Alessandro Facente's curaticism: Memory, art, and the bomb

Alessandro Facente revisits a text from December 2013, originally part of his 'Mercoledì Italo/Americani' series for Giacinto Di Pietrantonio's lessons at Accademia di Brera. The essay weaves together memories of New York's Spoonbill & Sugartown bookstore, Andrei Tarkovsky's Polaroid collection 'Instant Light' (selected by Giovanni Chiaramonte and Andrei A. Tarkovsky), and a 2012 collaboration with artist Gian Maria Tosatti on 'Tetralogia Della Polvere' at Casa Bossi in Novara. Facente recounts a pivotal moment on March 20, 2012, when he and Tosatti discovered red plaster flakes resembling rose petals, leading to an installation inspired by a story about Tonino Guerra and Tarkovsky's search for a villa with painted rose petals by Filippo Palizzi (1888). The narrative connects to Tosatti's earlier 'Devozioni' series (2005-2011) in abandoned Roman sites, particularly 'Testamento (Devozioni X)' from a 1950s water tower. Facente draws parallels between these artistic fictions and the real-world dropping of the GBU-43 'Mother of All Bombs' in Achin, Afghanistan, by the Trump administration, contrasting it with the hopeful era of Obama's 'yes we can'. The article introduces 'curaticism', a curatorial attitude theorized by Facente, defined as a constant dialogue with artists to follow their creative process, blending curating and criticism.