DECLARATION OF THE FOUNDER ARTISTS

 The idea behind this project came from a group of artists and citizens, who together with Laura Ramoino, felt the need to make a personal, unprompted commitment to bringing about significant, fundamental changes to present-day society. The need for such changes is increasingly perceived as critically urgent by even the most inattentive and superficial of observers. The roots of the project – as indeed its ramifications -  also lie, therefore, in the social and political sphere ("politics is the realm of  sovereign, collective decision-making"). Liberal democracy is citizen sovereignty; the “one person , one vote” axiom is valid, but only partially so; it is an insufficient guarantee if the individual citizen is effectively precluded from access to information and/or denied the possibility to examine such information critically, because in such cases he is not in a position to choose freely and independently. New technologies offer a series of instruments which were unimaginable until a few short years ago: the opportunity for each and every one of us to communicate, to transmit and to receive information. These opportunities have the potential to guarantee the autos-nomos which is the essential defining feature of all true successful democracies, and perhaps to combat what we perceive as an increasingly grave “danger” in today’s society, i.e. a revanchism of the extra ecclesiam nulla salus concept (with ecclesiam referring to all forms of power, be it the power of religion, of political parties, of the media), the intent of which is to control/effectively rescind the intellectual autonomy of the individual, by making everyone’s ideas converge into a single, uniform thought process. This uniformation exercises an increasingly pervasive influence also in “our” realm, i.e. the art world, in which no-one is prepared to turn their back on the market. All of us make a living from our works, most of us with great difficulty, but what we wish to draw attention to and take issue with is the fact that what is purchased on the art market is increasingly a signature rather than the work of art which bears that signature. An artwork is a individual creature, with all the imperfections and overstatements that may imply; and if it is purchased simply on the grounds of the artist who put his or her name to it, this both distorts and demeans the enthusiasm, the passion, the culture and the study which are intrinsic to the work, simply because some cold, calculating market mechanism has established that Mr. X is an investment (an investment; not an artist) and Mr. Y is not (regardless of whether he is an artist or not). 

Therefore, the decision to entitle this project OMISSIS is a carefully considered one. Every time a part of a whole is removed, every time an element of an idea or an action is deleted, every time a responsibility is not accepted, every time there is an attempt to curb or to uniform independent thought, every time there is an impediment to unfettered reasoning iuxta propria principia… in all of these cases something has been omitted : we have omitted to mention something to ourselves, we have omitted to inform someone else, we have omitted (or been subjected to an omission by) the powers that be, in whatever sphere (the economy, politics..) This civic awareness has, inevitably, been complemented by our vision of art – which, we are convinced, has a responsibility to live up to. The artist is a child of his time, of the context in which he is called upon to express himself; he cannot, therefore, shrug the civic responsibilities this condition imposes upon him. He must carry out his duty using the instruments with which he is most comfortable, in our case imagery. We all know how powerful an image can be: it is instantly effective, it rouses emotions; its universal intelligibility makes it a powerful media tool.

 We artists are presenting ourselves here, therefore, in the guise of simple “media instruments”, with an important, provocative omission: our names. By omitting our signatures and thereby  relinquishing any sort of personalism and individualism, our intention is to stimulate discussion, attract attention, encourage debate.

In taking a step back as individuals, we hope to take a step forward with our Art, a step in the direction of independent thought. Our aspiration is to help keep alight a tiny candle to illuminate the darkness which smothers the search for knowledge, the willingness to act, the realization of potential, the concept of citizenship and of human dignity:

the darkness of omission!