They story goes that Sigmund Freud was afraid to meet Arthur Schnitzler, the author of Dream Story, because he saw him as his double. August Strindberg, on the other hand, really met his double, a bit unexpectedly though, and he was left so upset that he devised a masterpiece such as Inferno.

There is something in the announced genetic modifications that doesn’t bring anything new, but something rusty and old. Human biological replicate, in the end, is only a dream coming true. So far, machines have managed to simulate only some parts of the human body: a stick becomes the extension of an arm. The replication of the whole human body would imply a modified and subverted relationship with God, a radical intervention in culture. Of couse, the unpleasant memory of the Golem, of Rabbi Low or of the exasperated makeup of the seventeenth-century automaton-like men and women. From the Vaucanson duck to the Spielberg’s Pinocchio, there is a huge gap, but the curse is only one. You are machine and a machine you will be forever: man has never been tender with his own brothers, at least after Cain.

Clonation lets in a scorching light of vagueness that directs to horror. The replicants by Phil Dick were good fellows, but that was fiction. The Dolly sheep was nice, but with a lot of problems to deal with. Anyway, it started a new direction. Poor Strindberg, if he only had seen the dozen of his replica coming to life next to the Blue Tower. This is science-fiction, of course, but stem cells will be soon implanted in the out-patients department with the health insurance scheme.

The artist, then, cannot give in his narcissistic pleasure. Human, too human. Their children are the same, but self-regeneration is even better, because we will always fall in love with ourselves. The ingenious Alighiero Boetti did it, in 1968 he invented his own double, creating a perfect couple because inseparable: Alighiero & Boetti. A true, artistic, real trademark like the many others that came after it. How many were the clones of Boetti? Several, de facto or fake copies attracted by the commercial & that so much recalls the cynical ‘80s.

Either monsters or perfect copies, either teratogenesis or perfect replica. If we create automatons, we need to be carefeul, as they might take our place. As it happens with our children, but without feelings or hate. The innocence of the Kinder chocolate of our childhood clashes with the evil sneer of the toys always ready to rebel against humans. The Manichinia, a town of self-propelled rag-dolls created by E.T.A. Hoffmann is now eclipsed under the pressure of the modern times, under their violence that doesn’t save anything. Goodbye Princess Brambilla and Goodbye tender Golem –  which used to scare kids and adults of the Ghetto of Prague. Today fear rises within the domestic walls, it is a soft toy persistently looking at us with a strange look from the reflection of our faces in the car’s rear window while we are heading home after a weekend.

Valerio Dehò

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DROME suggests you the following exhibitions:

Exhibition, Exhibition
Curated by Adam Carr
Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea
piazza Mafalda di Savoia – Rivoli
web: www.castellodirivoli.org

Rivoli (Turin), until Janaury 9, 2012

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ALIGHIERO BOETTI
alighiero boetti. game plan
Curated by Lynne Cooke, Mark Godfrey and Christian Rattemeyer
Museo Reina Sofia
C/ Santa Isabel, 52
web: www.museoreinasofia.es

Madrid, until February 5, 2012