A seemingly foldable chair for unfolding events

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Chair, 2024

"The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear."

[Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks]

National governments fighting with memes, live-streamed coups on YouTube, diplomacy through shitposting, extremist killers trolling on Reddit, cattle wearing VR headsets to boost milk production, environmental disasters going viral on Instagram and TikTok, "covfefe"...

"The Weasel Timeline" conspiracy theory asserts that Earth underwent a shift to an alternate universe following a weasel intrusion at the Geneva Hadron Collider in April 2016, causing a temporary shutdown. Advocates of this theory contend that it could provide a rationale for the apparent systematic chaos witnessed in recent years, resembling a modern-day "New Dark Age." Undoubtedly, compelling parallels exist between the present world and the Middle Ages. The increasingly personalized nature of democratic politics mirrors the era of dynasties and nobility. The supremacy of technological behemoths in the global economy reflects a feudal understanding of power dynamics. Supranational institutions share similarities with papal and imperial structures, while conspiracy theories embody a millenarianism reminiscent of the dark ages.

Referencing to the medieval Glastonbury Chair, "A seemingly foldable chair for unfolding events" invites us to take a seat, take a deep breath, and contemplate the morbid phenomena occurring around us. Here, the map of the CERN accelerator complex transforms beyond its informative role, emerging as an ornamental embellishment intricately engraved onto the chair.

*Project developed with the conceptual support of Linda Van Deursen.

Visual associations (ongoing)

lagunare

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Collaborative research project, since 2024

Together with: Giorgia Burzio and Alicia Valdés

Exhibitions

• The secret life of micro-algae; CCCC Centre del Carme Cultura Contemporània; Valencia (ES)

"lagunare" is a collaborative research project focusing on circular economies that extend to materials and narratives within the lagoons. "Lagunare" is a verb: it implies movement. The research focuses on situated and tentacular knowledge while rehearsing more-than-human collaborations and regenerative ways of production.

Together with Giorgia Burzio, we developed a PHA-based filament for digital fabrications that includes a variable percentage of mussels shells collected from restaurants in Venice. PHAs are a class of natural materials that existed for over millions of years. These materials are both bio-based and biodegradable, similar to other natural materials such as cellulose, proteins and starch. PHAs are produced by an extensive variety of microorganisms through bacterial fermentation. During fermentation, bacteria convert different types of feedstock into a product. In this case, the microbes produce PHA, a natural polymer. PHA-based bioplastics exhibit biodegradable behavior in all anaerobic and aerobic environments and can be used to make fully compostable, soil- and marine-biodegradable goods.

Rehearsing regeneative ways of production, we developed the lantern - an aquatic light for regenerative futures. A tentacular seaweed-based lace crafted by Alicia Valdés intertwines, binding two shells printed with our hybrid material, a blend of PHA and powdered mussels. Nestled within the lantern's handle, a touch-light bulb, akin to a luminous pearl, awaits the user's touch to ignite the aquatic glow. Born from the liquid depths, this lantern can return to the sea, completing its cycle in a marine environment, weaving a circular narrative of materials.

USB-Mussels Aquatic Muscles

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USB stick, 2024

Inspired by Aram Bartholl’s “Dead Drops” and the ecological function of mussels as a catalyst for environmental regeneration, the “USB-Mussels Aquatic Muscles” rehearse ways of digital resistance. By anchoring, sedimenting, exchanging, and remixing information in offline environments, they function as an anonymous, opaque, peer to peer file-sharing network.

J'adore Venise—on disappearing bodies

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Video essay, video game, web archive, and bio-material research, 2023-2024

Exhibitions

• Bibliotheque_5252; Fondazione Querini Stampalia; Venice (IT)

• Opyum ART FESTIVAL; Paris (FR)

• Eyebag2differ4ever; Fabrik der Künste, Hamburg (DE)

• Venezia Fabrica Futura; Fuori Biennale, Complesso dell'Ospedaletto, Venice (IT)

• here becomes elsewhere; Fabrica, Treviso (IT)

Festivals

• Lago Film Fest; Triveneto Competition, Revine Lago (IT)

• Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival; Official Selection Short Programme, Toronoto (CA)

"J’adore Venise—on disappearing bodies" investigates the entanglement of hyper tourism, surveillance capitalism and productive refusals. The research delves into the complex relationship between Venice, conceived as an urban body, and its users, focusing on the phenomenon of "disappearing bodies" resulting from both anthropogenic environmental degradation and the pervasive influence of surveillance capitalism. The Italian pop song "J’adore Venise" punctuates this investigative research that encompasses both a profound affection for and a critical evaluation of Venice: A paradoxical declaration of love.

