EDITOR’S LETTER
Artificial, heaven or damnation? Like everything, the adjective catch-phrase turns out to be dual these days. After all, aspirin and heroin appeared at the same time in history, with synthetic chemistry. Then, the use of anything always depends on human knowledge (increasingly scarce, alas).
Artificial is opposed to natural, but in the etymology it defines ‘what is obtained by art’.Usually, the artificial has always been a surrogate for the ‘real’: artificial fertilisation to bring the seed to the egg cell when it can’t get there on its own, artificial respiration to reactivate what spontaneously doesn’t happen; but… if we talk about an artificial diamond the nose twitches, it sounds like a will but can’t. Of course, it shines, even if less vividly, it makes its own scene. Therefore, in some cases the ‘artificial’ saves us, in others it deceives us by simulating the real in a less valuable way.
Body is also becoming more and more artificial. Whether it is for the better or for the worse depends on the eye of the beholder. How far can you go? It doesn’t take much wisdom to give an answer that seems obvious, but always clashes with the absence of one of the founding parameters of intelligence: the ability to learn from past mistakes.
Therefore, I will quote an adjective brought to this magazine by Chiara Donà Dalle rose, a patron, jurist, and promoter of beauty whom we had the honour of interviewing in this issue. Her Biennale of Art carries the adjective Sacred. It is called Bias, Biennial of Sacred Art, where the adjective is stripped of all liturgical and religious connotations, it refers to Man. Indeed, to being human as a prerogative to protect.
Recovering the sacredness of the body was one of our initial goals. Now, the sacredness of being human should be recovered, raising the bar judiciously, but without exaggeration.
