Work by art duo goldechiari is raising a storm. Photograph: www.goldiechiari.com
The point of conceptual art is, of course, to make people think. Unfortunately, in Bolzano, in the north of Italy, a work by the artistic collaboration goldiechiari has made at least one person think "Let's take them to court."
Sara Goldschmied and Eleonora Chiari have created an installation in which the Italian national anthem is accompanied by the sound of a flushing loo. Their work was on display at the Museion in Bolzano until a prosecutor, spurred to action by a local official of the formerly neofascist National Alliance, ordered police to seize it.
A judge is expected to decide in the next few days whether the two artists have committed an offence under article 292 of the Italian penal code, which outlaws contempt for a national emblem. The affair has some intriguing subtexts.
One is that Bolzano, or Bozen in German, is the capital of an autonomous, mainly German-speaking province annexed to Italy after the First World War. It is an area of simmering nationalist sentiment where, as the conservative paper Il Giornale said, the Italian national anthem has "always sounded as melodious as a dentist's drill".
The other point is that, if there is any aspect of Italy's national symbolism about which even patriots have misgivings, it is the anthem. Though in use since 1948, it was not made official until last year and only after repeated attempts to replace it with music by Verdi.
Composed in 1847 by Michele Novaro, with lyrics by the poet Goffredo Mameli, it is short on gravitas and long on words that leave most people today scratching their heads.
Ever heard it? What do you reckon? And a free roll of Andrex for anyone who can work out the meaning of "The children of Italy / Call themselves Balilla".
