Photographs and texts by Alberto Albertini – Milano, Italy

LIFE AT 98

My contract with the manager of eternity is about to expire, no, not the contract itself, just the earthly clause which, due to its material nature, is objectively a nuisance. Eternity, because time doesn’t exist, doesn’t exist either. I feel cheated out of my legitimate future!

Now I’ve accumulated so many years that I can no longer go back without stumbling, and I realize that through experiences, mistakes, and enthusiasms, many personalities have followed one another like layers glued on top of each other. I’m trying to peel them off, like an adhesive label sealing a box of strawberries from the supermarket.

Among the many projects I have in mind to keep myself busy in the future, there’s also the one of studying Mahler. I’ve already made some attempts, but without the necessary conviction. There must be something more, beyond the first impression, even the second one; it can’t be that simple and therefore disappointing, despite the substantial size of the orchestra.

Alberto Albertini, Photomontage, 2025

The impression I get is that he’s a professor who knows his subject very well but doesn’t enrich it with musical ideas, at least that’s how it seems to me. I could be wrong: perhaps this is the music he wants: serene walks along paths through green valleys, visions of luminous Alps on a clear morning, the glaciers and the scent of larch resin, the tinkling of cowbells. Serenity, lightness, an almost heavenly boredom, with Heidegger hovering in Bavarian costume.

I can hear the First Symphony from the other room; I have the impression that a film is playing on television, with the symphony serving as the musical commentary: the charge of our heroes arriving, the clash and the battle, the truce, the vast prairies of the West, Monument Valley… Visconti used the Fourth Symphony to accompany the opening credits of Death in Venice, credits superimposed on a long tracking shot of the sea, thus confirming the descriptive nature of Mahler’s music. Hence, film music. A scene can completely change its meaning depending on the musical commentary, provided that the musical discourse is not valid without the scene to which it is associated, as it could distract the viewer. Will a scene always be necessary to support Mahler, or will it be sufficient to listen to him in the other room?

The room is silent, the objects surround me affectionately, the control is mine. I could turn on the radio and fill the room with music, but the atmosphere would change immediately, and the control would pass to it. I wouldn’t mind, but I don’t do it. Why? I don’t know. Is it always a delicate balance? Two worlds separated by a thin line of indecision.

When I told myself that I loved women so much that I would accept them even as just friends, I was lying. The pleasure I felt in conversation wasn’t just friendship; it was a controlled intrigue, a subtle thread stretched between two brains that were weaving a dialogue hidden from both of us. I’m sure the conversation was more pleasant and flowing because the two opposite poles were circulating the fluid, the electric current. The conversations were longer, more relaxed, and more fulfilling, and now I feel calmer.

To keep his brain responsive to the social and political present moment in Italy, AA writes regularly his observations and sends them to a Milanese Daily Newspaper: DOMANI (TOMORROW) Most of the time they are published. Here one of most recent: RA

DOMANI, November 10, 2025  What if human intelligence were in charge of governing us? I booked an appointment through the National Health Service at the Monzino Cardiology Center. I arrived at the appointment early. Ten minutes before the scheduled time I was called in for a preliminary examination, and at the exact time of my appointment I was taken in for the consultation. Before I left, the doctor advised me to keep in touch for any event or need, and I was given a phone number to book my next appointment. A (human) person answered the phone and scheduled my next appointment.

Due to a mistake in the email address, I sent a message to customer service, and the next day I called.  At extension number 6, a person (always a real human being!) answered and told me that they had read the message and forwarded it to the person in charge! So it is possible! I think that even within the intricate web of bureaucracy, much can still be done to improve the quality of life.  The lingering question remains: what will become of human intelligence? The ancient masters built palaces and cathedrals that we don’t fully understand how they constructed, how they took measurements and performed calculations. Today, a surveyor no longer carries a tape measure in their pocket, but a laser, and without walking back and forth, the laser instantly takes the measurements and performs the calculations. Why shouldn’t they use it? Thanks to it, they could have more free time, but instead, they use it to work even more.

The situation can be summarized as follows: an ever-deepening chasm splits our society: on one side, increasingly specialized scientific excellence with remarkable achievements in research and invention; on the other, the broader society that embraces and uses scientific progress to avoid thinking, leading to cultural decline.  Between these two sides of the chasm lies a new political class detached from both, incapable of understanding them and seeking to consolidate an ephemeral power by manipulating democracy before the next elections. Perhaps this is the great project that is missing: how to heal the wound. AA

To all my readers

Nativity is in my mind for all beings on earth, not only human.

I like the creche more than the tree.

The lyric I found

quoted by William Carlos Williams poet in a rumination

about language labored “with speech and history”

turned on surprising reaction in the readers

unimaginable to me I am Italian

my husband Peter read it with the rhythm of a song

Dominique Moody told me when she was young

during the winter those lyrics were used to advertise Campbell Soup,

a company where her father used to work.

Yet, it was the freshness of the caring words

I cherished, people we love they belong to us.

You belong to me only a little bit, dear readers,

for the time you spend grazing my words

and whipping art images to peel off a meaning.

