Un fatto imperfetto: La Macchina drogata di Vincenzo Agnetti

Abstract

After devoting himself to informal painting and poetry, Vincenzo Agnetti (1926-1981) plays in the group linked to Azimuth magazine, publishing writings of aesthetics and art criticism, essential to his future investigations, focused, since 1967, on art and language. Antinomy, cancellation, denial, are the basis of his work, in accordance with a doubtful attitude towards reality which Agnetti applies deviance as access to new meanings. "I have always discussed and written about things that do not work because it was the only viable way to close the art-aesthetic discourse" – he writes - and defines art as a "choice" phenomenon equal to politics and sciences, and like such engaged in the present and oriented to produce objects to be considered as "recolling" of thought processes. My essay will analyze the artist's practice, based on the use of fallacious spaces of logic and codes, focusing on some works including La macchina drogata (1969) and the series of works 'derived' by it (like Semiosi, Dissolvenze, Comete, Aritmetiche), relating them with the socio-cultural context, with particular reference to conceptual art and concrete poetry engaged in a re-functionalization of language, from writing to technology. La macchina drogata, built by modifying a calculator Divisumma Olivetti, replacing the numbers with letters, is the creator of an unpredictable combination of syllables. According to the assumption that similarity reaffirms difference, the exterior of the machine, as well as its function of creating signs, remain almost the same to those of calculators produced in series, but content changes. The betrayal of the numerical code reverses identity and purpose of the technological medium as well as the dynamics of arithmetic of numbers, breaking all custom and transmuting the object-art work in an "imperfect fact that tends to make current income prevailing on axiomatic".