I am ashamed. Not much to say. You awarded me, grant me this award, and I feel like a thief that robs you of your fiducia.Eppure, before you change your mind, I can not help but accept your lusinghe.Come always, every victory is a defeat. And I never know which side to take: with the vanquished or the vincitori.La shame is a healthy sentiment, and also unjustly despised. Somewhere I read that there where people blush, begins her be more noble. Among all animals, we are the only ones to be embarrassed, or at least the only ones to prove it. Shame, perhaps, is an unobtrusive way to get out from anonymity: the sooner we face that looked identical to the others, suddenly is recognizable, it is seen, her cheeks tinted imbarazzo.Ho many reasons to be embarrassed today, here in front of to you. At school - it is useless to keep it hidden - I was a terrible student. In third grade, at the end of the year, together with the report card gave me the work book: I had spent so much time in the hallway that I had been hired as bidello.E now I'm in the chair. It is a role that just does not apply to me. Indeed, were it not for you, I would not be here either. This reassures me a little, because once again I can share a success, ol'ennesimo bankruptcy, with some accomplices, more or less volontari.Questa, after all, is a college graduation dates, first of all to yourselves, to your generosity, and, secondly, to anyone who has shared part of my job and my insecurities. In reality This lesson should be a simple list, as the end credits of a film.Io, without the other, there are none. I'm really empty. Even this speech I wrote with a friend, stealing a few words here and there. Since the times of the school that I go on like this: my teacher got mad because I did not have the smarts to copy the students bravi.Come you see, are a lousy model. Sometimes even I think that my work embodies some of the values \u200b\u200bwhich we should be embarrassed. But art is a mirror gives us back the image of who we are, or what we become. And the mirrors attract, even when they are little lusinghieri.A look like that, in the mirror art, it seems that the world is not a particularly welcoming place. In art and reality, sometimes the world seems as if it were temporarily in the hands of a god is wrong, while the real one if it is out of the game. Maybe I am a pessimist, but at the same time I think in the world there are many other console from which benefit: love, food, music, the immense variety of languages \u200b\u200band faces, and then the continuous buzz of immagini.Ecco, perhaps I should tell you about the pictures, because after all, with images that speak. If I ended up being an artist - whatever that means - it must have been right to find a way to escape from the words: a way to invent a language that was no longer mine. Not that he invented and then who knows: in fact, sometimes I have been content to move an image from one place to another, simply. It is a small circuit that is created in these situations, which may result from a thousand sparks, even pericolosissime.Forse image fascinates me precisely this ambiguity can never check to the end. I do not know exactly why, but I always feel like the images do not belong to anybody and instead are there, available to tutti.A difference of words then, the images seem to me that demand more interpretation. With the words you can say yes or no, things with pictures become more complicated. In fact, if I had the courage to teach something, I would say: "Beware of images always unique." The pictures are one way to trash the eyes and the brain: visual pollution to the state puro.Le images that interest me most are those who do not understand. Or rather, those that seem to contain within itself an infinite multiplicity of meanings. I know nothing about sociology, but perhaps the images that I really like - and no matter that they are mine or that someone else has created - are quite similar to what you call the company, or at least are similar to what I preclude imagine how an ideal society: they are a chorus of voices, a noise and conflicting interpretations of sounds, which mysteriously found a balance. And on top of this balance is not based on any hierarchy: no voice dominates the others, no interpretation can take over a right of superiority, no sound is noise. The best pictures are like many small towers of Babel remains mysteriously in our feet tremble, perhaps, but not collapse. Indeed draw new strength from the continuous oscillations that shake their fondamenta.Dalle pictures I also learned something about the world I learned to accept everything. And above all I learned not to underestimate anyone. I can not enlighten you on our society: they know much more than you. Yet I can testify that there is person who is not able to change your life. Taken in small doses, the man is an animal rather extraordinary, capable of insane acts of generosity, sometimes on the edge of self. Even this degree is a manifestation: the bottom is like joining an exclusive club that if he accepted my appointment was not to be so exclusive. Here's what I like about this degree, and I would like to thank you really: for a moment, all these professors, and all teachers in the world, professors and teachers, that's all I seem closer, and if they are closer to me , then it means that they can really be closer to me tutti.Per this degree is not ' a promotion: it is not me I rise, perhaps they are the teachers who have decided to downgrade, to go down to my level. It seems like a good sign: a way to draw closer to mix carte.Mia mother said that without a piece of paper does not get you anywhere. While I thank you, I can not keep hidden to be scared to death I hope that this ceremony does not mark an end point. I like to believe that it is only one step, not the capolinea.Non know who you usually give honorary degrees or master's degrees in general, but I hope they are aimed at those who still want to learn, and not to those who believe know everything.
Maurizio Cattelan
