How did I get here?
1998, interactive project. This image is an unfinished work for an interactive project. Internet spectators are invited to join the project by cutting and pasting this image on top of an enviroment of their choices. Click here for a sample of the results.
Hope & Despair
1998, Sculpture, h. 23'. Hope & Despair follows the same theme of the 1997 video with the same title. This time it's a sculpture of a man completely wrapped in PVC, his hands tightened by his back, as handcuffed in captivity. The figure sits on a laptop computer and has a portable telephone on his lap. A zip restrains his entire body thus making him incapable of communicating.
Free Vanunu
1998, Flag. Mordechai Vanunu worked as a nuclear technician at Dismona, Israel's nuclear installation, from 1976 to 1985. In 1986, following his conscience, he revealed the facts to the world through the London Sunday Times. Based on his evidence, experts concluded that Israel had stockpiled up to 200 warheads, making it the world's sixth largest nuclear power.
On 30th september 1986, days before his information was published, Vanunu was lured from London to Rome from where he was kidnapped by Israeli agents. He was tried in total secrecy, charged with "treason" and "espionage" and sentenced to 18 years imprisonment. Since then he has been kept in complete isolation in conditions described by Amnesty International as "cruel, inhuman and degrading".
Cans of Hope
1998, printed cans, 3x4½ In.
Primo Levi's first white lie (Desperation Island)
1998, oil and acrylic on canvas, 37x18½ In.
When Stefano was young he was so struck by Primo Levi's account of his experiences in Auschwitz that he wrote to him a few times. Once he asked him to make a drawing for him, to which Levi declined saying that he hadn't drawn since childhood. This is a reproduction of a drawing of his published on his best-seller "The Periodic Table".
