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Last spring at the Institute for Advanced Lateral Studies in Tours, Currado delivered a lecture entitled “The Cruelties of Choice”. In it he laid out what has by now become a familiar theme for people who follow Malaspina’s work. Essentially it describes artistic volition as a series of accidental “wagers,” intuitive predictions made in what Currado calls “the broken mist of misdirected reverie” (rêverie mal dirigée”).

Though well received by the audience at the time, his thesis became extremely controversial when the text was later published in the literary journal Faucon. Michel Encapuchonné, director of L’Ecole Niveau Bas de Paris was “dumbfounded by its witless arguments, gaseous yearnings and clownish inurgency.” Writing in L’Arte Aujourd’hui Brigitte Mamelon called Malaspina “a desperate blow-hard who mangles sentiment with spurious intellectualism and improvable daydreams.”

Currado was understandably hurt and dismayed but remained extremely practical as the events unfolded. Sensing an opportunity, together with the impresario Markus Ohrenschmalz, he staged a public debate at the Palais Garnier, which was televised live on TF2. The spectacle proved both profitable and entertaining and at the present time Currado is negotiating with Cable Statique for a regular series of provocative interviews and disputations.

The working title, loosely translated is “Try To Make Me Cry.”