“The Third Reich” is a performative video-installation based on the spectralrepresentation of all names. All the nouns found in the Italian dictionary are projected, in sequence, one by one. These nouns potentially represent all existingobjects that have a name.

The speed of this sequence is attributed by our capacity to retain, based on ourretina and memory, a word that appears in a flash with the duration of a twentiethof a second. This restricts our vision which then reaches a critical point wherefusion happens, right before our perception loses control. In this oscillation, it is no longer possible to distinguish words individually.

In the limit situation created by this machine of spouting words, some will leave a trace in the visual cortex of the spectator, while others, most of them, will be lost. The audience, helpless when treated this way, is subject to the human word, in terms of quantity. Not what, but how much. This furious bunch of words does notallow space for choice or judgement. The core of language returns to white noisethat leads to chaos.

“The Third Reich” is the image of a mandatory and imposed communication, with a violence that is accompanied by its claim to equality. Here, the language machine exhausts entire spheres of reality, as the nouns are all the same, mechanically and mass-produced, like prefabricated buildings in a knowledge from which there is no escape. All pauses are abolished, occupied. The pause, or the absence of words, becomes a battlefield following the military aggression of these words; the nounsfrom the dictionary, projected on the screen, are like flags planted on conqueredland.

 

Video: Luca Mattei, in collaboration with Giulia Coll
IT Consultant: Alessandro Colla
Production: Societas