Critical reflection

"To create is, first and foremost, to perceive in an unconventional way, to define as little as possible in a commonplace manner. To create is to interact locally in real time, influencing the system in which one is immersed according to one's project and desire. Creating brings satisfaction precisely because it allows for complete expression of these spheres of subjectivity. Perceiving the creator requires the construction of an ad hoc model. Ultimately, to understand a creative person, one must be creative oneself."

With traditional styles and classic genres in crisis, the art world finds itself facing a multitude of expressive substances, different modes of action, a remarkable diversity of meanings, energies, and passions. Contemporary artistic languages transgress the usual textual--linguistic and semiotic--as well as contextual--chrono-topical and productive--frameworks, opening up a wide range of possibilities for the perception, understanding, and interpretation of works.

When it's art

The broad spectrum of subjective, intentional, or unconscious positions of both authors and audiences increases the hermeneutic difficulty that finds its extremes in the antithetical positions of celebratory exaltation and total denial of status, whether by critics or the public.
To avoid falling into hermeticism, the most singular works, otherwise condemned to incomprehension, require interviews with the author, testimonies from critics, cultural generalizations of a sociological or aesthetic nature, autographic or allographic texts, in short, a support apparatus that provides interpretive keys that make them intelligible, even before they are consumable. This seems to be the usual solution adopted to overcome the structural difficulty of contemporary art in making itself known and therefore recognizable and interpretable. On a theoretical level, the preliminary renunciation of the ontological question "What is art?" is reformulated in the more pragmatic question "When is it art?" to try to place the multifarious contemporary works.

The sense of the artist

Every provocation exceeds recognized forms on the expressive and content level, and this transgression must be read according to a code of infraction that denotes it, establishing a medium, a framework, a space, a time, and, of course, participants. In the absence of this, the discursive trick to favor the interpretive process is represented by an interview with the author. This is preferred to the analysis of a critic because an analysis at a metal level presupposes that it is located where the prefix meta establishes, that is, it is not on the same level as the analyzed object, but on the analytical one. Therefore, in the absence of conventionally understood metalanguage, all that remains is to ask the artist for the meaning of the work beyond the scope of the public, and hope that they do not answer that they do not know what they are doing, or that they do it because they like it, or by using the perhaps hermetic language of the work itself. In any case, the answers, of whatever kind, are far from insignificant, as they integrate the work with its respective analysis, becoming texts to be deepened, and not just a simple explanatory context.
Of course, one must avoid falling into tired stereotypes, if one intends to delve into an artistic activity made up of conceptual experiences, affective and perceptual performances, even Gedankenexperimenten (thought experiments).

The role of art and the artist's life

According to Oreste M. G. Debernardi, art is one of the most eloquent manifestations of a society's "esprit du temps." In his view, the role of the artist is that of a visionary, an anticipator, an educator, or a social activist who gives rise to new forms of thought and worldviews. An artist, especially if relational, aims to bring artistic intervention operatively into every sphere of civil society, in order to contribute to epochal changes. The artist has the task of maintaining active relationships with most of the social fabric to inspire and generate innovation.

In his manifesto, he writes:

"Art transmits the feelings of the subject and helps to evolve what the rational sphere alone would not activate, keeping man in balance with scientific achievements. In fact, properly channeled by artistic enjoyment, passion leads where the artistic moment directs and this activates the possibility of growing at the deepest level, also involving the emotional part."

The artist tries to promote social change by acting on oneself and around oneself, giving an experimental approach to one's life, conducted in constant evolution, adopting original models, for both style and content, or at least alternative to those proposed by society. They avoid the prevailing homogenization, trying not to suffer the normalizing effects of the social system surrounding them. They fight the sense of linguistic alienation by seeking different languages and new models of learning. They avoid any attempt at ideological and religious conditioning. They do not simply seek libertarian ideologies but the freedom from ideologies. They avoid impositions resulting from work activities or servitude to market logic at various levels. They deliberately avoid anything that can capture them in spirals of decline. They avoid transcending into controversies that trespass into groundless issues, preferring to stay on the sidelines of what they are not interested in being involved in.

