Andrea Bianconi’s Stupidity Exercise Manual is a collection of drawings that describe actions which no rational person would ever think of performing. “Bark like a dog in the presence of a dog”, “Take a big, empty box and put it over your head”, “Beg a door to open”, “Look at the rainbow with someone who’s colour-blind”. Bianconi recommends doing one of these exercises every day for at least 10 minutes because, he explains, stupidity training is easily lost.
Designed to take its place in anyone’s home, the manual is a genuine artist’s book in the form of spiral-bound postcards with a free-standing cover (like a table calendar) so that it can be displayed as a work of art.
The rationale for this operation fits into a long-standing artistic tradition. Paraphrasing David Byrne, “The Dadaists used nonsense to make sense of a world that didn’t make sense”, Bianconi enthusiastically and optimistically declares, “Doing meaningless things is great because it imbues the meaningless with meaning.”
The purpose of the actions described in Bianconi’s drawings is not so much to become stupid (perhaps we’re already there), but to do so in the right way. The book is curated by critic and journalist Luca Fiore.