An interview with a futurist

Hamilton: "Mr Ernesto Giacometti Dolcelatte, you are the worlds foremost, and indeed only, Futurist Curator. You curate the Academy of Primitive and Archaic Art in Luxembourg. Your unique attitude to the presentation of painting and sculpture has won you few friends in the Art Establishment. Perhaps you could tell us a little..."

(At this point I was interrupted; the impatient Mr Dolcelatte had noticed my nephew's tricycle lying abandoned on the floor, and clambered onto it. With his knees round his ears, and puffing smoke from his cigarette like a small steamship, he was describing frantic circles on the floor. I tackled him off the bike, and hit him sharply across the face. After a tussle, and then a loud debate, we agreed that he could conduct the interview between laps of the room, and every ten minutes he could go into the garden to let off some firecrackers.)

Mr D: "The thing you must understand is that up to this point all art has been too slow. While it may have other points of interest, it is rendered unpalatable to the Futurist sensibility by its stultifying lack of motion. The APAA was constructed to overcome this difficulty."

Hamilton: "And how do you achieve that?"

Mr D: "Well, initially we employed a number of small devices. Early on in the project we discovered that any small statue, for example a Cellini nymph made out of gold and bronze, could be glued to the blades of a blender. When the machine is switched on the piece becomes high speed, kinetic, Futuristic. If only Cellini had worked in a more durable medium, like cast iron or steel, he could have been a noteworthy artist."

Hamilton: "Where did you go from there?"

"Mr D: We soon realised that we would never be able to truly explore the potential of these pieces as long as people insisted on viewing them as objects, rather than high speed events. We held a Titian week, during which we shot a series of his preparatory sketches out of a cannon at a group of Ukrainians, but ticket sales were surprisingly low and budget issues forced us to stop on the fourth day. However, other schemes have been a great success, for example, where else can you see a piece of Native American woodcarving mounted on a trolley and accelerated down a hallway by magnets, or one of Lucas Cranach's early alter pieces swung from a ceiling rafter by a steel cable?"

Mr Ernesto (left) and Colleague (right) work on their controversial new method of introducing the work of Eric Gill to a potential gallery goer.

Hamilton: "Bold and radical stuff indeed! What does the future hold for the APAA?"

Mr D: "Once sufficient funding has been achieved we will convert the entire gallery into a train which travels from Paris to Shanghai in just eight hours. The dining car will serve ozonised steaks and beetroot from the vacuum still. The front of the train will be fashioned like a gigantic fist, and a number of inbuilt whistles will make the train scream unbearably as it moves through the air."

Hamilton: "Thank you Mr Dolcelatte. It has been a pleasure..."

(I spoke in vain! No sooner were his final words out of his mouth than Ernesto Dolcelatte had vaulted lightly out of the window and into the cockpit of an idling autogyro. As he flew away over my house he dropped an aluminium square on which were printed the words 'Due to it's unnecessarily stationary nature, I am about to knock off your chimney pot'.)