Raffaele Quattrone from Bologna
Your new daily ritual…
The 2018 and the 2019 They have been for me two very hectic years as my normal activity has been added to the writing and promotion of a new book and at the same time writing, interpretation and promotion of a documentary that took me around the world. For which I had the need, I felt the need to stop, to rest but then something new always happened that led me to postpone the rest period, to move it later. From this point of view, the epidemic stopped everything and forced me to stop and rest but also to gain greater awareness of what I was doing and what I wanted to do. Suddenly I was no longer traveling or surrounded by people but I was at home, in Bologna, alone, unable, like everyone else, to move even just to visit my family who lives in another country. From the beginning, however, I made an effort to see the glass as half full, first of all because I was healthy, because I kept a job and a salary and then because I finally had the “time” which I had sometimes complained of not having. This is a great wealth of which we often forget. The epidemic was devastating for sick people, death, left without work or money… but it also had a regenerative force compared to everything we have always put off, that we are “pull yourself behind” with the idea that one day we would have it “put your hands”. Here it is, that day has come.
How your way of working has changed?
It's been since the second half of February that I don't travel anymore and I work like most of us with PCs, phone, email, video calls, ecc. I had to be in South Africa and then in New York to attend festivals where he was selected NewFaustianWorld and I found myself comfortably at home in videoconference. But I have missed human contact very much. Videoconferencing is certainly more comfortable but it is also less exciting than physical presence. I discovered the beauty of writing on paper, to do the “bad and good copy”, always recycling the paper and being careful not to waste it. I rediscovered a slower but much more reflective and aware way of working. I have greatly enhanced the planning phase in such a way as to be immediately operational when the conditions will return to resume our activities at 360 °. My new way of working is centered on slow living, on slowing down the pace, letting myself be inspired by what gives me serenity and well-being.
What you're missing? Your personal experience of absence and lack.
I miss my family and my loved ones. I always try to be as physically present as possible but in this period it was impossible for me. However frequent video calls may be, which help a lot for charity, physical contact is another thing and suddenly being far away is not easy.
How do you imagine the world when everything starts up again?
My greatest fear is to find the world exactly as I left it, proving that I have not understood anything from the lesson that the epidemic has given us. We have acted to date with the “craving for Faust” that is never satisfied. The progress, always going forward has become in the end, excuse the pun, an end in itself. We have lost sight of the goal, where we were going. The time has come to stop and set a new goal together, without leaving anyone behind. The epidemic has given rise to many forms of collaboration, of mutual aid, a humanity that we had forgotten could exist. Here we start from here, it seems like a good starting point.
When it all ends: one thing to do and one not to do anymore.
I have more than one to do and not to do!! To do: always find time for family, friends, the people you love and always find the time and the way to say you love them. Therefore, always take advantage of the opportunities that happen to us without taking them for granted or without postponing them to tomorrow. If we have the time to do them today, let's do it today. Don't ever do it again: not to think of others. The epidemic has taught us how connected we are, how much one's choices can affect the lives of others. In other words, we try to live more responsibly for ourselves, for others, for the environment that hosts us.
Raffaele Quattrone is a sociologist and curator of contemporary art living between Bologna and Rome. He collaborates with the Wall Street International magazine and the Real Academia de Espana in Rome. Among his books ONGOING. Contemporary art in transformation (2014, Equipèco Edizioni) with an introduction by M. Pistoletto and a conversation with the Chinese artist Wang Qingsong e NewFaustianWorld (2018, 24 HOURS Culture). In the last period he collaborated on the book by Xose Prieto Souso, The last Espaliù, released in March 2020 from AECID Publications, Madrid. The documentary NewFaustianWorld (directed by Piero Passaro and based on his latest book) in May it was awarded as Best Foreign Documentary at RAGFF New York City. www.raffaelequattrone.com