Riccardo Giacconi
Quello che non c'è
[What is not there]
ongoing research project
Quello che non c’è (“What is not there”) is an ongoing research on the appearance of an absence within a given linguistic system. The appearance of an absence is rendered through a specific mode, a strategy internal to language itself. Through the study of cultural forms such as jokes, riddles, cartoons and rebus, the project attempts to track down certain techniques language prearranges to refer to itself.
The fourth installment of the project is a study on rebus, carried out in collaboration with Giulia Marzin. It consists in a collection of rebus, extrapolated from the Italian magazine "La settimana enigmistica". Each of the rebus has been deprived of the letters that, inserted within the picture, allow the player to construct a sentence – the so-called 'solution'. By removing the possibility to solve the rebus, the aim itself of the picture disappears, leaving the mark of its absence on the awkward disposition of the figures in the depicted space. Such absence may, then, open up the space for a new narrative value.
The pictures that compose the work have been exhibited in different ways: individually, in groups of two or more, as an open archive or as a slideshow.
