Control

Control is a word that grew up in foreign lands, with different meanings that the Italian language has imported and merged together. The counter-role was the system devised beyond the Alps to prevent human errors in the official records, so for us today to check (from the French contrôle) means to hunt down errors. Dominating, having the last word in decisions, determining the trend of a phenomenon, are meanings imported from English (control).

We have a curious relationship with control: sophisticated, as it allows us, for example, to protect children or the sick. But also feared as we perceive its contrast with freedom and growth. And then adored, because we are tempted to place our hope in a concrete, continuous, total domain of events. However, control remains a chimera, the more it is pretended to stretch it on the whole reality by removing it from narrow and measurable areas.

Fabio Arduini
Np June / July 2020