. Each visitor is invited to take part in this dérive by simply asking to the curators at Il Colorificio’s booth in the fair, occupied by a banner – an enlargement of the poem – and a car that recalls what is happening outside the fair.
The poem, broadcasted through the megaphone, is read by Prie- stess, young Italian rap singer. Priestess casts off the robes of a femcee (the term that define freestyle rapper women) to bestow a voice that is only voice, beyond every gender division, a sound which may be associated with the croaking of the frog, and as such, with the necessity of being loud in order to affirm our presence. Recalling the tools and the imaginary associated with propaganda, the artist puts forward the proposal of a countermovement: an “anti-propaganda” where there is nobody left to persuade. Driving across the city, Giordano seeks to reach his public so as to invert the classic itinerary of the artistic pilgrimage that sees the public moves towards the art event.