What does the artist do??

Oreste is inspired by all this, and when passing through the existential alienation - the mal de vivre of Moravian memory - he is driven to seek an emotionally engaging existential perspective, soon realizing the absolute relativism of every choice in this regard. In the search for oneself, he encounters the early need for new models of interpretation and analysis. From here arises a strong interest in psychoanalysis and in radical analysis tout court. Tendentially motivated by the need to subject the results of his reflection to verification on the social level, Oreste creates numerous opportunities for confrontation with absolutely heterogeneous interlocutors, transforming the everyday into an expanded space of experimentation. His life experiences and his projects, both social and artistic, concern different aspects of subjectivity and daily life. More recently, they delve into the difficulties of emotional learning. They combine culture and science in an interaction whose result is situations - in the situationalist sense of the term - that generate effects of various kinds on different levels, with cathartic consequences on participating subjects. They stimulate the desire to clarify existence, overcoming the prejudice that only our way of life or the world with which we have learned to relate would be real.

How does the artist do it?

Every situation created falls within a broader horizon of investigation through which the artist questions the modus vivendi of humans in their totality, exploring individual and social experiences. He experiences some worldviews as personal life philosophies directly participated in, facing different ways of feeling space, time, presence, absence, memories, waiting, and relationships with others. More precisely, he starts from subjective feeling, in the first person, renewing every category and adopting unconventional interpretative schemes in living them. Thanks to semiotic training, he avoids being caught in the dichotomy between sciences of the spirit and sciences of nature and adopts strategies to become aware of the limits and possibilities associated with the assumed identity. In presenting the CEC project, he writes:

"We need to become others, we need to live their story as our own in order to understand it. In doing so, we discover how unstable and changeable our world is. We cannot consider it a reference point to adopt as an evaluative schema of that of others. To overcome the implausibility of communication and ontological difference, we need to find a common denominator, a code that understands us. If we succeed, we discover the internal coherence of the other's world: what may have seemed like madness or nonsense becomes intelligible, real as it is truly lived. Categories like truth or falsehood fade into the infinite gradations of subjective manifestations. Every categorical mode becomes alive: figures inscribed in the temporal dimension. And we are children of this time. If it is true that we preconstitute the future in the present, it is because in practice, we constantly renew it by directing ourselves towards an end. Memories, references to the past, expectations towards the future guide us, determining our future. Becoming has thus a meaning and a direction. If it is true that the plot of human history is given in people and beyond them, the future is dialectically created by a subject in the constitution of other subjects. The affective contact with the environment, pre-categorical intersubjective life can resonate or not with the personal world, with the social intersubjective one, or with the plot of history. We and others, agreement and disagreement are the antithetical terms of our becoming movement."

