Telefoni a luci rosse

In Squares, Telefoni a luci rosse places Rome’s monumental duration under the pressure of images that turn public space into a surface of consumption, desire and spectacle. The monument no longer guarantees a shared memory, but lends its prestige to fragments drawn from media circulation. Zampogna thus brings into the urban view the method of contamination developed after Artmedia: appropriation no longer concerns only art history, but also the codes through which contemporary culture produces attention, fantasies and identities. The square becomes the place where “real reality” and “media reality” cease to oppose one another, since both already appear organised as images.

The Colosseum, enlarged to dominate the square yet rendered in an unstable monochrome, loses the certainty of a document and becomes a backdrop available for contamination. Its historical mass retains a recognisable authority, while the rarefied setting and human presences expose it to an almost advertising-like condition. The two media inserts, foreign in scale and register, interrupt this urban continuity: below, the words “Telefoni a luci rosse” link erotic appeal to the impersonal form of an advertisement; above, a man riding a carousel figure introduces fictitious movement, an escape that remains suspended and without destination. The distance between the frames does not separate them, but makes the entire canvas resemble a laid-out page in which history, information and entertainment compete to occupy the same gaze.

The work records a decisive transition in Zampogna’s research: the city is no longer a stable container for events, but the support upon which the media redistribute value and visibility. Its irony arises from the incongruity of the juxtapositions, but does not neutralise their critical force. Private desire and spectacular play settle beside the monument without meeting resistance, until what remains alienated begins to appear natural. The square retains the name of a common space, yet its experience is now administered by competing appeals capable of turning memory into scenery and the present into an offer.