To all of you my goodwill, not yet contaminated by thinking.

The lyrics of Button Up Your Overcoat were written by B.G.De Silva and Lew Brown. The music was written by Ray Handerson. The song was published in 1928.

Penso alla natività per tutti i viventi, non solo umani.

Il presepe mi piace più dell’albero.

La lirica che ho trovato come citazione

in una pagina di William Carlos Williams poeta

che ruminava le parole pregne di lingua e di storia

ha acceso nei primi lettori

una reazione sorprendente per me italiana.

Peter il mio consorte ha letto la lirica con un ritmo di canzone a lui ben nota.

Dominique Moody mi dice che quando era giovane

queste liriche d’inverno erano in uso

come pubblicità delle Campbell Soups, la ditta dove suo padre lavorava.

Quanto a me invece, ero presa dalla freschezza

di parole tenere, accostate per unire le persone care

all’idea che stranamente ci appartengono.

Caro lettore anche tu mi appartieni per un momento,

nel tempo che passi a brucare le parole

e a frustare le immagini delle opere per svelarne il senso.

A tutti la mia volontà buona, incontaminata dal pensiero.

Rosanna Albertini

THE BOX, Los Angeles  

Nov 15, 2025

project and text by Robert Zin Stark

 Phallus :: Fascinum :: Fascism 

This is a show about inclusion as practice and process. Please invite whom you’d like. 

To begin, please allow me some foreplay with wordplay; 

The Greek root φαλλός (phallos) is likely related to the Proto-Indo-European root bhel-, meaning “to blow up” or “swell,” which connects it to concepts of inflation or enlargement. This same root appears in other words related to swelling or fullness, such as balloon, bellows, or belly. 

A fascinum was an ancient Roman style of an amulet of a phallus, designed to draw away the evil eye from the user towards the amulet (because it was an object of desire). The English word “fascinate” ultimately derives from Latin fascinum and the related verb fascinare, “to use the power of the fascinus“, that is, “to practice magic” and hence “to enchant, bewitch, or bind together”. 

In ancient Rome, the fasces were a ceremonial symbol of authority carried before magistrates. They consisted of birch or elm rods bound together with a leather strap, often with an axe head protruding from the bundle. The fasces represented the magistrate’s power to punish (the rods for beating) and execute (the axe for beheading). 

Benito Mussolini adopted this terminology when he founded the “Fasci di Combattimento” (Combat Squads) in 1919. The name deliberately evoked both the ancient Roman symbol of state power and the more recent tradition of Italian political organizing. 

Now, I would like to draw your attention—at length—to the history of Ancient Roman militarism and fucking, or the suppression of non-procreative sex, if you please: 

The endless demands of Roman militarism created an inexorable pressure for population growth that fundamentally transformed sexual culture and law. What began as pragmatic concerns about maintaining adequate military recruitment gradually evolved into a comprehensive system of legal and social controls that systematically suppressed non-procreative sexual behaviors. This transformation reached its culmination not with the end of paganism, but with Christianity’s adoption and intensification of these existing regulatory frameworks. 

Before the ancient Romans, with the ancient Greeks and Egyptians, sexuality was notably pragmatic. In ancient Egypt homosexual relationships appeared in art and literature without moral condemnation, marriage was often informal, divorce was relatively easy for both sexes, and celibacy held no particular virtue—even priests typically married and had families. Greek attitudes toward homosexuality are well documented, celibacy and contemplative life often being elevated, with contraception and abortion discussed openly by medical writers. Homosexual relations between soldiers were even understood as beneficial to the intensity of their fighting. 

The earliest manifestations of state intervention in sexual behavior emerged from Rome’s military expansion across Italy. The Twelve Tables, codified around 450 BCE, established the legal framework of paternal authority (patria potestas) that gave fathers absolute control over their wife’s reproductive choices, their children’s marriages and even their reproductive choices. This wasn’t merely about family structure—it was about ensuring that each household contributed adequately to Rome’s military needs through the production of future soldiers. 

As Rome’s territorial ambitions expanded, so did the censorial powers that monitored citizen behavior. The censors, initially concerned with property assessments for military service, gradually extended their oversight to include sexual conduct that might affect population growth. Social pressure against permanent bachelorhood among the patrician class intensified precisely during periods of military expansion, when the state most desperately needed the sons of prominent families to serve as officers and provide military leadership. Rome was mobilizing a staggering 10-15% of its entire adult male citizen population simultaneously (with 30-40% of the entire population being slaves, that were also recycled into their military). 

The Punic Wars and subsequent Mediterranean conquests created unprecedented demands for manpower, coinciding with the first systematic legal attacks on non-procreative sexuality. The Lex Scantinia, likely enacted during this period of military crisis, criminalized certain homosexual acts, particularly those involving freeborn Roman men as passive partners. The law’s timing was no coincidence—Rome was simultaneously fighting Hannibal and expanding eastward, requiring every citizen male to fulfill his reproductive and military obligations. Growing taboos against practices like fellatio and cunnilingus were similarly justified as “foreign” and unmanly behaviors that weakened Roman military character. 