The works

Aware that there is no strict demarcation between subjectivity, Oreste has chosen not to emphasize his own artistic sensitivity in order to bring out that of his interlocutors. Often an artist's ego takes up space from the viewers of the work. If denied ab initio from actively participating in the creative act of which they are spectators, there is nothing left for them but to contemplate, far from the spirit of an artist who seeks active participation. For this reason, he preferred to move, perhaps under false pretenses, as freely as possible without roles or adopting one that allowed him to establish unconditioned contact with his interlocutors, in order to place himself in direct interaction with them, trying to generate a laboratory, propulsive of creative energy, capable of activating transformation processes in the social fabric.
A constant of Oreste's works is the absence of a marked distinction between author and viewers. The artist seeks a meeting between himself and others on the level of effective interaction, rather than on an analytical metal-level. He believes that the interaction that takes place is all the more authentic, the more it is participated in without semiotic superstructures or separations between real and representative levels. The search for authenticity of experience has led the artist to create works as much as possible without medium. The redefinition of interaction, in light of the effects generated on the participating subjects, author included, is contemplated only post festum, and it is never a simple collective re-elaboration of the meaning arising from the relational process.
The focus of the works is shifted from the underlying dimension of it -- ideation, preparation, and realization -- to their front, that is, to the collective generative process. The artist solicits the subjectivity of the participants to manifest themselves as an original form of expression, free not only from restrictions associated with personal identifications -- roles, identities, subjective positions -- which he believes subtract sap from authentic life, but even free from the subjectivity of the author himself in the productive process of the relational work.
The artist is also free to impersonate roles, within the limits of their ability to embody them and subject to the availability of their interlocutors to recognize them. For this reason, the artist hopes that the involvement of the audience within the work is global. For example, the creation of spaces of conviviality, inspired by new participatory models, was achieved through an interaction with the artist who was willing to put a part of themselves at stake with those who were willing to do the same, a condition that automatically renewed the interpretative categories of the interaction. The argumentative space generated became a place of negotiation of new relational forms, and consequent identities, thanks to the questioning of some presuppositions of the collective imagination.
The direct interlocutors in their experiments -- the subjects to whom the performative act was directed and who constituted the ideal participant -- were fewer in number than the subjects involved as elements of the interaction game implemented. Those who were in contact with him often failed to understand him.
Direct participants in his experiments - the subjects to whom he addressed the performative act and who constituted its ideal participant - were fewer in number than those involved as elements in the interaction game put into action. Those who came into contact with him often failed to understand him. Those who grasped the outline of what his behavior was delineating were stimulated towards subjective transformations that went in the evolutionary direction: every emotional catharsis recalibrated subjectivity in light of the new systemic conditions.
Oreste proceeded without fully adhering to the roles occasionally played, neglecting to give importance to image to focus on deeper planes of being. As an infiltrator in the social fabric of his existence, he lived with goals different from those conventionally expected of the temporarily assumed identity. Thanks to his heterodox multi-disciplinary training, and the habit of practicing different idiolects, the parody reproduction of forms of subjectivity was frequent.
In his works, the representative plane is almost completely annulled, to remain as faithful as possible to the dynamics he intends to investigate. Thus, he becomes what he intends to know, plunges into the knowledge arena to collect as much as he can, adopting every form of learning that the history of modes of knowledge can offer (and even parody is a form of knowledge). As the world is revealed to his awareness, he grasps what of himself remained hidden.
Only at the end of the event, sometimes, a transparent dialogue was born between the artist and the participants, adopting occasional mise en abyme, showing the production process of the relational work, the preconditions, the objectives, the limit conditions, the roles assigned to the participants and explanations of the behavior he himself, at times an occult craftsman, adopted. Such practices appeal to the sense of responsibility of the participants who are urged to become aware of their possibilities in having contributed to generating the event, or modifying it, even determining its dissolution. At other times, it is the texts or websites resulting from the experiences that reveal the work, the interpretive scheme necessary to grasp its horizon, perspective, and meaning. In doing so, the writings directly emerge from the real situation - the object level - as well as providing interpretations according to new interpretive schemes and descriptions of events according to conventional models.
These different planes imply different positions of subjectivity. The artist hopes that such contrasts will induce the viewer to meditate on the relationship between subject and fact, between the description of the world and the emotional perspective of those who produce it, in order to grasp the personal cipher, the peculiar way of articulating the meaning.

The influences

The artworks of Oreste are affected by the moral, political and ideological crisis in the last decades of the twentieth century in Italy. The artist boldly declare the sources of his speech, indicating a mixture of themes, starting from some concepts of the situationist tradition, loved by historical artistic avant-garde, the origin of an art praxi arises which refers to the concepts of informal and conceptual art. influence Situazoinist tradition.

From this heritage he is emancipated, using their interpretive categories rather than the operational models. The declining of references shows his personal approach, the speech becomes style and shows a feeling that testifies his commitment to culture.
From the first conception of art, he takes on the ironic and provocative character, and the consideration that artistic event, devoid of formal value, coincides with the act of creation. Artistic value is in act, not in its product and this act can be whatever artist decides to take action.