Inaugurated in September 2020, the Smart Control Room is a project born from the strategic collaboration between the municipality of Venice, the local police, and Tim Telecom Italia. This control room collects real-time images from over 400 closed-circuit cameras installed throughout the city and its immediate surroundings. Additionally, using an advanced phone data tracking system, the Smart Control Room gathers and stores anonymous information about users’ country of origin, age, gender, speed, and route within its operational range. The goal of this monitoring is to produce a quantitative profile of users, thereby assisting authorities in developing a more sustainable tourism plan for the lagoon city, according to them. One of the most immediate results of this project has also been the recent introduction of the access fee to Venice, a metonymy for the transformation of the lagoon city into a museum, an amusement park, a simulation of a city that once was.

What happens when tourism becomes the main narrator: When the tourist narrative infiltrates local economies and becomes the main place-making tool? By reshaping the perception and consumption of a specific place, the tourist experience introduces a simulated authenticity that obscures, if not nullifies, the dynamism and pluralism of local narratives.

"J’adore Venise—on disappearing bodies" consists of a video essay, video game, and a web archive.

The video essay introduces them to Venice’s surveillance policies.

*Request the screening link here.

The video game allows potential (city)users to get in "touch" with Venice’s surveillance by navigating a simulation of the city. Furthermore, a mousepad made of bioplastics & 3D printed biofabrications using mussels and seaweed from the lagoon recreates a simulated materiality of the venetian ecosystem allowing the (city)users to haptically get in touch with the city of Venice while visually navigating its virtual simulation.

In the videogame (city)users wear a Bauta (from German "behüten" - to protect), a traditional Venetian mask worn both by women and men to mantain anonimity in public spaces. Every time that users enters a surveilled area, they loose part of their anonimity until they become fully visible and readable to the system. The game ends when users lose their anonimity. Furthermore, scuba divers wearing a wet suit with the logos of the sponsors of the Control Room are to be found where the actual CCTV cameras are installed in the city. Eventually, users inhabit a semi-transparent body made of seaweed - the same material of the mousepad simulating the materiality of the city.

*Request a demo or the screening link to the video game screen-recording here.

The web archive functions as a DIY research-storage where information, articles, books, visual associations and processes are stored. The website is an open source archive, where users can follow the whole research and developing process and potentially recreate the videogame and the bioplastics by themselves. An archive for regeneative futures and productive refusals.

*The web archive is not online anymore. Request the link to the archive here.

*Project developed with the conceptual support of Andrea Gatopoulos, Prof. Aram Bartholl, Carlos Casas, Filipa Ramos, and Prof. Heike Grebin.

**Project developed thanks to the financial support of Fabrica Research Centre.

Venezia Fabrica Futura

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Eco-critical lab, May-July 2023

Together with: Asuka Akagawa, Riccardo Androni, Giorgia Burzio

Curation: Carlos Casas

Location: Complesso dell'Osepdaletto, Venice (IT)

"Venezia Fabrica Futura" explores alternative futures already present in the Venetian lagoon and proposes a reflection on local ecologies of co-existence in an era marked by political, economic, and environmental crises. A group of young international researchers previously in residence at Fabrica Research Centre proposes multimedia research projects, including interactive video games; bio-fabrications with mussels from the lagoon; experiential tastings; experimental herbariums dedicated to underwater flora and sound re-elaborations of wave motion and pollution data from Venetian canals.

Open to the public during weekends, the laboratory functioned as a catalyst for the artists to engage in conversations with the visitors, experiment, collaborate, and further articulate and situate their research.

The laboratory opened on 19 May 2023 with a guest lecture by the Swedish artist Nina Canell and a live set by Furtherset. On 17 June 2023, on the occasion of Art Night Venice, the laboratory hosted a creative workshop and lagoon meditation with the visual artist Sara Bonaventura; Ginestra, a live concert by Ava Rasti, Iranian composer, pianist and bassist and Obsession, a live concert by Camille Rieu-Camilleri, French multidisciplinary artist. During the evening it was offered vegan ice cream with Algavenice spirulina

*Visit Venezia Fabrica Futura's website to dive deeper into the project.

