ITALIANI BRAVA GENTE
Riello in 1996 has designed and personally produced an artwork in form of a video-game “ITALIANI BRAVA GENTE” (ITALIANS GOOD FELLOWS) a classic “shoot them up” game. The action takes place on the Puglia coast. From a gun emplacement on the coast you can direct attacks on different kind of boats filled with Albanian refugies, who are trying to land on Italy. Voices and sounds accompany the different levels of the game: the cries of raped women, shouts of drowning refugies, curses from sailors, gun-fire and the sounds of the sea. All is accompanied by music from “O sole mio” and from the Italian national anthem. It has all the aspects of a real “bad computer game” (possibly illegal) but it has a paradoxical nature when it is seen as a work of art. By necessity ambiguous it operates both as a fierce critique and an acceptance of the crude pleasure of this type of game playing. A sort of “ultimate diseducational”…..The first step in a project about xenophobia and intolerance in contemporary Italy and Europe. In 1996 this attitude in Italy was at its very beginning.
