Assembly of Objects
Call to the Assembly
Hear! Hear!
Today’s objects, transnomadic, geopoetic ones,
Scrap from elsewhere, joined by inaccessible and chance ways
In midst of the great nothingness;
Splinters come to their senses from explosions that left their traces
on bones and in memory;
Pages torn from diaries that were lost and found thousands of times;
Modest models, unable to remain immobile.
Listen!
Listen to the sea’s wave which teases your ear,
Listen to the wind from the very high mountain,
which musses your hair.
The hits, the drinks, the streets, the punctured tyres,
The fears, the shags, the pyramids, the swims,
in the finest brushes of cat hair…
Playing on the street, painting on the floor,
be shipwrecked on the sea, a thousand bananas in the freezer.
It doesn’t matter.
You, imported, important, deported, exported, exhibited,
misfits, exhausted, married ones.
Prepared to litigate for what ties you (very little)
and in agreement on what divides you (almost everything).
Everything, little, nothing.
That everything, which is nearly found in a painting.
And if someone asks: What is it? The answer is:
Nothing! And he thinks: I won’t tell you!
Antonio Mariotti, Lugano, 1994

A Journey in the Mergui Archipelago
Luca, our artist-drawer, engraves images in his mind, gives them form and artistic expression, immerses himself in a world that he is discovering, and to which he becomes more and more sensitive. His sensitivity informs his savoir-faire, and the researcher makes use of it while it opens a door to understanding the nomad mentality: the talent of the one, the talent of the other, exchange of gifts, exchange of ideas, etc.; all the ingredients are there favouring a budding friendship. Luca has a great desire to explore the islands, penetrate more deeply into a world “apart”, distant, a different kind of reality. In this, he re-joins the Moken who see in the “elsewhere” and in the “above” the past and future. All this conspires to immerse one in a universe of concrete or abstract forms both pleasant and unpleasant; forms in perpetual conflict with each other, where – according to Luca – these very contradictions become the motor for a harmonious way of life.
Jacques Ivanoff, Myanmar, Thailand, Paris, 2002