FABRIZIO CORVI
The project entitled “HUMANS” is a photographic, literary, musical, philosophical and cinematic journey through many aspects of the human spirit. Dostoevsky wrote: "We often qualify as bestial the cruelty of men, but it is something extraordinarily unfair and insulting to the beasts.". I think he was right; bloodthirsty and violent events of history arouse in us a certain horror that we usually describe as "inhuman". In fact, it is precisely these qualities that characterize humans because only humans perform them. Perhaps the deepest horror comes from the fact that wild animals, acting with bloody cruelty, trigger ancestral knowledge of the beast that everyone, without exception, holds locked within the depths of himself. Why else do few men accumulate massive amounts of wealth and power? Why are they the envy of many others? I refer to a wealth and power that brings no comfort to the lives of those who possess it. Indeed, it is very often the cause of terrible misfortunes; the uncontrolled desire that leads to war, to looting of land and property, to contempt for the others, to genocide, to ethnic cleansing, to the export of democracy with weapons and the poisonous industry. I am referring to the typical, unreasonable and human desire for supremacy without sense. The HUMANS of this project are similar in this way: they are predators and they are intelligent. They have a veil over their eyes because nothing is more monstrous than intelligence without reason, than genius that lives beyond good and evil, the beast with sharp teeth and with opposable thumbs. Because, on this planet, only HUMANS guard the monsters: the "captives" locked up inside us. But is it really so, our true nature? Is evil really so banal, so superficial, so easy that any idiot can accomplish it...or is evil so ingrained in us to be ineradicable? Is it human nature to be a good, invincible force that destiny favors...or not? I'm not a scientist, nor a philosopher; I'm just a photographer. I do not have the answers, but I have many questions. The project “HUMANS” is comprised of photography, video, performance art, music and poetry through which the viewer is asked: "...and you, who are you ?".