The crisis of the late Republic, marked by civil wars and recruitment difficulties, intensified state intervention in sexual behavior. The Lex Iulia de Adulteriis Coercendis, building on earlier precedents and finalized under Augustus in 18 BCE, criminalized adultery not primarily for moral reasons, but to ensure legitimate heirs who could provide military service. The law’s provisions carefully protected the patrilineal transmission of military obligations from father to son. 

Increased prosecution of sexual behavior deemed to undermine traditional family structures accompanied Rome’s desperate attempts to maintain military recruitment. Social campaigns against Greek sexual practices, particularly symposium culture and pederasty, were explicitly connected to Roman military superiority over their allegedly effeminate Greek subjects. The message was clear: sexual discipline was military discipline, and military discipline was the foundation of Roman power. 

Augustus’s reign marked the systematic codification of militaristic sexual regulation. The Lex Iulia de Maritandis Ordinibus of 18 BCE mandated marriage for men aged 25-60 and women aged 20-50, with explicit exemptions only for those serving the state in ways that precluded family life. The Lex Papia Poppaea of 9 CE penalized celibacy and childlessness through inheritance restrictions, creating economic incentives for reproduction that directly served military recruitment needs. 

The legal privileges granted to parents (ius trium liberorum) provided those with three or more children with significant legal advantages, including exemptions from certain civic duties and enhanced inheritance rights. These privileges were explicitly calculated to encourage the production of future soldiers. Restrictions on marriage between social classes served to maintain distinct citizen bloodlines suitable for military service, while increased regulation of prostitution channeled sexual activity toward procreative marriage rather than sterile commercial encounters. 

The early Imperial period saw the expansion of stuprum laws targeting non-marital sex among citizens, creating comprehensive legal frameworks that made non-procreative sexual activity increasingly criminal. The senatus consultum against castration under Domitian around 83 CE explicitly protected male reproductive capacity, recognizing that voluntary sterility represented a direct threat to military recruitment. Legal restrictions on divorce were made more stringent under various emperors, ensuring that marriages, once contracted, would continue to produce children for military service. 

The military crises of the third century intensified sexual regulation as the empire struggled to maintain adequate forces against barbarian invasions and internal rebellions. The Lex Cornelia de Sicariis was expanded to include severe penalties for castration, treating voluntary sterilization as a form of treason against the state’s military needs. Legal campaigns against mystery religions that practiced celibacy reflected imperial recognition that religious enthusiasm could undermine demographic objectives. 

The cultural apparatus supporting these legal frameworks became equally comprehensive. Literary campaigns by authors like Juvenal and Martial satirized sterile relationships and non-procreative sexuality, while philosophical schools promoted marriage and childbearing as fundamental civic duties. Mystery religions emphasizing fertility, such as those devoted to Cybele and Mithras, gained state support precisely because they reinforced demographic objectives. Public festivals celebrating fertility and procreation, architectural programs emphasizing family and childbearing, and educational reforms emphasizing masculine virtue tied to reproductive success all served to normalize and institutionalize the connection between sexual behavior and military obligation. 

The legalization of Christianity under Constantine in 313 CE and its subsequent establishment as the state religion represented not a break from these regulatory traditions, but their crystallization and intensification under new ideological justifications. Early Christian leaders, far from rejecting the Roman system of sexual regulation, embraced and expanded it while providing new theological rationales for existing practices. 

The Christian synthesis represented the ultimate triumph of Roman demographic anxieties over sexual freedom. By transforming military necessity into divine commandment, Christian sexual ethics preserved and expanded the regulatory apparatus that Roman militarism had created, ensuring its survival well beyond the collapse of Roman military power itself. The theological justification of procreative obligation proved more durable than the military justification from which it had originally emerged, creating patterns of sexual regulation that would define Western civilization for more than a millennium. 

Finally, to be enjoyed with your bedside smoke (and a faggot meant a bundle of sticks or tobacco leaves, to be burnt)—the word proletariate came from the ancient Roman census, which categorized the class of people that had no other assets but the ability to procreate.

R.Z.S.  Robert Zin Stark

Los Angeles, Sept. 2 2025 at 4.04 PM

Robert,

I read your pages after an unbearably hot and humid visit to the Getty. 

Looking at the words I couldn’t believe them, 

so familiar they were to me, and really strange in a page written by you, in Los Angeles, today. 

My tongue devoured them as I do with an ice-cream cone overfilled with the very best creamy stuff. 

And I couldn’t stop, nor interrupt the pleasure of reading. 

I haven’t read anything so smart and exhilarating in a long time. 

The last intellectual orgasms I remember were decades ago, with two unique figures, the best scholars in the worlds about ancient history: Arnaldo Momigliano and Emilio Gabba.

I was an Eighteenth century philosophy scholar, working with them because of my obsession of wanting to understand

why so much of the ancient culture was sitting in my philosophers books, and how and why. 

Every time I met one of them my excitement continued to explode for days. 

In the end I generated a little blue book. 

Yes, I’m honored and happy to work with you about this project. 

Rosanna Albertini

(I am one of the curators)