Fascism in its purest form. Fabio Mauri and the regime’s rituals in all their savage tedium

Fabio Mauri’s fascism is excruciatingly boring. And this is perhaps the most unsettling and extraordinary feature of "Che cosa è il fascismo", the famous performance first staged in Rome in 1971 and restaged in L’Aquila a few days ago. For about an hour, the audience witnesses gymnastic exercises, competitions, songs, salutes, speeches, flag-waving and proselytising of various kinds. Young bodies perform precise movements, occupy space in a Cartesian manner, and obey. Their voices are measured and solemn. Everything is carried out to the extreme. And that is precisely the problem.

This rare re-staging forms part of the exhibition ‘Fabio Mauri. The Years in L’Aquila’, curated by Marta Papini and Maurizio Cattelan, at Palazzo Ardinghelli, home to MAXXI L’Aquila, as part of the vibrant programme for L’Aquila, Italian Capital of Culture 2026. The students of the Academy of Fine Arts in L’Aquila interpret with remarkable precision the styles, rhythms and nuances of a score that has the merit of remaining faithful to the original. One of the finest ever produced, according to members of the Mauri Archive. For all those who knew "Che cosa è il fascismo" through photographs, documents and accounts, finally witnessing it produces something different from a mere discovery: a revelation.

Mauri presents fascism rather than portraying it. He lays it bare before the viewer exactly as it is – in its form, its gestures, its language – allowing it the time it needs to reveal itself. He eschews caricature and any irony that might already imply judgement, even that pre-emptive moral condemnation which would allow the viewer, without engaging in critical reflection, to immediately position themselves on the ‘right’ side. Herein lies the extreme power of this performance. Mauri presents facts, leaving them to the viewer’s judgement, whilst simultaneously placing that very viewer within the system they are observing: the colour of the invitation determines one’s seating and assigns each person a social status – authorities, academics, magistrates, the press, rural folk, builders, and Jews. Even before looking, one has already been categorised. I found myself amongst the magistrates – who knows.

The piece draws on the ‘ludi juveniles’ held in Florence in 1938 to mark Hitler’s visit. Mauri had taken part in them as a boy alongside his friend Pier Paolo Pasolini. Thirty-three years later, he thus revisits a personal experience, without turning the memory into a testimony or confession. At the centre of the ceremony is the German general Ernst von Hussel, depicted with subtle irony by a wax figure in full dress uniform. Surrounding him are living bodies – those of the young people taking part in the ceremony and those of the spectators watching it. The general remains motionless, suspended amidst all this movement. His figure is stripped of both grotesque distortion and celebratory grandeur. He simply stands there, and his stillness finds a curious parallel in that of the fascism depicted by Mauri: a form rigid in its own gestures and symbols which, through repetition, gradually sets everything around it in motion.

Mauri thus shows us the conditions that make fascism possible. He emphasises duration, order and discipline, all fuelled by solemnity. The ceremony proceeds methodically, repetitively, exhaustingly. Boredom is part of the work and perhaps one of its most political elements, because, as things progress, violence inevitably follows. The gesture becomes an exercise; the exercise becomes discipline; discipline becomes a march, leading all the way to war. The piece concludes, in fact, with the deafening roar of bombs and images of war from the Luce newsreels. There is no spectacular acceleration; it is the form itself that continues and produces its own consequences. It all seems so damn natural.

Republishing "What is Fascism?" today is an extremely pertinent choice and illustrates what it means, for a work of art, to be relevant. Works that stand the test of time are rarely those conceived as an immediate response to a news story. The sense of urgency risks fading away along with the circumstances that gave rise to it, evaporating with the news story itself. Mauri explores deeper structures such as power, consent, the discipline of bodies, obedience, and the transformation of collective behaviour into a searing normality. Its relevance becomes even more acute when a new promise of the Future takes the form of a reclamation of the past. Fifty-five years on, those structures, those voices, return before us with a timeliness that surpasses many works conceived specifically to comment on the present. A truly relevant work does not need to chase after its own time. It traverses it, waits, and returns to question it. "Che cosa è il fascismo" has not needed to be updated. It is we, if anything, who have once again drawn closer to its question.