Marco Maggi: PROFILES: THE TED TURNER CATALOG (from CNN to DNA)

DNA: Watching a hair for hours doesn’t allow us to identify its owner, even though that hair includes much more information than any high-resolution picture. It’s now possible with a single strand of hair to reconstruct genetically even the most intimate details of a person. Knowing that a file as simple as “hair.zip” has embedded within it a forest of signs and codes that we cannot see or read has produced in us a new sense of myopia or illiteracy.

CNN: Watching the news for months doesn’t allow us to identify the reality behind an issue covered by the press. An infinite sequence of simultaneous, precise, and live reports is not enough to understand the difference between live broadcasting and death, between democracy and business. We are condemned to know more and understand less. This is not a contradictory process; it’s semiotic indigestion. If something moves as fast as a bullet, it becomes invisible and supersonic.

If something moves as slowly as a minute hand, it becomes still and uninteresting.

Examining a ream of the best-quality white paper proves that it is impossible to find a single absolutely white, silent sheet in 500 examples.

Seeing two pages printed with the same image confirms there are no two identical visual experiences. (Even McDonald’s has never cooked two burgers of identical shape, color, taste, texture, temperature, and context.)

Marco Maggi recently had solo exhibitions at the Fifth Gwangju Biennial; the VIII Havana Biennial; the Sao Paulo Biennial; The Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art; Centro Cultural Reina Sofia, Montevideo; the Centro Cultural de Espana, Montevideo; Centro Colombo Americano, Bogota; and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne. Recent group exhibitions include the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Buenos Aires; and the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Santiago, Chile. In 2005, he was included in “Drawing From the Modern 1975-2005,” at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

* Turner, Ted: (born 1938), US broadcasting and sports executive, born in Cincinnati, Ohio; president of Atlanta Braves baseball team and chairman of the board of Atlanta Hawks basketball team; head of Turner Broadcasting System, Inc., whose properties include station WTBS and news station CNN; bought over 3,000 movies to televise and received criticism for colorizing many classics. (Source: Britannica Student Encyclopedia, 2002)