Project Description
Fabio Mauri (Rome 1926 – 2009),Dramophone
Charcoal on paper 17 x 20 cm dated (76) lower right. Work registered by Studio Fabio Mauri, chaired by Achille Mauri, at n. 10/2016.
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The work presented here, a sheet on which several concentric circles made in pencil with the compass evoke the shape of the turntable with the needle placed on the central section of the long playing, is a version, in a reduced format, of the drawing depicting a large disc that stood on the wall of the first of three “stations” of the performance “Dramophone”, performed by Fabio Mauri, in Rome, at the Studio Cannaviello in 1976.
In the first station of the stage action, titled “Pessimism”, you could see a real dog in front of an old gramophone, allusion to the mark of the Deutsche Grammophon (the Voice of the Master), as an ambiguous emblem of the world. On the wall there was the drawing of a large disc, a metaphor of a world already engraved, referring to a predetermination of destiny, a recurring theme in artistic research conducted by the author. In the second station, “Skepticism and pain”, a group of young people in the audience danced at times on revolutionary music next to a basket of red roses, in front of the wall images of the poet Majakovsky, intellectual idol, and of General Huerta, murderer of the Mexican rebel Emiliano Zapata, a virtuous symbol of effective rebel. In the last station “Cinism, psychology, and national virtue” a senior film actor, Fjodor Chaliaplin Jr., son of the great Russian bass Chaliaplin, sitting on a chair, told his biography, answering questions from the public about some events of the Revolution Russian of 1917.
The performance is to be understood, therefore, as a refined reflection on the need to question oneself in the face of history, central to all the poetics of Fabio Mauri. “Without history, that is without critical analysis, – Mauri has stated on several occasions – there is no possibility of judgment. History is, it is a possibly profound judgment “.
In the last station of the performance “Dramophone”, as Dora Aceto noted, a non – image image of the world ‘s stories is proposed, highlighting the need of the historical – critical method for the rendering of a final judgment exercised by the projected memory in the present: the present shows the usual methodologies of events, for which it is comparable, it helps in the interpretative diagnosis of historical facts.
