Conti inutili

(Bad Buys)
Year 1977-84
Text by Pino Poggi
The floor of a room is covered with black plastic bags. Several lines stretch from one side to the other side. Numerous bills hang on the lines.
Art as Presence 84 – Installation, Twin Palms Gallery San Francisco, 1984

Of the many bills I paid over the last few years, I carefully sorted out the “useless bills” – bills for things I bought, but never used. I asked friends, acquaintances and passers-by to do the same. The sum total of these “bad buys” is unimportant: by just looking at them you can get an idea of what we have come to!

In addition to these useless bills, I covered the space available in the gallery with plastic bags and wrapping paper (acquired together with the buys), scattered hap-hazardly over the floor… as you see, I have put the lot on show – in short, I have made an Environment AU. I purposely arranged the “bad buys” and the coloured plastic bags advertising the various products in this way – the “useless bills” hanging on lines, and the coloured plastic bags scattered higgledy piggledy over the floor. I did it to warn people – people who do not know… warn them of the danger, the danger which undermines the human element, the social element… which cuts us off from reality more and more, unawares, which pushes us into buying something which basically we never wanted…