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The Last Supper, or of "The Last God"
"The waking have one world in common (koinon kosmon),
sleepers have each a private world of his own (idion kosmon)."
Heraclitus, fragment 89
The artistic gesture of Libera Mazzoleni reconstructs the setting of the "Last Supper", throwing it into the disorienting autism of a closeness that is infinite distance, depriving it of its original sense of a valediction that, while leaving behind words of love, calls to witness a life that has endured over time and in the wake of a memory that constantly renews the experience of a hope of salvation.
No longer the pain of a separation of destiny that leaves you bewildered, no longer the attentive silence that, welcoming the moment of the word evoking a shared history, will turn into a message capable of overcoming death.
A sumptuously decked table, at its centre a bowlful of fruit. But on the plates of the guests there is no life-giving food, but objects that have become the indispensable prostheses of a narcissistic subject who is always "on the network", lost between the threads of a virtual plot woven by ever-connected ghosts, but that never meet the eye, never a warm and tangible body.
The apostles play with their seductive ornaments, each closed within their idios kosmos, their own private world. This is not the intimate space of conversation, but the arid and faceless world of isolation, of soundlessness, and whispering fantasies of omnipotence to oneself.
At the centre of the table sits a mannequin, "The Last God", dressed as a soldier. Within the obscurity of his dark glasses, he speaks with a metalic voice, in world-weary tones. It is still a sinister voice, that does demands not listeners but cynical laughter, finding its echo in the deafening noise of a city that is there, outside, in a space that people constantly pass through but never fulfil as a place of shared meeting.
"The Last God", a bloodless yet powerful personification, of the umlimited and infinite manipulation that promises happiness and eternity to mortals, the ephemeral inhabitants of time.
The mannequin speaks, while the guests of the table are semi-mute figures that move with agitation. With one hand they pluck the fruit absently, and with the other they play with their objects of attention, the symbols of the nullity that dwells in their hearts. They rise, walking in aimless disorder.
The grotesque banquet unnerves and disgusts two young women, who are no longer able to bear the vacancy of the distorted meaning of "being together"; it was supposed to be an invitation of love, a gift of hope. With courage they break the masculinity of the scene, declaring, with resolute steps, an end to this farce of communication.
Nothing remains of the banquet, of the messenger, and the guests, save an empty table covered in whiteness, freed from the black cloth which had first enveloped it.
Confused in the audience, the artists observes, documenting the scene, immortalising his creative gesture with images, perhaps able to transform it into a message that will recall, after the disorientation, that silence of listening that will give birth to a word of the "koinos kosmos", the common world of meeting and true participation. Here anyone shall live in the presence of the other, welcoming them as a companion on their journey to a future removed from indifference and from the repetition of loss. Graziella Longoni
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