**Project developed thanks to the financial support of Fabrica Research Centre.

{amour courtois [XX(I+U)p(DATE)]}

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Installation, 2022

Exhibitions

• Project Statement Frappant e.V.; Parallel Vienna, Vienna (AT)

{amour courtois [XX(I+U)p(DATE)]} attempts to identify online dating platforms such as Tinder, Grindr, OKcupid and Bumble as digitized versions of medieval pleasure gardens. These enclosed spaces of love, intimacy and bonheur were developed in the ducal and princely courts of France and Sicily during the high Middle Ages and provided a secluded setting for a new "game of love" aka amor courtois - a flirtatious game where lovers could experience a love at once illicit and morally elevating, passionate and disciplined, humiliating and exalting, human and transcendent.

As the Swedish sociologist and researcher Marie Bergström argues, dating apps have fundamentally changed the nature of dating, transforming it into a compartmentalized activity that is deliberately carried out from prying eyes in an entirely disconnected, separate social sphere. As an integral part of a wider movement towards social insularity, the privatization of dating has enabled seemingly new forms of flirting that in their noncommittal and private nature are reminiscent of medieval courtly love. However, instead of sublime lyrics we’d often rather go for an ordinary, mechanically and serially typed "Hey, what’s up ;)" or "looking for?"

The silkscreen are reminiscent of an abstracted version of the architecture of medieval pleasure gardens. The mechanic process of silkscreen functions here as a pendant to the mechanical online-dating flirt juxtaposed to the more human medieval courtship.

Visual associations

Intensivsimulation La Gomera + Capri

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Installation, 2022

Exhibitions

• Deutscher Urlaub; KDK der Deichtorhallen, Hamburg (DE)

• Simulacrum 24/7; Frappant Galerie, Hamburg (DE)

The cross-space installation "Intensivsimulation" is to be understood as a continuation of the since 2020 ongoing research "Deutscher Urlab 2.0" (German Holiday) around the latent exoticisation of the German artificial turf. Unlike in most European countries, artificial grass carpets are often sold in German DIY and hardware stores with the names of paradisiacal islands such as Antigua, Bahamas, Bali, Capri, Corfu, Gran Canaria, Ibiza, La Gomera, Mallorca, Malta, Santorini and Sumatra. These nomenclatural retouchings of the goods are aimed at marketing the longing for dreamy holiday destinations and represent a surrogate for heavenly places. Yet what happens when a square meter of "Mallorca" artificial grass is more expensive than a direct flight from Hamburg to Mallorca itself? Based on the marketing strategies of artificial turf in German-speaking countries, the project "Deutscher Urlaub 2.0" raises questions about mass tourism, (simulated) ownership and ecology. In the process, a speculative space is created in which artificial grass carpets are observed and examined like green screens - green projection surfaces of postcolonial thinking.

The installation "Intensivsimulation" consists of a physical and digital counterpart.

PHYSICAL: Visitors are invited to enter the intensive-care-simulations "La Gomera" and "Capri" as inpatient-tourists. By means of visual as well as auditory elements, a temporally as well as spatially condensed vacation is created in the form of an immersive, artificial space, which references characteristic design components of a beach holiday, an airplane and an emergency room and combines them in a semiotic interplay. Hospital stretchers and sun loungers are surprisingly similar in their fundamental design. IV poles resemble parasols with the top part being removed. The aircraft belt in this specific ensemble is also reminiscent of fastening straps for operating tables. Illegally downloaded audio tracks and 360-degree photos from Google Maps function here as a counterpart to the holiday locations embodied by the respective artificial turf carpets. Together, they form a verbal and spatial glitch installation.

DIGITAL: Thanks to an online memory game, inpatient-tourists can distract themselves during the treatment. Here, however, there are no pairs of identical cards. Instead, the pairs are each made up of two different representations of the same holiday destinations. Based on the erroneous naming process of the goods promoted by German DIY stores, the flat artificial grass carpet is to be matched here to unwrapped 360-degree Google photos of the respective tropical island.

