"The event took place in Turin on May 3 1977. Four artists - Mario Merz, Giulio Paolini, Marco Bagnoli and Remo Salvadori accomplished four works - each his own - for a single space (the empty and dark auditorium of the Gobetti Theatre) and for a brief period of exhibiting time (from six to eight p.m.). These were different and autonomous works which together formed a single, mental and visual 'concerto', subtly spectacular for those who were fortunate enough to witness it. . . . This 'collective' experience by Bagnoli, Merz, Paollni, Salvadori, discloses references and methods more suitable in a philological-literary context and in the philosophic and analytic reflection, and thus in the time sphere, rather than in a strictly pictorial sphere. And yet the image which appeared 'in one fell swoop' was evident, and therefore without time. At first sight (which is what counts) something induced us to instantaneously think

that that intersubjective action implied the 'global' result as contemporaneity of 'conclusion'. And what is this if not the 'pictorial' immediacy of the 'instance of the glance'? (Lacan).

A ruby laser diagonally crossed the general half-light. The straight line stopped on a parchment attached to one of the lobby windows, upon which one discerned a drawing of the 'golden scarab'. The vision takes in the tale by Poe, who has always seemed a strange guy to Merz . . . . On the stage, at the front of the auditorium, on the side opposite the scarab - which was invisible by now — the ruby laser grazed the throat of Salvadori's box-tree dog. And his sentence 'the thought on holiday' multiplied analogies and reflections which couldn't be verified without risk. One could momentarily lose oneself and recognize the contours of the vegetable animal, the unfinished continually outlined by the pruning of the hedges, like in the Italian garden."