53rd edition

At first sight, it could seem unjustified since the idea of chamber of wonders is mainly linked to a kind of museum gathering oddities and tastes of a solipsistic and maniacal individual.

However, by overcoming this impression, is clear that the Wunderkammer is not just a ‘collection’ of the past, but it is also an important metaphor for the world where we are living now. The reason is simple: Wunderkammer is a ‘scientific’ catalogue, an ‘aesthetic’ (and chaotic) summation, the show of beauty and ugly things, and certainly a journey. In short: (mutatis mutandis) it has all functional (and fusion’s) characteristics INTERNET.

The eternal interest for wandering in space (and time), nomadism, letting yourself drifting or dedicating to flânerie is clear even within the words which define it: we do not USE Internet, but we BROWSE Internet. From this word, it is better shown the idea of ‘journey’, it emerges the reaction to boredom and disenchantment of the world that has become disciplinary and constrictive and that often makes people playing unmovable roles and living places which are often not changeable. Mobility, which so much is spoken, is indeed often a fake nomadism, a cover, a phantasmal shade.

In fact, this nomadism, fake or not, leads, among other things, to a consequence closely related to our industrial sector and it has revealed for a long time in the anarchy of shapes and attitudes and in a new dazed MANNERISM made of hyper-customization and egocentricity, solipsistic expression of a being detached from common formal codes and representing only itself in formulae of self-satisfaction that can be understood just by people expressing them: show, multiplication of shapes and masks, proliferation of inconsistent shapes, ornament, overflowing of emotions, the ephemeral, the abundance. If each epoch has its own organisational principle and its establishing shape, we cannot neglect that this principle is the new BAROQUE for our epoch.

Wunderkammer/Internet is both journey and show, multiplication of shapes and experiences but, if we consider its origin as luxury’s diversion of very rich people and we want to go beyond the search for its meanings, it is also the LUXURY OF TIME. And the use of time, in our HERE AND NOW which lives an eternal present and an eternal acceleration, it has become extremely important, deeply felt despite it seems to be intentionally ‘banned’. The big contradiction lays in the fact that, if our present has an outstanding characteristic, this is exactly being the time when the highest acknowledged privilege is the one of escaping from obligations and anxieties of contemporaneity. That is why, after a lot of talk about just eco-compatibility and the due respect for environment, maybe it is not a wandering idea starting talk about an ECOLOGY OF THE TIME which we are living.