No Future | Ettore Favini e Triangolo

Mid 90’s, all the greatest sociologists engaged in studies on generational change are intensely debating in a room. How to name the new generation, the one after millennials — this is the complex topic. Suddenly, an idea: “Generation Z”, shouts an old-looking professor. Around him, murmuring of assent. Then, the youngest of the sociologists stands up and takes the floor timidly: “dear colleagues, just a quick doubt… if we call it Z, how are we going to call the one afterwards?”. Guffaws spread all over the room. Fade out.

This is pretty much how those born between the end of the 90s and early 2000 feel. Needless to repeat the same old story about iGeneration or digital natives. For those born in these years, devices have provided — without any doubt — physical places in which they can train their imaginary. On the other hand, they have also provided a phenomenal catalyst that creates an imbalance between the social media pace and the real-life pace, a further disharmony in a world where the scientific and ethic process don’t go hand in hand for over a century now.

Therefore, the meaning of the title of this exhibition, No future, is double: it is not only the No injected by history and society to all our possible aspiration or future perspective, but it is also our No to this wrecked world that they want to palm off on us and that we don’t want to take charge.

In the history of countercultures, there’s always been a crucial moment: the one of the revolt, where the “NO” took body, time and space in the building of a movement. Then, in an almost paradoxical way, within a denial appeared a project and, with it, the promise of an alternative future, like an ocean of possibilities in which you can dive. As we approach our days, something that can no longer be framed according to a precise scheme happens in this story. As Marguerite Yourcenar says, it’s undeniable that “whatever one does, one always rebuilds the monument in his own way. But it is already something gained to have used only the original stones”; in other words, nobody ever really invents anything, the volumes of the Library of Babel are always the same and, at the end of the day, we all periodically say the same things. However, that healthy and radiant unawareness of thinking to be somehow innovative, simply makes all the difference in the world.

In fact, the exploration is no longer in the mental place of thought, imagination or fantasies, but in the great network that connects everything and everyone. Hence, what happens to that line of flight that we call utopia or future, if everything is already there?

In a completely paradoxical way, due to the total absence of filters in the social maze, in a world increasingly virtual, reality can no longer be ignored. It is the Mephistophelian and apocalyptic win of the truth against the fantastic, in a contemporaneity that has never been as frightening as it is today. This is where melancholy, sense of failure, mental health always more fragile and a sense of plenary precariousness blossom, like Flowers of evil.

Future, as Blink182 sing, can’t exist for this generation.

You can run, but life won’t wait, yeah They don’t care about you
(No future!)

Archimede Favini

More on: Cremona Contemporanea | Art Week