The non pious but hearty New Year greetings of the Instants Vidéo numériques et poétiques (and not just a little) so as not to be defeated.
Since 8 January 2007, the Instant Vidéo have made their New Year’s greetings coincide with the celebration of the ever-living memory of the great electronic poet Gianni Toti.
This year, this celebration of one of the most breath-taking figures in the History of video art also marks the 150thanniversary of the City of Paris. Amourtier (lover) rhymes so well with émeutier (rioter).
Dear Gianni,
I remember that Roman night in 1992 when you took me to eat a pizza not far away from where a fascist bullet once stabbed your leg.
You spoke to me about the Poème de l’extase (Poem of Ecstasy) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqVz7Y2k4YU) of the Russian composer Alexander Scriabin, of which you only knew of emotional equivalent, the groans of pleasure of a loved one, because poetry, you said, sweats from aroused bodies. Physical love and poetry have an irreplaceable power to shake. You then warned the young man that I was, steeped in dreams, in order to convince him that the true condition of a revolutionary man, poet or lover, is to be stronger than his dreams. From the dark days of the anti-fascist resistance until your death, you never gave up an inch on your revolutionary, poetic and love commitments.
You told me: The ecstasy killers will come back masked. You will recognise them. They will declare the body of women obscene and poetic thought incomprehensible.
I asked: Have you been imprisoned? You told me: I escaped. We must not be defeated.
Make no mistake about the enemy. A much more terrible virus than COVID-19 infects our sensitive intelligence, the anti-poetry covid. If we are not careful, we will soon forget the taste and the smells of words, we will excommunicate passionate thought, we will adore the ugliness of the commercial world: by not providing assistance to beauty in danger, we shoot a poet every morning and we shoot love every night.
You told me: Communism will be erotic or not because sensual nature is the heritage of all humans.
One evening, after the screening of your electronic opera SqueeZangeZaùm, we went to the Lacoste castle to pay tribute to the poet sent to the Bastille, the Marquis de Sade. Our Master, we said, laughing. I asked you: Do you know that there is a Japanese island called Sado? They used to house intellectuals and artists who had fallen from grace. You weren’t left speechless. You knew the power of words and their power of association.
In 2021, let us get into battle disorder, gunshot loaded with poetic and erotic frenzies, let us prepare our escapes from the dungeons of indelicacy: let us not be defeated!
Aux (l)armes, Plantoyens !, Gianni Toti used to say.
We will laugh until we cry and we will be poetically contagious!
We will have madness in mind and the sun in our hearts because the time of cherries will return.
1871 – 2021: Long live the City of poetic passion! Long live video art!
Marc Mercier
Many thanks for the translation : Elisabeth Grech / Mana Chuma Tearto
