I produce so little that the works have to be editioned.

Host: The gallery was almost empty, save for the echo of footsteps and the low hum of the air conditioning. White walls stretched into infinity, cold and immaculate, lit by spotlights that fell like judgment from above. In the center of the room stood a single installation — a mirror cracked clean down the middle, reflecting two halves of the same fractured world.

Host: Jack leaned against the wall, his arms crossed, eyes narrowed at the piece. Jeeny stood beside him, her hands clasped, her gaze soft but searching. The faint murmur of voices from a distant hallway drifted through — the sound of art critics pretending to understand divinity.

Host: Somewhere, near the edge of the sterile white space, a quote from Maurizio Cattelan was printed in minimalist black text:
“I produce so little that the works have to be editioned. Otherwise, I don’t survive. Also, editioning is relevant for communication. If you make three new works, it means that nine objects are available. Three people talking about your work is fine, but nine makes a difference.”

Jack: (half-smiling) “There it is. The gospel of survival — art as multiplication.”

Jeeny: (tilting her head) “You say that like it’s a sin.”

Jack: “Maybe it is. Maybe it’s blasphemy against authenticity — carving one idea into nine replicas and calling it legacy.”

Jeeny: “Or maybe it’s generosity — letting more than one person hold the same truth.”

Host: The light shifted slightly, glinting off the crack in the mirror, splitting Jack’s reflection into two — one face skeptical, the other weary.

Jack: “No. It’s dilution. Once you start copying the sacred, it stops being sacred.”

Jeeny: “Then maybe the sacred was never in the object. Maybe it’s in the conversation it creates.”

Host: Her voice was calm, but it vibrated with quiet defiance. Jack turned toward her, the faint echo of a scoff on his breath.

Jack: “So you’re saying the art isn’t the piece — it’s the noise it makes?”

Jeeny: “Not noise. Resonance. Think about it — three people talking about your work is fine, but nine makes a difference. The idea spreads. It multiplies. It evolves. Isn’t that what communication is — the art of contagion?”

Host: He said nothing, his eyes drifting back to the mirror. The split line down its center seemed to widen under the lights, as if the piece itself were listening to their argument.

Jack: “And what happens when the copies outlive the creator? When the noise drowns the voice?”

Jeeny: “Then the artist becomes myth. Isn’t that what every creator secretly wants?”

Jack: “No. What they want is to be seen, not replicated.”

Host: A gust of air from a vent rustled the gallery’s silence — sterile wind over cold art.

Jeeny: “You think too much like an economist. Not everything that multiplies loses value.”

Jack: “But it does lose intimacy. When something belongs to everyone, it belongs to no one.”

Jeeny: “And yet here you are — standing in a public gallery, staring at someone else’s pain. Would it be more meaningful if you were the only one allowed to see it?”

Host: His jaw tightened, but he said nothing. He looked again at the fractured reflection — at the man he was and the man who argued for purity.

Jack: “So what you’re saying is — art needs to sell itself to survive.”

Jeeny: “Not sell — speak. And sometimes, the only way to be heard is to multiply the voice.”

Host: The spotlights dimmed slightly as a technician walked by, momentarily interrupting the sanctity of the scene. The mirror caught the movement, transforming the intruder into a dozen reflections before swallowing him whole again.

Jack: “You know, Cattelan built his entire career on irony — the banana taped to the wall, the Pope crushed by a meteor, himself hanging from a rope. Maybe this quote is just another joke — survival as performance.”

Jeeny: “Maybe. But the joke works because it’s true. Artists are organisms — adapt or die. ioning isn’t betrayal, it’s evolution.”

Host: Her words lingered, floating in the sterile air like a confession too elegant to dismiss. Jack exhaled slowly, his eyes now softer, the tension dissolving into reluctant understanding.

Jack: “So every copy carries a fragment of the original — like DNA.”

Jeeny: “Exactly. Each one is a mutation, slightly different, slightly flawed. But together, they create survival through echo.”

Host: The silence that followed was deep — the kind that invites thought instead of ending it. The light pooled on the floor, illuminating the dust motes that drifted lazily between them, like particles of unfinished ideas.

Jack: (softly) “You know, I used to think art was about purity — about making one perfect thing that outlasts time. Now I wonder if it’s just about leaving enough pieces that time can’t erase them all.”

Jeeny: “That’s not wonder, Jack. That’s wisdom.”

Host: She stepped closer to the mirror, her reflection splitting beside his. Together, they looked like twin ghosts trapped in two halves of the same sentence.

Jeeny: “Maybe that’s what Cattelan meant by survival. Not just staying alive — but being heard again and again, through others. Even if the original dies, the conversation keeps breathing.”

Jack: “So art is a virus too?”

Jeeny: (smiling) “A beautiful one.”

Host: He chuckled under his breath, the sound soft but real — a rare thing in a room built for echoes. He looked at her reflection, then back to his own, and for a moment the fracture between them seemed to blur.

Jack: “If that’s true, then maybe we’re all just editions of each other — copies with different scars.”

Jeeny: “Maybe that’s what makes humanity the ultimate art form — flawed, repeated, but endlessly communicative.”

Host: The lights dimmed once more, this time intentionally. The gallery was closing. Outside, the city glowed like a living canvas — countless windows, countless eyes, countless lives reflecting the same desperate need to be seen.

Host: Jack and Jeeny stood before the cracked mirror one last time, their faces aligning perfectly along the fracture — two halves forming one temporary whole.

Jack: “So nothing’s original, then?”

Jeeny: “Everything is. Once.”

Host: The camera lingered on the mirror as they walked away — two reflections fading into nine, into ninety, into infinity.

Host: And in the silence that followed, the mirror seemed to breathe — reflecting not perfection, but persistence.

Host: For in Cattelan’s strange arithmetic of existence,
to create is to divide,
to divide is to multiply,
and to multiply… is to survive.