From October 11 to 13, 2024, the artists and students of the Master’s Degree in Multimedia Arts and Design showcased two extraordinary multimedia works at the Roma Europa Festival as part of the Digitalive section.
The works, created by the Blivet Collective and the Pascolo Abusivo Collective, represent excellence in the contemporary art scene, critically and experimentally exploring the complexities of the digital world. The public, at the Mattatoio, had the opportunity to immerse themselves in these cutting-edge creations, which tackle themes such as the evolution of the web and cyberfeminism, offering new perspectives on the interaction between technology and society.
“Ex-Stasi” by the Blivet Collective is a work that explores the relationship between humans and the web, focusing on the evolution of the internet starting from Tim Berners-Lee’s principles of accessibility and transparency, the creator of the World Wide Web in 1994. The work analyzes how the initial trust in the technological development of the web has progressively taken new forms: from the ritualistic approach of the common user, to the centralization of power on large platforms, and finally the monetization of browsing data according to commercial logic.
Through seven audiovisual experiences, themes such as algorithmic anxiety, social and psychological phenomena born in the digital universe, surveillance logic, and the introduction of artificial intelligence are addressed. The monitors become portals that lead the viewer on a hallucinatory journey, characterized by a state of dissociation from physical and mental reality, exacerbated by the continuous use of browsers and apps, which progressively transform the perception of human reality.
Blivet: Alessandro Battaglia, Micol Gelsi, Marco Valerio Luciani, Benedetta Marino, Beatrice Resta, Paolo Rucci, Riccardo Tartaglini.
“/Imagine:Femina” by the Pascolo Abusivo Collective tackles the theme of cyberfeminism, highlighting the potential for subversion of gender stereotypes through digital platforms. With the birth of the Web, Cyberfeminism experimented with the potential for resistance and subversion of gender stereotypes, offering oppressed categories the chance to generate new identities capable of dismantling the binary system through which inequalities are built. Today, the internet has betrayed its premises, becoming a parallel reality to our lives which, enslaved by post-capitalist logic, risks hindering transfeminist alliances instead of supporting them.
The female body becomes the fragmented sum of an image archive, which, without being absolved, imprisons women in their own existence. We need a collective and furious action to resist the oppression imposed by “patriarchal capitalism” to pursue an intersectional struggle for liberation that embraces the needs of all.
Pascolo Abusivo Collective: Annarita Debellis, Raffaele Esposito, Silvia Baldo, Elisa Catalano, Giuseppe Di Capua, Carola Imbesi, Anthony Tony Jugo.
These two works, part of the programme curated by Federica Patti, are embedded within the broader context of the Digitalive section of the festival, a showcase dedicated to digital cultures, the metaverse, electronic music experimentation, and technological innovations that are transforming the art world.
Listen to the protagonists of the event
As part of the event, Friday 11 October saw a Talk by RUFA curator and lecturer Caterina Tomeo, titled: “VOICE – The Phenomenon of Voice between the Immaterial and the Carnal”. This is an opportunity to explore the role of voice in the contemporary dimension, between physicality and virtuality.
The transdisciplinary theme – which has been explored in Caterina Tomeo’s book set to be released in November 2024, outlining the coordinates of a still fragmented and largely underdeveloped debate – aims to shed light on sound experimentation in the artistic field, with particular attention to voice. This includes extended vocal techniques and the expressive possibilities of voice in relation to singing and dramatic speech, investigations into the concept of trace and sound document – connected to sound hauntology and the phenomenology of listening – as well as the relationship between sound and environment, sound composition in space, and the collaborative dimension of creating art and music. Participating in the talk are the authors featured in the book: Agnese Banti, Gaia Ginevra Giorgi, Muta Imago, Barbara de Dominicis.
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