Perhaps we should stop for a moment and reflect on the words we are spending and the proposals we are advancing in order not to close cinemas, theaters, concert halls. Not because the arguments are wrong, and even less because the intentions are not acceptable. There is no doubt that “art continually re-establishes the community” and that “without theater there is police begins to disintegrate ”, as he wrote for example Nicola Lagioia. And therefore there must be no doubt that in the black hole of a pandemic that seems to never end, we really need art, culture and beauty like bread. We need it as a community and as individuals: without it we would all be weaker, poorer, more alone.
But a pandemic is something that breaks into our lives and doesn’t let itself be dominated. We are learning it – with difficulty, astonished and reluctant – week after week. The data, unless you take the idiocy of the various denial nuances, are cruel. The less equivocal ones from all points of view – the pressure on hospitals and especially on intensive care units – already tell us that we will have a very hard winter.
The only weapon we have is to slow down, empty, isolate. Close what you have to, give up what you can. And then some bitter truth must be told. Cinemas and theaters have already emptied. And anyway, in their small (very small, alas) they contribute to movement, circulation, reunion. Just what we should avoid. The great safety guaranteed by a room with spaced seats is therefore not in question. Nor, if it needs to be repeated, the indispensability of the contents, language, values and emotions of a theatrical or musical performance. But precisely, it is these that should be defended at any cost. It is for these values (in the impossibility, we do not know how temporary, to frequent the places that express them) that a mobilization that is up to the times must be launched. That is to say of the gravity but also of the responsibility of those who – precisely because they care about art and culture, that is, the fullest, most open and generous life – cannot even in the slightest jeopardize the health and existence of others.
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It is therefore not a question of resigning oneself. But rather, not to surrender to the alternative between self-reported resistance and fatalistic renunciation. The mobilization of cultural operators and of many citizens who care about the future of art as well as that of their own existence should be directed in another direction. Less rhetoric (it must be repeated: theaters and cinemas will empty anyway, whatever the dpcm that await us) and more effective. No less demanding: first of all it is necessary to ask for certain and rapid resources for a world that has always lived on the edge of poverty and that now risks falling. Its existence is at stake, purely and simply.
In sight there is the disappearance of an entire fabric of companies, orchestras, groups and individual operators. Resources – that is, money and services – immediately, first of all. But then we must think how not to lose the richness of the artistic and cultural experience. And therefore reinvent material and digital ways, real and virtual places, in which to continue to practice art, intelligence, beauty. Studying (and expecting) incentives to be used in this direction: designing platforms and technologies capable of overcoming every isolation, every separation (which will in any case be necessary in the world that is emerging from the pandemic).
And finally to ask, indeed to demand, that the media and the large communication agencies open their spaces to art and culture not only when they protest but in their daily work. The Italian platforms – starting naturally from Rai – should be pressed and finally forced to give space to experiences, shows, scenes and sounds that can no longer be expressed elsewhere. Here appeals, petitions, claims should be concentrated. To compensate for and replace empty and silent rooms as possible. Not in the stubborn (and I fear useless) claim to remain open anyway. But to open up more, during and after the pandemic.
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