Flashback 2019

Flashback is the project dedicated to art, conceived as an open artwork, born in 2013 with the aim of building an atlas of visual culture able to link culture and market into one equation, without constraints of space and time.

In 2019 flashback is 7 years old and – as every year – it adds a new significant element to its tale. The headings of each year are parts of one story. Thus, the Time enigma, the Labyrinth, the Energy, New syncretism, Counter-clock world  and The shores of another sea are the chapters of one tale, which – this year – adds The Wanderers.

We are the characters, the time travelers of arts and in arts, hobos in its eternal present, wandering beneficiaries, a mysterious people whose whim is to meddle in the past and future history of all the peoples. The heading of this seventh edition takes inspiration from a science fiction novel dated 1986, of the two writers from Soviet Union Arkadij and Boris Strugac. The original heading, The weaves that extinguish the wind was first translated into English as The Time Wanderers and then into Italian as I passi del tempo (“The steps of time”). For flashback, this Hobos in and of time are Gli Erranti / The Wanderers.

The  travelers in the novel are time hobos, enthusiastic walkers, roving wanderers, roaming observers and searchers, nomads by choice, curious of the art history of any time, always ready for a  new adventurous exciting experience: the result is a fluid dreamlike magma of landscapes, emotions and tales, which are collected as if in the journal of a pilgrim, as excavation, discovery, prayer and ascesis; a personal journal made of meetings with the artworks, of relationship, feelings, boredom and curiosity. The Wanderers move random, with no destination or program; they roam, hang around inefficiently, avoiding to preliminarily establish their itinerary; the meaning is in the discovery, in the mistakes along the way, in the meetings and in the emotions they live. This is why wandering helps refine the senses. In Latin, “to Wander” has the double meaning of strolling without a destination, but also of deviating from the truth, of being wrong to acquire knowledge.