Canned shit

We are drowning in numbers, in data, in that rate that goes up and down every day and makes our mood swing. Our dependence on numbers has reached unimagined limits.  

There have now been 141 million people infected with Covid-19 worldwide, 80 million have already recovered and 3 million have died. Spain’s GDP has recorded a historic decline of 11%; aid from the European recovery funds amounts to 750,000 million euros; vaccine production has increased by 30% in recent weeks, and vaccination programmes have ambitious targets to have 80% of the Spanish population immunised by the end of this summer.  

We encourage our children to study careers in numbers, science, and mathematics, sheltered under a utilitarianism with the firm belief that only that which surrounds figures will be useful for their future, and ours. We live in times when it sounds almost ridiculous, or worse still, bohemian, to talk about the need for Latin, Greek, art, poetry, philosophy… We have become mechanised and subjugated to the powerful dominion of numbers and are increasingly sensitive to their power.  

The famous French sculptor, Auguste Rodin, said that “Everything that brings us happiness is useful.”.Watching a film that moves us, reading a novel that makes us travel while sitting down, transporting us to another space and time, going to the theatre to laugh at others' stories without quite knowing why, or simply feeling our skin prickle to the melody of a song; these are pleasures that are becoming increasingly scarce but, at the same time, increasingly necessary. And we saw this when We've felt like lions locked in their cages. during weeks when it felt like everything was falling apart on the outside. 

Paradoxically, for a Mediterranean and calm people, our language has several references to condemn someone who occasionally dedicates themselves to contemplation, to necessary rest, or to those things considered useless: “to twiddle one's thumbs to not lift a finger to ogle someone”… We love to look at ourselves in large mirrors and decide how far our society is from the civilised Scandinavian cultures, where the grass is greener. But we are incapable of internalising the famous Danish practice as necessary. hygge which basically consists of creating environments that foster situations of comfort, relaxation, rest and well-being. Because going for the Italian idea of “Dolce far niente” (literally: the pleasure of doing nothing) seems to us, quite simply, utter madness. We already know: “tempus fugit”. Wake up, run, hurry up, retrain, be your best self… or shut up and die forever. 

It is no accident that in recent decades the humanities and artistic disciplines have been considered useless and are marginalised in both school curricula and state funding. Why spend money or time on knowledge that only offers a meagre economic return? We have not yet been willing to accept that it is precisely from the knowledge considered “useless” that our soul is fed. What would have become of us during all these months without a book, a film, or a song with which to escape from painful reality? 

In his manifesto “The Usefulness of the Useless” the philosopher Nuccio Ordine already said that “knowledge itself constitutes an obstacle against the delirium of money and utilitarianism” and stated “the vital importance of those values that cannot be weighed and measured with instruments adjusted to evaluate the quantity and not the Quality” claiming the fundamental nature of investments that generate non-immediate and, above all, non-monetisable returns. 

Art, literature, music, cinema, theatre, and all These disciplines, considered “useless”, are the sustenance of human nature., the breath that empowers us, the strength that magically drives us forward, with no other desire than to feel our wings, onwards; even more so, in dire times like the ones we are experiencing. 

If Einstein hadn't played the violin every time he got stuck in his brilliant thoughts, perhaps we wouldn't have the Theory of Relativity today. If Gillian Lynne hadn't swapped her school desk for the “silliness” of a dance school, we would probably have missed out on memorable musicals like “Cats” or “The Phantom of the Opera”. If the scruffy Steve Jobs hadn't attended “useless” calligraphy classes out of his own volition, millions of computers worldwide would have been without Apple's beautiful typefaces.    

Let's stop viewing humanity's thirst for art as incompatible with (economic) profit, because everything that is good for us ultimately becomes good for society too. Even a “useless” brick dreams of one day being an unforgettable building. Even the most delicate, small, and rare flowers are capable of breaking through – with no other purpose than to humbly serve the extraordinary fact of beauty – amidst useless rubble. That rubble also called Monday, end of the month, overtime, tax return, or lockdown. 

And let us not forget that once Italian artist Piero Manzoni sold his celebrated work “Artist's Shit” in a can for the “useless” sum of €275,000..Here is our contribution, albeit more modest, to champion the importance of Book Day, Art Day, and Creativity Day.