Enrico Gaido and Vasco Costa

performance and exhibition
30′
Portugal

14 5 2019

The theme on which Gaido and Costa worked on is La société du risque, from the title of the French translation of the book Risikogesellschaft by Ulrich Beck from 1986.
The society of risk is first of all characterized by a lack: the impossibility of attributing threat situations to causes external to society. The risks no longer come from the outside, but are built by society itself and, as argued by Beck, contemporary society has moved from a principle of distribution of wealth to one of distribution of risks. The title for this first collusion was borrowed from Beck’s book because it perfectly lends itself to identifying a specific concept such as ‘risk’, but leaving ample freedom to investigate other specificities that, while remaining linked to the term and its concept, can be more personally relevant and addressed with different methodologies and approaches.

The concept of risk has a more tenuous and less certain value than that of “danger”, because it is an eventuality connected to circumstances that are more or less predictable.

There is the risk of slipping, but you have to take the risk, it is a calculated risk, taken into account, and sometimes you have to put your reputation at risk even at the risk of breaking your neck bone, other times, though, you have to face the risk of dismissal or worse, the risk of death because there is still the nuclear risk with the possibility of exposure to radiation, and there is still a high statistical incidence of particular pathological events, as well as of economic damages, and it is better trying to foresee the risks of a transaction, an initiative or a contract, but there may be a clause or a notice with which the company declines all responsibility for any damage suffered by the goods, because in economics, in insurance and in banking and business technology there is the concrete possibility of suffering damage due to unforeseeable events, these are technical risks such as fire, theft or accident harassment, whether commercial or market, such as the risk of changes in demand and supply, or prices, so we will come face to face with insurable and uninsurable risks, risks assumed or insured and risks excluded or uninsured. Like the risk of hailstorm.