The co-founders of the well-known English rock band inaugurated "The Pink Floyd Exhibition: Their Mortal Remains" on Tuesday in the Italian capital.
The exhibition will open to the public on January 19 and will
run through July 1.
The rather chaotic atmosphere saw rock legends Nick Mason and
Roger Waters speak alongside Rome Mayor Virginia Raggi, deputy
mayor tasked with cultural activities Luca Bergamo and PalaExpo
commissioner Innocenzo Cipolletta.
The approach of the two protagonists towards the show has
been starkly different: Mason acted as a consultant while Waters
visited it for the first time on Monday and in the London
version at the Victoria & Albert Museum - visited by 400,000
people - he only took part in its presentation to the media.
In Rome, the 74-year-old Waters called it a "technological
miracle", but added that he was not very interested in their
legacy or past.
"I am interested in the present," he stressed, saying that he
was "still relatively young" and that he thought he had a great
deal of work ahead of him.
Waters noted that he would be on tour for two years and that
he had released a new album. He will be in Italy for two
concerts this summer: on July 11 in Lucca and on July 14 in Rome
at Circo Massimo.
He stressed that he was focusing on the issue of human rights
and that though "there is nothing wrong in this exhibition,
which involves a lot of people", it didn't interest him.
"I am more interested in me and you. I am interested in the
issue of humans as individuals," he said.
"Humans have existed on this Earth for 150,000 or 100,000
years and it has been found that they appeared for the first
time in Africa. So we are all Africans", he added to applause.
In the exhibition space in Rome's Macro Museum, just under
the table of the guests, there was one of the huge inflatable
puppets used during their Animals Tour some 40 years ago.
Mason stressed that the 1977 tour had been extremely
important for the group since they had begun at that point to
use a more spectacular approach.
The drummer came to Rome for the inauguration as he had in
November for its presentation and noted that he hoped that the
young museum-goers would get a lesson from seeing their journey
that would help to create their own.
Waters - whose main link to Italy is through his father, who
died during the Battle of Anzio and whose body was never found
but might be buried near Aprilia - stressed, however, that "we
cannot live in a state of never-ending war. I live in the US and
most of the taxes I pay are invested in wars. Ecuador, Syria,
Palestine…if we stopped giving all our attention to photos on
cell phones we could devote ourselves to other things, for
example realizing that we are now in the presence of
proto-fascism".
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