As informal artist, he is always creating new events, but often leaves them happen, merely to support spontaneous and random implementation, possibly influencing the course with their own contributions.
By conceptual he takes on the idea that contents of any artistic expression are more significant than its aesthetic and perceptual results.

In fact, he is expressed through manifestations of thought rather than action looking for an aesthetic pleasure.

If the conceptual have repudiated tradition about artwork and use objects drawn from everyday to insert them into a work of art, Oreste use the daytime as a artwork, regardless of its eventual objective dimension to make room for the thought and reflection, the effects on the subjects.
Like conceptual art, evading the formal and traditional cultural constraints, represents the culmination of the evolution of visual art, from Impressionism, Oreste waiver of the same work after he departed from tradition, trying to experiment each category ab ovo, making a tabula rasa, free to play as parody some forms of subjectivity.
The absence of the work requires use of such rationalistic fruition, forcing to renounce of an empathic understanding or aesthetic enjoyment.

Only denying recognition of value to activities involving the primacy of reason, passion expressions are left free to be expressed spontaneously and directly, overcoming preconceived patterns, customs and rules.

For instance, the transition in the style of his books over the years shows an initial depletion of emotional content - typical of the production of essay from which he purged of the essential emotional elements - and he offers subsequent books purely emotional, without rationale rework .
The spontaneity and the makeshift character of his way of handling certain situations approach him to happening, expressive form used by conceptual art. Exploring the link between action and subject, the artist is led to unusual fields of expression, while maintaining active the denial of the art object, in terms of event too, occasionally he gives to the work character close to the performance consequently its planning director.

Surely influenced by the artistic experiences of the seventies, which had as theoretical and practical horizon the sphere of interpersonal relations, Oreste is manifested through relational art without the constraints resulting from the search for a definition of art adopted, in part because he did not consider himself an artist. But this is not to avoid the lack of recognition of meaning associated to that status that people reserve to it, especially in the academic world.

As he said on the sidelines of a conference, the'artist' term evokes in him a deep respect, a feeling strong enough to make him feel embarrassed even when the term is associated with his name.
Despite his musical education, for years he felt distant from the semantics area the term designates. A feeling not only influenced by the choice to deepen humanities disciplines, first, and scientific, then, but from the habit to keep away self-definition. A choice that he tries to explain in Avant qu'il arrive (Godot).

Personal style

Oreste shows little interest in making public the terms of his work, nor does he make much effort to manage the image or meaning that arises from proceeding in a non-common or divergent way. Aware of how ambiguity is essential in any communication, he rebels against both the models adopted by conformists, which offer predictable questions and pre-established answers producing consensus and homogenization, or reproducing schemes and conventions, which spread superficial culture and massified behaviors, and those of antagonists, which are often channeled into instrumentalized paths.

He believes that the absence of ambiguity from the path of searching for meaning, which is a cognitive path, turns every thought into mere ideological replication, every communication into simple behavioral instruction, every feeling into sensory impoverishment.

As much as the simplification of social practices -- which channel in pre-established paths towards predictable destinations -- in the name of their comprehensibility or their performativity proves to be a successful strategy -- as the explosion of globalization demonstrates -- it makes automatic the processes of interpretation and creation of meaning, reducing the margins of freedom of thought and action.

Oreste resists this implosive movement and relates to the social world as if it were a space where creativity can still express aesthetic, semantic, semiotic, and even passionate instances, that is, questions of a cultural and social nature, through forms of authentic and lively communication, not reducible to mere reproduction of schematics or conformism.

The temporary assumption of roles or identities was necessary to favor social experimentation, to cross the limits of acquired competences, skills, and the horizon associated with the definition of the self. In this context, his refusal to establish a definition of himself, transferring interest to the realm of possibilities rather than the actual one, must be placed.

