Centro Di Gravità, 03/1995

BIRKENAU SOLARIS - (Italy, June 1992 - March 1995)

About sacred references in the Kirlian Camera opera.

The Kirlian Camera music faces on sacred. And if even the modalities with whose this symbolic band explores are always very excruciating and not devoid of a deep mistrust about results of this exploration, it seems however necessary to raise to surface at least those estabilished with a certain degree of certainty elements.

In this sense, in the evolving of their discography, Solaris assumes a central role, after that pain and death themes, Schmerz, Todesengel, already declared, in a preliminary way, the coordinates in which the protagonists will move in (often desperates) of this research; a point-break, the apex of a chilly parable in which the possibilities of salvation are drastically foyers. Till its presentation like an ultraground voyage (theirs is sacred music very simply because regards at divine things).

Solaris proposes itself like the chronicle of a missing reconciled event, of a possibility substracted at the protagonist of adhesion of own consciousness; the past of the world ("How is the past, in the consciousness?") moves against.

The choice to adopt Solaris for this ultraground voyage is almost transparent in this sense; the movie, especially, finishes with a picture of maybe apparent reconciliation. It's in the tradition of transitions for stations, of a closing, at the end of the lapse, revealed - (for revelations): in the direction of a light that comes away - its apparition (of light) is however altered, (Nocturnal afternoon) - if not druged.

The ultrawordly nature of the experience appears out of any discussions, revealed at least from enigmatic presence of the dogs on the stairs, that a title makes reference; they guard the hells (Cerbero, that is the three-jaws and implacable guardian of the infernal entry). And from the angel Enned, guardian of the last corridor.

In the booklet notes, Enned is identified on the right, Satan on the left; and the significance - the direction - of reading postpones also toward a temporal order of the events, it seems then clear that the final destination is under the sign of a punition, at least of a failure - Enned is also the first track, in the track-list, - that significatly finds expression in the fading of hope. The nature of its role (of Enned), strangely, it's revealed with more clearness in a song that seemed excluded from the major order of the work; that it was released in two versions. In the widest version of the compilation, it's notable the presence, on the second cd, at least of two titles that seem being included in the main narration (they are released the lyrics of both of them), and they miss from shortest version: Letter to my Killer and The secret of the third communication. In the second one of these two songs, the angel Enned is characterized with sufficient precision (the same sense of his refusal) to provide a more significative track (it's easy however try to associate the title to the famous, and naturally secret, third revelation of Fatima): it's lack of sense, of proprerty; the death, the end of the protagonist of this descent.

Where for end is said: findind own judgment.

The completed lapse seems to happen reverse, in a kind of regressive view, in which the Story conquests an extremely negative value - Krematorium, Birkenau: not much the guilty of the single individual polls the reconciliate potential of the revelation, as the useless research of a hypothesis of redemption in a ultrawordly passage troubled by the manifestation of absolute evil - (see: nazism - see: Cain that kills Abel) - Where the prohibition to kill Cain (by God) represents a limit to exercise of justice (by the man), "Justice is mine", a limit to the good revelation, in the history -

"But where is the past, in the consciousness?"

"In the good that remained impossible" -

And in fact Solaris (especially the movie) is substancially an entry to the past however apparent - that permits to choose again, and permits to choose correctly - (Tarkovskij: "... So in Solaris. The astronaut, notwithstanding his science, is almost a little man, full of weaknesses, but in the end, when he is face to face with his own consciousness, he doesn't hesitate, he chooses the right ways...")

But in Kirlian Camera, notwithstanding the emerged pictures, notwithstanding Solaris materializes them (and it can do only reading information in the consciousness), the reconciliation failed; it dominate an extraneous sensation; almost fatalful, perceptible with clearness in Letter to my killer and Solaris IV: "Toward home!", screams in this last one. The home will be desert. The desperatly searched (remembered) mother is unfindable. The same ocean, of ice, maked a chilly absence miracle. The request of a wanted death (of protagonist) for the ending of his pain in the emptiness. And it's clear the revealed character of this absence.

Their opera becomes a little Book of deads that reveals an only way, allowed to consciousness, that acquired the awareness, in absence of forgiveness, of evil, toward which it cannot individually substract itself, with affirmation: but, forecast an individual possibility; because the planet is penetrated deeper that a thin probe could, that begins to say: "I".

It doesn't find in fact only a condemnation, but an only way to percorse.

Maybe also for this, the artistical project of Bergamini remains in some measure fragmentary, it doesn't complete in its integrity, it assumes different personalities; how like if the hope remained where the project weared out, or in its partial disorder.

The cards don't join perfectly in the mosaic, the hope becomes hope to be able to redraw the warp.

It allows a further step.

And in fact not always it's easy identify storirally the persons which the songs refer to; for example, the deads in the last song Fur immer, that wait, after years of martyrdom, an useless resurrection. But it's quite clear that the references to sacred in the following two works remain, just in different way, very marked; but, to demonstrate that with the precedent was less some equilibrium, some tension, the first of two (Pictures from eternity) is at least apparently informed to a vision less lacerated than Solaris. We immediatly find an instant element, a kirje: much spectral than intensly (intentionally?) homesick; and a song, "I am the Light", which title postpone to a metaphora quite common, in the religious emotion field, and in which a self-awareness sense materializes, almost completly extraneous in Solaris.

"Pictures from eternity" renews the request of salvation (it finds the way in prayer) that Solaris looked for without success, arriving to a chilly revelation, not waited, maybe ununderstood.

"Ascension" and, then, "Your face in the sun", propose both a bright presence, a light of salvation, that allows to varcate an obstacle - (where often the light was a worryed element and just unpleasant, previously).

The image of a mercy extents to (almost) all the pages of the booklet. But it remains that the Christ picture of "I am the light", with its emancipation of father and mother, seems having made in the alterness (the light just sung in "Ascension") the only possible place, "He's free, but is other (from us)", which find refugee and salvation in. And still, in more than one occasion, the tones become dark.

Struggling and homesickfull, this record doesn't let presage the changing of root that the most recent production "The desert inside", allows to intuite till the artwork. The cover, in fact, almost completly white, assumes the sense of a total elimination of all the previous iconography (I'd say almost idolatry, making a road of pictures to materialize the invisible, in the constant quest of a contact that continues to escape), to open a way toward the process to make desert own myths, coming to privilege the road of christanity spirituality fathers. I mean, it's in this avoiding of history nighmare, that the individual can propose a praticable redemption perspective, in this remake of clearness in all what was tangled. To see from desert, that is the place of absence, to see from a timeless point; and in this sense the inner picture of booklet is as much relating to programme. What remains, in this affinity to sacred, it's just the pain, the possibility to trace a new map, devoided of coordinates if necessary than hallucinated, that becomes desert for prayer, from the other side still not said.

Franco Basso

Taken from: http://web.tiscalinet.it/cdg/articoli/altro005.html

English translation: Adalberto Orrigo