ART-MEDIA,
VERDI THEATRE, SALERNO, ITALY
4 MAY 1985
This performance is one of the most important illustrations of the
principles of the Esthetics of Communication, which theorizes a
new type of art that reveals relational configurations in space
and time—its media—instead of producing material objects
to be contemplated. The performance begins when the artist dials
the number of a telephone in the local studios of the RAI television
network—seen in close-up on live television, on a monitor
installed in front of the audience at the Verdi Theatre in Salerno.
The telephone on television begins to ring and the artist, seated
in the audience, grows impatient and finally gets up and leaves
the theatre. Unbeknownst to the others in the theatre, he gets on
a waiting motorcycle and speeds off to the nearby studio, where
he answers the phone, which hasn’t stopped ringing during
his absence.