Biscotti’s practice can be read as an ongoing exploration of this idea. For Virno, the culture industry is the matrix of post-Fordism, a sector ‘in which there is “production of communication by means of communication”’. In his seminal book A Grammar of the Multitude (2001), Italian philosopher Paolo Virno argues that, within the society of spectacle, communication itself has become an industry. Twenty years earlier, as Biscotti recently reminded me, Lenin had declared: ‘Of all the arts, for us cinema is the most important.’ Set against the backdrop of a country that has been described as a videocracy (one in which the power of the image dominates society) and ruled by the unbridled media tycoon Silvio Berlusconi, Biscotti’s wall painting was a blunt warning about the political situation in Italy and the risks involved in its strategically crafted entertainment. Mussolini wasn’t particularly original though. It was the slogan used by Benito Mussolini in 1937 to open the Cinecittà studio in Rome, which was built by the Fascist Ministry of Popular Culture in order to exploit the newest mass-medium as a powerful propaganda tool. In 2004, Rossella Biscotti daubed the phrase ‘La cinematografia è l’arma più forte’ (cinematography is the strongest weapon) in black paint on the walls of the Fondazione Olivetti in Rome.
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