Page 209 - World of Art Contemporary Art magazine: The 2023 Guggenheim issue

have two problems: How much can this system remain Maybe they can buy the same blue jeans. In the end the
acephalous? The overloading of the network at some composition will still underline the difference. Where
point will impose some filtering and discipline, and at this does the difference lie? In the great filtering of opinion
point we don’t know what will happen. The Internet is leaders like Armani or Krizia: they tell how to compose,
the greatest possibility of abolishing any or every Great and the informed, cultivated person uses them as
Brother... advisors, while the uncultivated person invents styles by
“Big Brother...?” him- or herself. So, once again, you have a sort of total
Big Brother. But it can in a second step open up the Internet of fashions - up to a certain level: Timberland for
possibility for some Big Brothers to occupy the main both. Everybody can buy a pair of Timberlands. Blue jeans
lines and the main network. At this point, I do not know. for both, but one has a small, private network of advisors.
Secondly: if it remains acephalous, then the abundance “Advisors, yes. So what you are basically saying then is
of information will be such that either you have reached that culture will pervade, even though...”
such a level of maturity that you are able to be your own Culture or UNculture. Because the filters also can be
filter, or you will desperately need a filter... negative filters. But there will be filters in any case. At
“Some professional filter?” most there will be an exaggeration, an overabundance
...some professional filter. So once again you will ask of negative filters. One of the TV talk-show directors,
somebody...an information consultant...to be your or anchor-men here in Italy at the moment -Funari - is
gatekeeper! providing a model for behavior for a lot of lower-class
Take the example of a book shop. In the thirties a book young people. It is a filter: a negative filter, but it is there.
shop was a small place in which every week there
were one or two new books. If you went there often
you knew pretty well how to isolate the interesting new
items and so on. Now, a book shop like the FNAC in
Paris, or the Feltrinelli here in Bologna, is an Internet
in itself: you have everything. Now - an this concerns
not only the young student, but also myself - if I
don’t read the cultural pages of the newspapers to
know what is happening, then I am lost. There’s this
excess of information. Once again it makes you need a
gatekeeper...
“A filter.” UMBERTO ECO, SEMIOTICIAN AND PHILOSOPHER IN CONVERSATION WITH
PETRU RUSSU, FINE ARTIST. PICTURE CREDIT: MARTA DIMITRESCU
...a filter. So this filtration function of certain centres
of orientation will remain. Take another example: once
upon a time there was the upper class who had the great “We have this dream and the vision of the Internet as
tailors that were telling men, and ladies too, how to dress something which is very open, and is going to create
properly. The lower class could only buy ready-made, off a society without a center, or is going to take part in
the hook stuff, so it was very easy to distinguish them the development of societies without centres;a general
from one another. Then improved distribution made it global democratization: you don’t really think that that is
very easy for everybody to begin composing his or her possible?”
own dress, we have personalised denims, blue jeans etc. Eco leans forward in his chair:
“Composing personal styles, yes.” Yes, but once again we are back at the problem of
And in principle the wife of Mr. Agnelli Rockefeller decimation. A student of mine who is a devotee of the
and the young maid from Puerto Rica can go to the Internet, and he is interested also, not only, but also in
same store - for instance Bloomingdales - buy the Peirce, he discovered a Peircean network. So he sent
same elements and concoct their own style. Now, messages, he got answers. He started to argue with
has this eliminated, in the language of fashions, the somebody. And he said to me: “Oh last night after my
class-difference? No. The rich lady has some rules for last message I got an answer from a fellow - let’s call
composition... him Smith - which seems to me stupid and strange. So I
“A code?” said: “No, Smith is one of the greatest scholars on Peirce.
Yes, a code. And the young Puerto-Rican has not. Probably you don’t know him because he has published
very little. He is a modest person who works hard at this

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