Pietro Sanguineti

(now), 2001

Pietro Sanguineti uses language that is already strongly pictorial-objective and logo-like in his work. Words like desire, genetic, help!, ego, life or private property develop meanings that can always be interpreted differently from a philosophical, sociological or scientific-theoretical etc. point of view. Sanguineti makes concepts of this kind into word-objects that swirl through the empty universe of the monitor image as computer-animated 3D structures or into light boxes, illuminating the space like public advertising. Pietro Sanguineti’s (now) is the present in brackets. It shows how topicality and the meaning of ‘now’ is out of date the very next moment. So the brackets are more than a relativization of sheer size; they underline the self-contradiction that is immanently given and launched strategically at the same time. (now) contains that same contradiction between the fiction of progress and an actual standstill. The brackets stand for an absent context and for a language system, for grammar and punctuation, for syntax that is relevant in terms of both form and content. The endless movement of the ‘now’ in the video and the absurd size of the word in the light box present an ironic self-negation of the term and imply the continuing process of valorization and devaluation in the production process that cultural production is also subject to.