A L E X G A W R O N S K I

Tomorrow, Again, Artspace, Sydney, curated by Scott Donovan

SD video (Mini-dv) 5:17

Initial footage in this video was shot on mini-dv from the funicular linking Lake Como to Como Upper Town. Como, in Northern Italy, boasts one of the earliest and most influential examples of fascist architecture in Italy, the Casa Del Fascio by Giuseppe Terragni. Northern Italy more generally, is ripe with examples of fascist architecture. Unlike in Germany, where the vast majority of fascist buildings were destroyed either during allied bombing or deliberately immediately after the war, in Italy many fascist buildings and sculptural monuments survive intact. In fact, as concrete indicators of an inescapable totalitarian vision of the modern world, it is surprising the extent to which these buildings have come to blend, almost invisibly, into the contemporary urban texture of numerous cities.

The rise of the Right in Europe and around the world has been escalating for years. This video ties evidence of past right-wing violence, symbolised architecturally, to scenes of modern urban rallying for the neo-fascist cause with its reactionary, fictional notions of national purity and lurking aggression. The soundtrack sampling a segment from Shostakovich’s 15^th and last, string quartet engages the notion of the string quartet as a classic communal unit. Here though this unit has been reduced to expressing single notes, strained and eerie, as testament to forced separation and social atomisation; a broken cooperative, a lost internationalism.