What if Pompeii would embrace today’s digital episteme and become part of our daily conversations? Can we refer to Pompeian heritage to convey timeless feelings and ideas? Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla have explored these questions, embarking on a quest to compile a visual glossary based on Pompeii’s articulated and complex iconography. The artists have created the Archaeological Park of Pompeii’s first collection of mobile stickers, with some of the images courtesy of the Ministry of Culture – National Archaeological Museum of Naples, available for free download on IOS and Android and launching on pompeiicommitment.org to mark the culmination of their Digital Fellowship. The collection is gradually revealed to the public over the course of two online publications, one on the 12^th of September 2024 and the other on the 12^th of October 2024, on the occasion of the XX Edition of Giornata del Contemporaneo, promoted by AMACI.
In the contemporary visual digital scenario, emojis and mobile stickers have become an integral part of the way we express ourselves and interact with one another, growing into a universal language that transcends cultural and linguistic barriers. The emojis originally appeared in the late 1990s, offering a way to combine text with visual meaning and taking over from the simple text-based emoticons broadly used in SMS communication, while paving the way, around the 2010s, for mobile stickers. Their flamboyant way of conveying messages has gained increasing popularity since 2019, becoming a ubiquitous means of communication and often replacing text all together. The cultural and linguistic implications of the phenomenon are multifaceted. On the one hand the mobile stickers reflect how visual language can enhance and expand traditional text-based communication. Studies have shown that both mobile stickers and emojis can bridge gaps in communication, offering emotional clarity that written words alone are sometimes unable to convey. They have become social tools, serving as a low-risk way of initiating a conversation and are especially appreciated by those who are prone to being shy, socially awkward, or those who don’t speak the same language. On the other hand, their proliferation raises concerns over their impact on language proficiency and the depth of expression since the immediacy of mobile stickers, referred to as “visual oversimplification”, might encourage a more superficial engagement with complex ideas.¹  Ultimately, mobile stickers are an important communication tool of our time, deeply embedded in everyday exchanges, and with the unique potential — in contrast to emojis, their fellow graphic icon — for bottom-up development and design, where both the visual references employed and the meanings to convey can be self-determined.
Allora & Calzadilla’s collection of mobile stickers has been created through an especially conceived graphical project that matches images of carefully selected Pompeian frescoes and artefacts with words that convey intricate notions such as solitude, individual love, loyalty, pleasure or mistrust, to name but a few. As is often the case within their practice, Allora & Calzadilla employed poetic association tecniques, also thanks to the participation of functionaries or collaborators at the Archaeological Park of Pompeii — such as archaeologist Anna Civale or renowned touristic guide Mattia Buondonno — who responded to a given list of approximately 200 words. The artists privileged the most nuanced words, often pairing these with images that can allude to multifaceted interpretations and prompt a critical engagement via witty and humorous associations, moving away from the most iconic and widespread symbols of Pompeii to favour less well-known artefacts and frescoes. That’s how the fresco of an evergreen fern (Phyllitis Scolopendrium) from the House of the Orchard is paired with growth, or a snake moving towards an egg from one of the Gragnano Villas at Castellammare di Stabia refers to vanquished, and Mars caressing Venus enthroned from the House of Punished Love becomes divine love. Some of the stickers employ Pompeian iconography connected to mythology, embracing the atemporality of mythopoesis. This is the case, for example, for the fresco of The Metamorphosis of Cyparissus from the House of the Vettii, which the artists chose to associate with sorrow, or the Orion Mosaic from the House of Jupiter, paired with hubris. There are many variations of the myth of Orion, generally renowned for being the handsome hunter who was turned into a constellation after his death. Whose “hubris” the artists are referring to — whether the gods’ or the hunter’s or the process of becoming a star — remains open to interpretation.
Overall, the collection of mobile stickers delves into the visual culture of a specific historical time and place, discovering and sharing its possible meanings while also approaching Pompeian heritage as something alive and constantly transforming, in harmony or in contrast with contemporary cultural paradigms. The stickers originated from a study of the past, combined with a multiplicity of interpretations linked to our contemporaneity. The public’s engagement in fact will be required to activate further meanings, thereby generating future interactions between the past and the present within everyday communication. Allora & Calzadilla Digital Fellowship is not just an investigation of the enduring power of images, concepts and thought processes, but an actualisation of the dynamism inherent in archaeology itself. CA

1-3. Images

Allora & Calzadilla
no title, 2024
mobile stickers and download link
Courtesy the Artists and the Archaeological Park of Pompeii

Home Page Image: view of the mobile stickers by Allora & Calzadilla. Courtesy the Artists, the Archaeological Park of Pompeii, and the Ministry of Culture – National Archaeological Museum of Naples