Pink Floyd exhibition in Rome

(ANSA) - Rome, January 18 - 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".