“Career ladder”, it sounds so nice, so harmless. A series of steps, a climb upward, a panoramic view at the top, all the things you ever wanted and, of course, your applause. In Non-Solo-Pasta I took that story apart and rebuilt it, with Carrara marble, steel, and a bucket full of pasta.
The result is a little stage where our performance culture celebrates itself: coins clink on every step, multiplying as they rise; formulas promise predictability; two marble dice hold the whole thing up like a lucky casino (because without luck, or the privilege of where you start, it just doesn’t work). And on top of it all dances a grinning man in a suit, wearing blinders.
(Greetings to Silvio B. by the way.)
One step further, and he lands in the carbohydrate universe. Kabooom.
Why this piece? In 2013, Italy was buzzing with that cocktail of presidential myth and success-at-all-costs. I didn’t want to make some bitter portrait of our times, I wanted to show the mechanism itself: how we bow and bend our way upward, step by step, always looking up, naturally stepping down on others, all the while believing there’s a formula for happiness.
Neat, clean, scientific, but mostly very sluggish. We treat our equations as guarantees, yet life keeps coming back with a sledgehammer, hard, direct, and more and more often right in the face.
The coins on each step are my little toll stations. Every step costs something: time, nerves, relationships, always a bit of conscience.
And the little man on top, my dancer in a black suit and red tie, wears blinkers. He looks victorious (well, halfway), arms wide open, his next step already half into the void.
“I can fly!”
I didn’t build him as a ego-monster, but as someone we all might recognize, maybe even that part inside us that longs to stand at the top. The face is exaggerated, ridiculous, like all my Pinokels. Humor helps people look. But his pose is shaky, the ramp is bending and your triumph is just a brief tone before the great static, the big nothing.
Below waits the white bucket with the slogan
„NON SOLO PASTA“
Italian cliché? Of course.
The bucket is filled to the brim with dry fusilli, a yellowish sea pretending to be soft. But it isn’t. These are hard, uncooked noodles. The end is rarely sweet or fluffy. Out of the pasta pile stick two legs. Someone’s already in there. Maybe the predecessor, maybe the colleague who climbed a little faster, maybe us, in five minutes. The bucket is sarcophagus, joke, and warning at once. “Not only pasta,” it says and yet that’s exactly what the body dissolves into: the mash of self-optimization, the mass that makes everything the same. The reaper always comes.
In southern Italy, the audience read the piece instantly, but in their own way, direct and physical. Kids tapped the bucket, asking if they could touch it. Some visitors read the formulas aloud; others counted the coins, and nearly everyone laughed at the dice: “Ecco, la fortuna!” That line stuck. The laughter often turned to reflection when someone taking a photo realized that the little figure on top literally had no more room to move.
Of course, the piece is also a jab at Italy’s eternal success cult, the “always on top” mantra of the media years.
(Again, greetings to our self-made “from pub singer to president” dude.)
But I don’t want to moralize. I built this thing because I know the pull myself. The steps, the coins, the triggers, they work. They always have. Every new level is dopamine. You only realize late how tight it gets at the top, and then you need more. Always more. The rush fades, as it always does. That’s why we should treat our success carefully; it climbs into our heads faster than we notice.
What does it mean to me today?
Non-Solo-Pasta is a small ethic in stone and steel: don’t climb with blinders on. Not every step is worth the toll. Not every formula answers your questions. I have nothing against ambition, but I have something against the tunnel. And I have something against the myth that only the president, the profit, or the perfect résumé counts. Life(social) has its own worth, with girl, dog, old car, and people who stand beside the ladder, not on it. Forget that, and you’ll end up in the noodle heap faster than you can say “promotion.”
I like that the work looks funny in photos. That’s the trap, and the invitation. You come closer, laugh, count, tap the dice and at some point you feel the balance: the thing is unstable. It stands only because all parts hold each other in tension. Just like us. We balance time against money, pride against doubt, attention against silence. Non-Solo-Pasta makes that fragile equilibrium visible.
I hope the piece stays cheeky enough not to fossilize into a moral lesson. Otherwise, I’ll take it apart and rebuild it.
For now, it may stand, unseen, in the depot, a small, shaky truth.
Whoever only looks upward won’t see the abyss.
Whoever looks sideways might find the way back, to the table, to the people, to food, friendship, fun, and love! All the things that are worth more than cash.
Non Solo Pasta, indeed.
Carrara 2013
