NON-NARRATING NARRATION

In which way shall we now look at an artist's work? Do we observe it keeping our point of view, thus inevitably taking the distance from it? If we go on talking about a mere vision of the work, the attitude we keep is this. On the contrary, if the piece of art is able to actìvate true participation, involving the observer into the creative process, and turning him into an actor, then the distance mentioned above is reduced, as it occurs more and more often. I am not referring to works based on the interactivity obtained by means of technological media, which surely develop to the utmost extent the relational work-addressee circle, though in some cases the risk of falling into a mere technical virtuosism is probable. I am thinking about the value and potentialities of all those works which own such propension to generate involvement and participatiòn, whatever means have been used to realize them. The trait d'union which place them on the same conceptual platform is represented by the renewed narrative intent, by the precise will to re-qualify the poetics of the tale. A tale which develops founding itself on the necessity of relating to the self (where autobyographical paths can be found) and to the other from the self, if the tale/s appeal/s to the collective imagery.
The works of Walter Bortolossi belong to this second approach, but activate a type of narration which, paradoxically, contains the negation of the narration itself. When we imagine the development of a story, we mostly tend to assume a beginning and an end, as with classical literature and cinematography. It is hardly possible to read a novel starting from t_he fiftieth~page or see a film starting from half way through: we would not manage to catch the whole meaning, nor to let us involve by the development of the nartation. On the contrary the artistic video, or the way we take when using the computer, and surfing in Internet in particular, activate a different narrative modality. Most of videos do nòt assume a continuous vision, has no precise beginning and end. When we surf in Internet we can open several windows and visit different sites, without following a fixed sequence. In both cases we receivers (or users or interlocutors) do choose the way to take. Somehow we are offered the possibility to manipulate the narrative potentiality, to rewrite what the video synthetically tells, or to formulate a new informative, cognitive or ideative path according to the choices we make while surfing into the net. It is this kind of possibility which caracterizes the non-narrating narration of Walter Bortolossi's paintings. In his works he enphasizes some narrating methods, like cubic capitals headlines, which reminds us of the old advertisement notices, or the stylistic features derived from comics, or headings which accompany finds displayed in museums, symbolic monuments, hystorical characters or contemporary ones connected with massmedia communication. All are charged with and translated into a hyperbolic dimension which, arousing a slight sense òf irony, contains a critic to the narration itself. The same critic which comes apparent whenever a system reflects itself, becoming tautologic and therefore less communicative. Walter Bortolossi's paintings are highly communicative without being characterized by narrative continuitv. When an artist makes irony on narrative methods, giving up the sequenciality of the tale, the story to be communicated is no lonaer intended as development. On the contrary, the possibility is offered to use more "windows", more imputs, in order to rewrite the narrative potentiality the artist has infused into the work's identity according to one's own choice.

AN EXAMPLE OF INVOLVEMENT INTO THE WORK
AND NARRATIVE MANIPULATION

"Where are we?" or better "Where are we going?" we wander when we throw ourselves, eyes wide open, into Walter Bortolossi's paintrngs. It is not important to answer, but ra.ther to take a
seat in this sort of anthropologic time machine. An automatic and mad machine, a car which naturally turns .from reverse motion to the fifth gear without slowing down, to overtake prehystorical animals, old chinese statuettes, microscopes, spectrometers, clocks with barometers, several scientific devices of different ages, modern televisions, cameras and computers, as well as more or less famous monuments of the past; Babylonian terracottas of the VIII-VII century A.C. or German engra:vings of the XVI century.
Everything turn and come forward onto a dense and hypercontaminated surface which rewrites point by point the hystory of man, of the scienti ic discoveries and the artistic theories, making fun of the cronological sequence and expressing a subtle sense of irony. It emerges a wish of rediscussing the imperative scientific statements made along the centnries. Everyting live together and survive, remain objectively but degenerate ideologically, philosophically and pragmatically too. The arcaic scientific devices, no more used but venerated in the showcases of the museums, appear in the paintings as archeological finds, like old architectures, prints and bronzes. They take one of the many places of the articulated compositzve scene; evoking a possible intergalactic future, where the energy goes from eIectric to electronic circuits without ~excluding references to prehystoncal landscapes. The atmosphere is dense and queer, half way between a paleolitic cave, with its unpredicatable telluric movements, and a space ship where the absence of gravity subverts the position of objects and bodies.
The ensamble of messages and pictures produces a great yisual impact, bouncíng our glance like a flipper ball, whose fail into the hole - in this case, a single image - we want to prevent in order to avoid ending the game; a reading game which, to be effected in its completeness, must involve each point represented; until the painting's "exit" is reached. It is a travel following an elliptical system, which can abstractly be related to the symbol of infinite, as it contains both the seed of repetition and that of innovation and unlimited potentialities: Whatever point of the representation we enter, we anyway begin to turn, to take part into a story which is not narrated as it is too crowded of allusions and premonitions. We look at the whirling of forms which seems turned around themselves, sometimes sùnk into black depressions or projected in quivering white threads which all together originate tangles which jut out as if made of electrified threadlike paste, soft and plastic. A paste like Play-doh which children car: put into its special moulds but also manipulate with their fingers for the pleasure of kneading.
It is not the representation of apocaliptic sceneries characterized by the man absence: man is there, as a manipulating and manipulated being in a over-real universe. The universe of memory and collective omens, of the past and future united in a chemical-alchemical laboratory which cancels the temporal cathegory. It is man who manages this queer place, with the risk of being swallowed by it, but at the same time with the hope of re-building his own identity. We have somatized our possible future dimension because we are made of the same material as the objects and the world which surround us. We are humanoids with point-shaped head, with neck; arms and legs manneristically stretchable according to the situations and needs. We belong to the post-human gender theorized by Roberto Terrosi;we are changing beings
resulting from a massmediatic alteration, based on the awareness of an active and transversal seach and re-elaboration/building of the self.

Sabrina Zannier