Antenna

Maxims is a series of six white flags, each bearing stylized texts based on the speeches of the Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini. The work consists of six flags, 54" x 39", each with formal arrangements of lines of text. Each of these texts was written by the use of a modified cut-up technique, consisting of selection of text fragments and their subsequent recombination, to ‘rewrite’ Mussolini speeches into poetic form, to be inscribed on the flags in fonts based on Italian fascist architecture and futurist poetry. The work is presented on flag poles, in any variety of ways (standing, wall-hung, etc.).

Based on the speeches of Mussolini, these poetic rewrites focus on the conception of nation and land as gendered, as well as the sexual shorthand used to express identity and how Mussolini’s speeches are linked to libidinal economies, that is, politics of desire and attraction. The work takes on these shorthands in a more explicit way to express the seductive language of sexuality that underpins the conceptions of nation and domination (put forward by Mussolini) as a kind of ‘soft power’. By making these sexual undertones explicit, the work attempts, firstly, to make them known, and, secondly, make them absurd and sickening, thereby embodying a critique. What these poems reveal is the coding of the military as masculine and territory as feminine, showing an expansionist drive and sensual logic of conquest and domination; a technique that creates the impression of naturalness of military action and acts as ‘soft power’, a kind of power based on attraction and co-option as opposed to coercion, playing off of libidinal economies to be desirable and enjoyable, both as action and identity concepts.

This article was written as part of Platform. Platform is an initiative created and driven jointly by the PHI Foundation’s education, curatorial and Visitor Experience teams. Through varied research, creation and mediation activities in which they are invited to explore their own voices and interests, Platform fosters exchanges while acknowledging the Visitor Experience team members’ expertise.