Marisa Merz

In 1968, Marisa Merz showed the three-minute black-and-white film La conta (The Counting) in an exhibition about the artist Michelangelo Pistoletto. The film was shot on 16 mm. It is radically simple, both in terms of its subject matter and form. Merz is sitting at her kitchen table, taking peas out of a can, counting them and putting them on a plate.

She demonstrates for us the passing of time through a domestic activity. Perhaps it was also conceived as a game for her daughter Beatrice, since the seven-year-old was in the room during filming. The prosaic situation becomes an animated genre scene that records a solitary, domestic activity. At the same time, the nocturnal atmosphere borders on the fantastic, especially due to the eerie presence of the Living Sculptures in the background.