(after Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band)
Nobody told Bernardino Duccio Costantino and Nicola Rettino to be serious about it. That was the point.
The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band’s We Are Normal is a declaration made by people who are obviously, gloriously, defiantly not — which is perhaps the most normal thing anyone has ever done. Nervous Gender Reloaded brought it across decades and handed it to two artists in Venice who function as a single creative organism, their collaboration producing something neither would arrive at alone.
The channel was asynchronous by necessity — chat windows opening and closing across the Atlantic, messages arriving at odd hours, the whole thing forming in the gaps between time zones. Costantino found the song. He and Rettino took it from there. The band watched, responded, and mostly got out of the way. Complete creative freedom was the only instruction.
The result is what happens when absurdism meets two artists who take absurdism seriously — which is to say, not seriously at all, which is the only way to take it seriously. We are normal. We are normal. We are normal.
The video is proof of nothing except that sensibilities on opposite sides of the world found each other over the internet and made something none of them would have made alone, and that this is, despite everything, still possible.
Nicola Rettino
https://www.instagram.com/pirillo1978/
https://www.facebook.com/ivan.astroboy.5
Bernardino Costantino
https://www.facebook.com/elemento.carbonio
https://www.instagram.com/volt.b/
http://disintegrazioneof.blogspot.com/