Critical text
The work sets an identity constructed through music against one assigned by gambling’s promise, turning the person into a possibility subjected to the code of chance. In the «Scratch & Win» series, Zampogna transfers the grammar of the promotional ticket to ordinary life, so that the desire for recognition and the desire for wealth come to share the same instability. Here the musician introduces an activity capable of defining the subject through body, gesture and instrument, but that definition is immediately placed beside a system promising an alternative identity, obtained not through experience but through a combination waiting to be revealed.
The figure with the bass counters the abstract logic of the prize with an active presence, yet the pink field reduces its weight until it resembles an image already absorbed by communication. The body retains its singularity but does not dominate the space: it coexists with four cards occupying an autonomous area and translating luck into a visual sequence. Their arrangement, one card above and three below, suggests a procedure of comparison without providing a legible result; the game remains suspended within its promise. The words «LE TUE CARTE» also act ambiguously: they address the viewer directly, yet replace a personal relation with the standardised formula of a message directed at anyone.
Compared with other works in the series, where the figure is more visibly incorporated into the ticket’s surface, this work preserves a distance between the subject and the device. That distance makes the conflict more explicit: music as practice, exposure and possible self-representation stands against luck as a media shortcut towards a change in circumstances. Exhibited in the 2007 show «Cirkus», the work thus places the spectacle of possibility within individual life. It does not establish whether the person possesses the cards or is being evaluated by them. Instead, it allows identity and prize to become interchangeable terms within the same condition of waiting.
