The Paperwall is a living installation that I developed during a residency at the MACRO Contemporary Art Museum in Rome. The work begins with the construction of a symbolic wall, made by assembling cardboard modules found on-line, whose sinister shape fits perfectly into the concept of the work. The Wall, whatever its color, its latitude and its substance, material or mental, is a diabolic idea: besides keeping out the unwanted, it imprisons people inside. The Wall, therefore, has a double value: separation from the outside and control of the interior.

This principle has its plastic manifestation in the second phase of the work, when, within the area circumscribed by the Wall, I marked the territory with the colors, symbols, and shapes of the American flag. In this phase, I was "assisted" by some small robots that interacted with the installation. Those that I place inside the Wall, equipped with black markers, contribute and at the same time always interfere with my design, but also tend to expand their random trajectories, ending up inevitably at the borders, where they attack the cardboard bricks looking for a way out. The performance then develops in my attempt to continue the design, while in the meantime I try to monitor the behavior of the robots, bringing them back within the fixed perimeter when they manage to get out and restoring the wall failures: a clumsy and labored dance in which is consumed the grotesque nature of control.