The performances carried out over the years by the artist could take place anywhere, at any time. The subjects meet and walk or sit on any bench. The artist begins to talk and the verbal interaction between him and those around him constitutes the event.

Sometimes the performances were completely centered on the words exchanged with the artist. Sometimes the encounter was random and the moments were chosen by those who participated. The participants in the performances can consider themselves collectors of the same works.

The occurrence of absolutely banal circumstances sometimes became the context and center of the artistic act, which was not documented in any way. There were no photographs, except in very rare cases due to reasons other than wanting to testify to the event. The action leaves no visual or sound evidence and is exhausted at the moment it ends.

It has already been said about the lack of an object that embodies the artistic operation, and the novelty now is that those who enjoy the event, in addition to becoming an integral part of it, are its unique user. The performative event is not assimilable to a staged performance with actors and observing audience: it is a real event, in which its simulacrum, icon, and reference coincide in the work, which is devoid of a physical dimension. Only those who participated had the opportunity to see it at least once and it will only remain in their memory.

This conception of the work of art as an interaction, often verbal, between the artist and others is a fundamental model for Oreste, who uses words as a place of action and starting point to meet the other, to establish contact and communicate content, that is, to express oneself artistically.

The word of Oreste is a creative and artistic moment and a unique source for externalizing an inner world and sharing it with the outside. A shared word, made dense by the reciprocity required by the participatory act, is quite different from words that establish a unidirectional relationship, without interaction or feedback.

Oreste's word gains meaning when spoken within an interaction, within a context of meaning that contributes to shaping its value and constructing its effects. The body, tones, manners, volume, and gestures are all essential components of such a word and multiply its meanings.

Oreste's interactions establish an emotional and physical contact with the interlocutor, surpassing the limits of contemporary mediated communication. In the multimedia society, language is assimilated as colorful writings on computer screens, sequences of emotions devoid of emotions. Oreste believes that words, as authentic, are always intimately linked to the body of the speaker. A physical dimension that is iconized, in different forms, by the presence in Oreste's actions of occasional physical elements that enter the space of interaction (a bicycle, any object, a bag, a bench, a bed, a chair, an armchair, a book, a computer, a staircase) and delimit or support the emotional space built with the voice.

The definition of an artist, accepted late, places the sense of his experience within this framework, and allows him to embrace a broader perspective than the previous ones to fully manifest the latest contents, which require a peculiar expressive form. The broader limits of art are better reconciled with a scientific connotation with its creative requirement within the social field. The choice to expand the horizon of artistic practice to areas simultaneously managed by the artist and the users leads to unpredictable results. A factor whose outcome is certain remains. The artist believes that everything, not only in his life, depends on the emotional sphere. The amount and quality of love received determine people's abilities. His search for knowledge has always been marginally situated with respect to emotional research.

As leaked from the latest books, Oreste is grateful to those who have loved him because he knows that everything that has happened has depended on such love. And he seems to dedicate every moment of his life to these people, as can be seen from this letter of thanks.

"Love asks me no questions,
And gives me endless support."
William Shakespeare

"Dear participants in the relational works, just a few lines of gratitude, assuming that my gratitude can be focused on them. I recognize in you the merit of an authenticity and spontaneity that constituted the profound meaning of the shared experiences. None of you, even with different nuances, has disappointed me or proved to be opaque or marginal. Everyone, without exception, has been effective, captivating, and moving in the face of circumstances that were by no means certain. For this participation and demonstration of sensitivity, you deserve much more than these few lines. I feel the need to write them because perhaps I was not able to give you full testimony of my appreciation at the right time for you, and I apologize for that. Among the achievements of recent years, the progress made, that shared with you represents the most exciting result. The images of your faces, associated in my memories with emotions of opposite signs, joy and pleasure, defeat and disappointment, will remain indelibly in my memory. With tenderness and gratitude."

* Debernardi O., Codici e Cognizione, s. l., ed. Debernardi, 2006, (ed. originale 2001), p. 99.