“Disease X

In a dark room in a museum, a spotlight illuminates my skin. A teacher invites boys and girls to come closer. “Students, this is a finding dating back to the Anthropocene, please come closer, listen, read and, above all, observe: “Disease X. With this term we want to represent the awareness that a serious international epidemic can be caused by a pathogen of which we currently do not know the ability to cause diseases.” Way back in 2018, the World Health Organization inserted for the first time with these words the reference to an “X disease” in the list of potentially pandemic infectious diseases from which humanity could not defend itself. Two years later, starting in January 2020, it seemed that Coronavirus had given a name to the unknown X. This skin, this embalmed body, belonged to a contemporary artist, who in the midst of chaos and panic claimed that the real pandemic was the anthropocene itself and indicated how salvation could have come, paradoxically, precisely from microorganisms ...
This was his manifesto:”

40,000 moments of infinity

40,000 animals are killed every second in the world,
just to satisfy our palate.
Most of them are marine animals.
40,000 desperate migrants have lost their lives at sea. 40,000 plastic bottles perpetuate Earthʼs liquid nightmare; continuously contaminating ocean water, each second.
On land, it is no better.
Each year, in the U.S.
– that beacon of Western civilization –
drug addiction claims 40,000 lives;
firearms kill 40,000 people;
car accidents result in 40,000 deaths;
40,000 souls commit suicide;
and sexual violence slithers into the lives
of 40,000 girls and children.
Beautiful and precious: our entire "civilization” has its days numbered... 40,000 days, according to one of the most intelligent scientists of the twentieth century. 40, 000 hours, according to others with newer data.
A handful of years separate us
from a sixth mass extinction.
Soon, a planet home to life for billions of years will struggle to host even microscopic organisms.
And, yet, microorganisms suggest a way to put an end to this incredible nightmare...
40,000 microorganisms are exchanged in a single kiss. “Infinity captured in the bee's brief visit to a flower".
On the edge of extinction, only love remains.

Alfredo Meschi X

That historical period, that global crisis, marked the end of civilization, but also the beginning of a new way of life. That's why in this museum of disappeared civilizations, together with many finds, we still keep its skin today.