'Safe coffee', 2016. Interactive installation with security camera container, thermos, hot coffee, wooden panel, solenoid valve. Make Munich, Germany / Share Festival, Turin
In Byung-Chul Han's book Psychopolitics, the author delineates the power relations attached to the stimulation of positivity and agreeability and, setting them up as the maximum level of sovereignty in contemporary society. There is nothing more agreeable and positive than having a cup of coffee, an act wholly related to the social, the pleasurable and even to moments of peace and disconnection. Taking this type of stimulants as his starting point, Carlo Galli composed a piece in which humour and criticism strike the spectator powerfully. Safe coffee (2016) consists of a CCTV camera transformed into a coffee machine, something which incites audience participation, dispelling the passive role of visitors as mere observers and pushing them to be part of the piece thanks to their involvement. The artist explores interior/exterior dialectics, or, in other words, the private and the public.
