Facilitated Pocket-sized Impossible Puzzles - Enigmistica Impossibile Tascabile Facilitata

Facilitated Pocket-sized Impossible Puzzles
Enigmistica Impossibile Tascabile Facilitata
2004-2009
Artist's book. Magazine, 64 pages. Typographic print. ~ 208 × 145 × 5 mm
Two editions of 100
Available in English and Italian

With the occasion of its anniversary, as 20 years have passed since the conception of this artwork, I wish to dedicate an in-depth to it. This artwork is one of the first ones officially released, and the very first artist's book I ever published.

The artwork saw the light in 2009, but its production started in 2004, since I carried it on as a side project in the spare time. It had a good success, it has been exhibited and awarded even recently in several artist's book biennials, group exhibitions, my first solo exhibition, and belongs to some collections.

The book is a puzzle magazine, at least it looks like that, but it is fake, you cannot solve any of the many surreal crosswords and games, while the jokes and the other things you may expect to find in such magazines are insipid.

The artwork criticises this kind of magazines, it is a parody. It is Dada and pataphysical.

You may object that among the many publications that you find in newsstands, the puzzle magazine should be considered one of the "smartest" (compared to tabloids and other paper made irreparably useless, as it has been covered with ink.)

But I do not think so.

Actually, puzzle magazines are just pastimes, they do not bring more culture than what you have already, (unless you peek the solutions, but would not be better to take a good book and read it?) let alone wisdom. To me a pastime is a waste of time, a way to waste your life not making something good, not studying, not evolving your conscience, and worst of all not thinking: if you keep your mind occupied with minor trifles, you cannot think by yourself and evoke the great knowledge that is inside us already. They are like TV: a distraction that fills your head and time.

Well, crosswords may help your memory to stay fit, and this is not bad (although there are plenty of better ways to do that, like memorising poems or songs, playing music and so on), but just consider that memory is not the only function of the mind, its purpose is just to store raw data, and notions, which may become rules and then dogmas. Notions hinder your real freedom of thought, as they build up a system of beliefs, in most cases deriving from the actual mainstream opinions. Opinions are not the reality. You must be able to forget notions, put aside your knowledge, if you want to see things for what they are and have an unbiased consideration of reality.

The artist book, a double edition of 100 multiples, is available in two versions: in English (Facilitated Pocket-sized Impossible Puzzles) and in Italian (Enigmistica Impossibile Tascabile Facilitata), as I think that Italy is particularly characterised by a peculiar "bad" taste for this kind of magazines, with poor and trite side jokes (yes, in the real magazines), to the point that I hardly understand where the fun is, so I just tried to replicate that insipid taste.

You can browse both previews here:

English preview: Facilitated Pocket-sized Impossible Puzzles

Italian preview: Enigmistica Impossibile Tascabile Facilitata

As you can see in the previews, to end the book with a bang, I put on the back cover a fake advertisement recalling certain vintage weird stuff on sale in such magazines some decades ago, funny and unconvincing A.C.M.E. Corp. items promising features that are certainly enticing within a society based on rudeness or the need for supremacy, so I wanted to exaggerate with more bogus products recalling contemporary controversial themes.

After its publication, I recorded an inspired audio where I explain more intimately my point of view about these magazines.

You can enjoy it in this introductory video featuring the Italian version, English audio with Italian subtitles.

The market of puzzle magazines is even today growing and growing worldwide, and I do not see this as a good thing, as to me it just means that people is searching for more leisure, entertainment, amusement, thus less spirituality, meditation and elevation. People are in the grip of materialism.

At the time of releasing the artist's book, I wrote these words:

«Artwork allegorically representing the difficult epochal renewal of thought: a new vision exposing the folly of a whole mental scheme, predetermined on an obliterating cognitive circumscription. 
Exposing the machinations of a perverse mankind, once shattered the mystifying bubble concealing it, tortuous characteristics are revealed, expressed in the referentiality and fulfilled in dogma and taboo.»

The crossword scheme is the perfect allegory or metaphor of mental schemes, like cages, where consciences are trapped in a forest of words, notions, apparently useful information; or like Faraday cages, that do not permit external "radiations" to permeate and reach you mind. So people cannot escape the status quo, their predetermined lives, ruled by the economic requirements of materialism.

But, do not get me wrong: I am not one of those people who despise what they cannot achieve, as I am very good at solving puzzles. I just think that answering unsought, impractical and unnecessary quizzes or tests is a waste of time. Even more if the questions are about a mainstream system of thought based on pragmatic notions and chronicles that end in themselves. You know those TV quiz shows: they test if you have memorised the mainstream lesson well, the official version.

All the contents in this artwork are surreal, sarcastic and mocking, but they do not pretend to amuse or make you laugh, they must be taken seriously, since you must see the artwork in its entirety, in its conceptual meaning. The impossible puzzles make you feel helpless and are an invitation to put these magazines aside.