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THE PERFORMANCE I WANTED TO CREATE...

I had been always very curious about SecondLife, although I had tried to stay away from it to avoid becoming addicted to one more virtual world tool. But while thinking about what type of virtual performance I would have liked to create, I realized that the Italian political presence on SL is fairly big and wanted to explore the island of some of the most hated Italian Ministers.

I started by creating my very first Avatar and I found that experience somehow ridiculously rewarding.
There is something intrinsically satisfactory in giving an Avatar the physical qualities one has always wanted... so here's Ms. Toula Pinazzo:

Then for days I tried to get used to this environment. It took me forever to learn how to sit, change my appearance and I still can't seem to land very well. I had some interesting interactions my first days there as everyone on the first island seemed very confused about this new world. I got lost in it for a while and then decided what my plan would have been. Unfortunately i didn't understand how dispersive, distracting and complicated life on SL can be.

What I was in fact on SL to do was try to find Antonio Di Pietro, the Italian Minister of Infrastructures who became famous because of his war so called "Clean Hands" against big business owners and corrupted politicians who would receive payments in order to facilitate the growth of their firms or companies. Although Di Pietro being incredibly ignorant, extremely illiterate and almost embarrassingly uneducated, he managed within this present government (which I have voted for, unfortunately) to become Minister and inaugurate his own party called 'Italia dei Valori' (Italy of Values), for which he apparently opened an island on SecondLife.

Here's a video of his first public speech on SL:

To know more about him, you can visit his website, although I can't stress enough how illiterate this man actually sounds when speaking in Italian. And although I have always been an open leftist, this is the one thing I cannot forgive my government for. Antonio Di Pietro has in the past persecuted people without a real reason, using the excuse of the Clean Hands act, and has hit very close to home for me, involving members of my family in his unfounded finger-pointing and witch-hunting. Since my family is rooted in the construction business, it is really hard for me not to despise this man now that he has been invested with such a high position.

This is a picture of when Toula made it to his island and was greeted with an introductory video:

My ideas for a performance were:

1. Try to get expelled from his Island (or SecondLife all together) for shooting him during a conference or for seriously damaging his property or for assaulting him verbally and physically;
2. Trying to seduce him after a speech to end up actually bitch-slapping him in private.

Unfortunately, not only he seems to be fairly absent from his island which has nothing on it except for useless propaganda and an empty theater, but also SL has been constantly crashing in the past 24 hours, helping me in not getting hooked to this realm, as my FirstLife still seems to run more smoothly and uninterrupted.