Brian Eno's 'FOREVERANDEVERNOMORE' and the Call for Art to Change Reality

Christian Caliandro's article on Artribune critiques the Italian art world's bourgeois homogeneity and argues for art's power to effect real change, using Brian Eno's latest album as a case study. Caliandro opens with a Facebook post by Bertram Niessen (October 24, 2022) lamenting that over 90% of Italian cultural figures come from privileged backgrounds, leading to a focus on trivialities like font choices rather than urgent issues. This post inspired the series title "Il milieu dell'artista" (The Artist's Milieu), originally planned as "Potere & potenza dell'artista" with artist Roxy in the Box in Naples. Caliandro traces the gradual abandonment of the working class over the past 30-40 years, both politically and culturally, in favor of bourgeois values embodied by the "fighetto" (a privileged, ostensibly progressive but fundamentally conservative figure). He notes that artists from the 1970s-1990s generation are now addressing pressing issues without rhetoric or archaism. The article then focuses on Brian Eno, aged 74, whose album FOREVERANDEVERNOMORE (released October 2022) tackles climate crisis and mass extinction emotionally for the first time. Eno calls artists "feelings-merchants" and art the place where emotions become "actionable thoughts." Caliandro praises the album as a masterpiece and argues that art must leave its luxurious enclosure to change people's minds and reality.