PRETTY USELESS [2023]

Confetti is often encountered by chance, stepped on, found creeping in unexpected places. Paying attention to confetti as an object, as a thing produced to be thrown away, is an invitation to question the notion of usefulness. Pretty useless is a film that portrays a factory of nothing, a surreal, suspended place, where confetti is produced. Constrained in boxes, manufactured through highly mechanized processes, confetti is shown in juxtaposition with its nonsensical flowing through public spaces. Rather than a production process, confetti-making consists of a destruction process: the factory performs an official service for the Italian government by certifying the disintegration of sensitive legal documents, such as unused ballot papers. Along with other types of paper scraps, from typographic tests to rolls of biscuit packaging and expired billboard advertisements, the ballot papers are collected and fed to a die-cut machine. A bag of confetti thus contains a multiplicity of bizarre materials that reveal stories of errors, abundances, surpluses and discards, all remixed in an unpredictable fashion. Looking closely at something so tiny and childish unveils a strong political message. Dismantling the idea that voting is pretty useless.

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