On “Don’t Eat My Dreams”

By Maurizio Imperiali

Could what happens to the Nutcracker’s toys—who come alive during the night—also happen to other, humbler objects? I believe it can. To strip objects of their predefined and externally imposed network of meanings—even those that exist prior to our first encounter with them—is to allow for the emergence of a significance that is no longer tethered to their function or consumption.
Since the most radical and final act of consumption is eating, this reflection begins with uneaten sweets—edible images that evoke the way we daily ingest visual content, reducing it to meaningless atoms. Paying greater attention to things also implies paying greater attention to human beings. To rescue objects from their (un)avoidable consumption and restore them to the status of pure image-icon may become a revolutionary act.
One might even begin from the opposite end of the spectrum—by becoming chefs of horror, shaping the worst images that pass before our eyes into cake decorations. And is this not precisely what happens when the Bosnian child is “served,” between courses, by the great television chef—ready to be reduced, like everything else, into meaningless atoms?