| A motel of crossed destinies
inguine
mah!gazine #10
It is difficult to interpret the heritage and desires of the
dead, risk is high but temptation is a disease that it is difficult
to escape.
In 1973 Italo Calvino, in the introduction of The
Castle of Crossed Destinies, spoke of a project which was just a draft, never completed.
In that text there was not only a castle of crossed destinies but
also a tavern, in which fantasy and combinatory method played with
a Tarot of Marseilles pack of cards: besides these two texts a
third was to be included, the motel of crossed destinies. The author,
in this unwritten text, wanted to create a sudden contrast with
the medieval and renaissance material of the other two, and intended
to create a similar operation with modern visual material.
But which is the contemporary equivalent of tarot cards
as a representation of collective unconscious?, Calvino
used to ask himself. I thought of comics… Some characters
who have escaped a mysterious catastrophe find refuge in a motel
in ruins, where only an half burned page of a newspaper remains:
the page of comic strips.
This is the starting point for the construction of this issue
of inguine, travelling in the iconography of tarots, beloved also
to another great protagonist of the world of the eight art, Jodorowsky,
interpreted by contemporary Italian and foreign cartoonists. An
issue dealing with the infinite possibilities of images to tell
stories and to interpret, if not the future, at least the present.
Elettra Stamboulis |
