This digital book is a revised and reworked edition of an original version that was published physically in Italian in very limited numbers. This version includes a new preface, an expanded introduction, a new division in sections as well as backgrounds for the poems, along with the interludes. Many images have also been reworked, I hope, for the better.

CATASTROFE

Catastrofe is a collection of thoughts, more than poems, meant to combine words and collages, assortments of distorted images I have made myself in Affinity Photo. Halfway between an old, scratched up photo album, a collection of tormented thoughts and the diary of a treasure hunter's journey. 

What is a "Catastrophe"?

The term catastrophe is composed of two halves: kata (down, below) and strepho (I turn). A catastrophe is a turn of events, a plot twist in a story that, just like any good story, is at least allowed to end happily.

A plot twist, then, to find irreality inside reality, to find dreams inside our waking consciousness, and to find inhumanity paired with human hands, human language, human emotions. 

To be catastrophic is to set aside everything that came before us, to set a part of our own life or thoughts as a point of “before” and “after”. 

In other words, catastrophe is to say: 

«I am at the center of everything that happens to me. I am part of the world with my deeply human irrationality, and such “everything” includes me too, and thus must allow me too, with my irrational dreams and the natural laws that regulate inanimate matter. I am at the center of my everything, I am the point of origin of my Forever. The world could not exist without my inconceivability, for it would be a would that lacks me».

A note on AI

All the constructs I bring to you in this book are original compounds made using photographs I have taken myself or found on the web as well as AI generated through a very old (around 2021-2022) version of Stable Diffusion (model sd-v-1-4 used through Easy Diffusion).

The decision to use AI to make some of the images is very intentional. I saw the AI’s poor attempts to produce realistic-looking gears, hands, branches, eyes, faces, brush strokes and flames, and I saw not beauty in them (I hardly see how anyone could) but potential to represent a distorted, irrational world. I thus want to make this as clear as I can:

I do not support AI or AI art as a replacement, overcoming or improvement over human creativity or ability.

I believe no self-respecting artist would hold such a belief.

This book is not a work of AI art, but a human one that tries to philosophically and aesthetically investigate, among other things, AI art, artificial intelligence and the influence its inhumanity can have on human creation– its “catastrophe”.

The uncanniness of its distortion of recognizable figures perfectly fit the surreal, otherworldly atmosphere I want the images to evoke.