A True Story

In the early XX century L. Frank Baum, just before reaching fame with his book The Wizard of Oz, conceived a provocative shop window display known as “The Vanishing Lady.” It consisted of a magic trick involving a living model and a motorised stand, resulting in the apparition of eerily disembodied body parts of a pretty young woman inside a shop window of a department store selling hats. Such spectacle is a pivotal point of investigation for Anna Franceschini, PhD holder in Visual and Media Studies at the IULM University in Milan with a research focus on the display of both desire and the female body within consumer society. 

Inspired by a recent studio visit, this short story strategically re-appropriates the title of such an important reference for the artist and the act of disappearance itself; here turned into a choice and a manifestation of agency, refusal and lateral thinking. Needless to say, this story simply mirrors some of the considerations emerging within Franceschini’s practice. 

Anna Fanceschini: The Vanishing Lady (A True Story) is part of a trilogy on disappearance inspired by real events. 

When I arrived, Anna was not there. As I pushed the door left ajar, a strong smell hit me. The old panettone factory where we agreed to meet for the shooting was still impregnated with butter, warm as a fertile womb. It made me feel nauseous, and my legs became limp. July in Milan kills me. I left my camera and backpack on a steel work table at the entrance and I started scanning the surroundings like a plastic surgeon would do with an ageing woman. The light was dull, and an eerie silence rendered the whole strangely similar to a cocoon ruin once inhabited by a butterfly, now deprived of life. I moved into the courtyard and sat for a minute, hoping to catch a breath of fresh air. I told myself I would use my special mirror to improve the lack of light. Thank God I brought the backpack. 

Ten minutes later, still no trace of Anna. Twenty minutes. Half an Hour. Damn Anna! 

Her phone could not be reached and after the nth message left in her voice mail, I decided to start getting on with the shooting, feeling confident enough to have the basic elements to capture what we needed. The machinery for baking panettones was still in good condition. I could picture them resting head down, like a slew of tiny asses full of fat waiting to be spanked. It made so much sense to shoot a porno in that location, I thought. Anna had told me she wanted to film a porno of an invisible performer, starring three kinetic wigs dancing erratically on a pole, Charlie’s Angels of lap-dance. I knew it was not the first time Anna crafted machines of desire. “Il motore del mondo!” as she always liked to wittingly exclamate. Over the years her artistic research into the representation of the female and feminine body in a visual culture dominated by patriarchal structures had led her to question the strategies of desire induction, implemented by display and consumerism, as well as technology. Her studio was constantly packed with blond extensions, wigs, jewellery displays, arms and busts, heels and gears catalysing rotating movements, among others. We often spoke about her interest in deconstructing the male gaze by reducing the body to a state of fragmentation and disappearance, rendering this an object specialised in performing desire to a point of no return, where all sense would be lost. Although she mainly expanded the concept of animation in kinetic sculptural terms, this time we were going to film a techno-porno where mane-gloves and speedy motors would bite decisively. We had already discussed the movement to capture, spiralling and mad; ecstatic and almost destructive. So sexy in its non-functionality. Elegant like cats’ claws in a cream-coloured gala. I was excited, but after filming a couple of minutes here and there I realised I needed Anna’s direction to continue. While waiting, I extracted my analogue camera from the backpack and captured images for my archive, the atmosphere was already so charged that I had to try and catch it. To kill some extra time, I explored the back of the main room, which Anna used as storage. It was full of deflated shirts piled up like empty body bags. I did a couple of shots there too and then I felt such a deadly energy that I decided I had to leave. I will call Anna tomorrow and find out what the hell happened to her…

I haven’t seen her since, but she recently wrote me a letter. She explained that she had an unfortunate event while travelling on the train to come meet me, which led her to take definitive action. “Imagine how ironic,” she wrote “while travelling to film our porno che non si vede, I encountered a despicable slug. I don’t know how I let myself fall asleep in front of such a troll, it must have been the Martini extra I drank the night before. The fact is that when I woke up he was literally wanking, and when I objected with disgust you know what he dared to say? It makes me furious to even repeat this. He said “hey miss, you are not always the centre of attention you know?” The world is still so shitty, I can’t do this. I mean, I must change my strategy here. I decide now to become like my works, to employ absence as a refusal of femme’s historic entanglement with (hyper)visibility under predetermined gazes…” I got a bit lost in her ranting but I understood her point. Anna went on to explain that she was now eating tempura in the land of algorithmic invisibility, she had managed to truly disappear and swap identity with someone she could obviously not reveal. The porno production had to be interrupted. Instead, she wanted to realise a behind-the-scenes portrayal of an unrealised movie. “We will call it The Vanishing Lady” she wrote, “as the film itself is a disappearing character. Refusal is all we have got.”  My photos, thus, are all that remains of a story of subversion. A true story.