ROAD TO BLACK

What happens when the system of investigations and information begins to falter, and unproven conspiracies and theories transform into a genuine lead? Nothing is closer than reality transformed, experienced, just as our eyes and and our mind want it to be

ROAD TO BLACK

What happens when the system of investigations and information begins to falter, and unproven conspiracies and theories transform into a genuine lead? Throughout history, the archetype of the Devil and the phenomenon of Satanism have been used as tools to explain events that have nothing to do with facts, exploiting mankind's ancestral and atavistic fear of the unknown. Thus, suspicion and doubt spread like wildfire, gradually turning into weapons. 'It's a pandemic of Satanists!' is shouted, and slowly the realm of foreboding takes on the weight of condemnations, condemnations so cruel that we are compelled to ask: what if it were all true?

Like a Rorschach stain, in Road to Black, one navigates between the reality of facts and fiction, arriving at the recreation of an ideal case, perhaps never actually existing, and thus telling the tale of the profound connection that binds man to Evil.

Nothing has a single face; on the contrary, the pieces of the puzzle can mix until fragments that once seemed impossible to unite fit together perfectly. Nothing is experienced in a unique way or has a single, precise place on the map. The human mind, confusing mist and midges, manages to break apart and then reassemble the puzzle of experiences. And thus, through Confabulation and false memories, we come to perceive as real a world that never existed and events that never actually happened.

The central theme of “Road to Black" is the Satanic Panic, the Satanophobia that developed in the 1980s/1990s first in America and then spread to the rest of the world, which still occasionally surfaces in today's news. The research serves as an ideal mapping of worldwide cases where Satan was used as a scapegoat, an excuse, a guilty party, and an "easy" conviction, often towards individuals who were entirely innocent or merely involved in various aspects of Satanism unrelated to ritual killings. 

These miscarriages of justice are so egregious that they seem like products of imagination, yet they have instead destroyed entire lives and families. 

This project is part of a broader investigation culminating in the Dummy "Road to Black," developed under the supervision of Francesco Rombaldi, during the Yogurt Magazine workshop in the years 2022/2023, and is currently under his curatorship.

VIDEO: [ https://drive.google.com/file/d/1t_0oebTglVcVJAHMmV7QIfQ62_VI5aGv/view?usp=sharing ]