**The memory game is not online anymore. Request the link to the game here.

Visual associations

mobile intimacy

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Webpage & Performance, 2022

After all, what is the difference between tapping, typing and tickling, or scrolling, zooming in and out, swiping and caressing? "mobile intimacy" celebrates the bodily intimacy with our smartphones, raising questions about the semiotics of intimacy in the Digital Age. Rarely out of sight or mind, our smartphones are surely inseparable companions in our life. Not only do we sleep close to them, eat with them, and carry them around all day, but they also promise us that we will no longer feel alone, ignored, bored, ignorant, lost, or unloved. They are the first thing we touch in the morning and the last thing we touch before going to bed.

"mobile intimacy" attempts to identify the polished screens of our smartphones as a surface/source of pleasure resulting from the encounter of the human body with that of our phones. The way we tap, type, scroll, zoom in and out and swipe is reminiscent of acts of bodily intimacy such as tickling, caressing or petting if we were to perform them on a human/animal counterpart instead of on our smartphones. "mobile intimacy" aims to give due respect to this swift but feverish intimacy we share with our beloved technocompanions several times a day. In this speculative experiment, whenever one feels the need to use their smartphones, they must first completely undress so as to conform to the usual (semi-)nudity of our phones, therefore to explicitly manifest and celebrate the intimacy we share with our dear smartphones.

*Project developed with the conceptual support of Prof. Aram Bartholl.

**The website is not online anymore. Request the link to the webpage here.

Visual associations

about:norms&relations

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Video Installation, 5min, 2022

Exhibitions

• The Wrong Televion; The Wrong Biennale

Based on the poem "A Haircut" by Raymond Carver, "about:norms&relations" questions heteronormative relationships in the digital age. Who is the "beautiful woman we are traveling with, sleeping with, having breakfast with [?]"

*Project developed with the conceptual support of Prof. Yael Burstein.

**Request the screening link here.

Deutscher Urlaub

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Installation & Performance, 2021—2022

Exhibitions

• Deutscher Urlaub; KDK der Deichtorhallen, Hamburg (DE)

• ID—entity; Galerie LADØNS, Hamburg (DE)

"Deutscher Urlaub" is a research based project dealing with the latent exoticisation of German synthetic grass. Unlike in the most European countries, turf carpets are often sold in German DIY and wholesalers stores with the name of paradisiacal islands such as Antigua, Bahamas, Bali, Capri, Corfù, Gran Canaria, Ibiza, La Gomera, Mallorca, Malta, Mallorca, Santorini and Sumatra. These nomenclatural retouches of the goods are aimed at marketing the Sehnsucht for dreamy holiday destinations and represent a surrogate for heavenly places.

What happens when a square meter of Mallorca artificial grass is more expensive than a flight to Mallorca itself?

Research

The starting point of the project was a special offer at the German discount-supermarket Aldi in 2020, where artificial grass called "Barcelona" was available for a reduced price. According to a bizarre, almost perverse marketing strategy, the artificial grass in question was supposed to remind people of the Catalan city, and by purchasing it, consumers were allowed to supposedly own a piece of Barcelona at home. Furthermore, more examples of this strange artificial turf edition were to be found in German DIY and Hardware stores. In addition to the usual range of artificial grass advertised with the name of its purpose, such as hockey or tennis, there was a wide range of artificial grass carpets named after paradisiacal islands such as Antigua, Bahamas, Bali, Capri, Corfu, Gran Canaria, Ibiza, La Gomera, Mallorca, Malta, Santorini and Sumatra. Interestingly, some of these strange artificial grass carpets are sold in the shape of a circle to supposedly suggest the basic shape of an island, as if the artificial grass were now an abstracted representation of the island itself.

The research attempts to deconstructs the bourgeois norm of laying out lawns on one's own doorstep. The historian and philosopher Yuval Noah Harari devotes several paragraphs to lawns and their imperialist history in the book "Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow." According to the author, this norm has its roots in the late medieval French and English aristocracy, which in the early modern period began to lay out lawns in front of their own castles. The empty lawns required land and lots of labour, but they produced nothing of value: The fine lawns around the châteaux were accordingly a status symbol. Here, the long-term mindset of the royal and high nobility was anchored in the soil, for only those who could think in terms of generations could afford the luxury perspective of planting their own gardens. When kings were overthrown and dukes guillotined in the late modern period, the new presidents and prime ministers kept the lawns. Parliaments, Supreme Courts as well as presidential residences increasingly proclaimed their power in a row of well-tended, green blades of grass. People thus identified the lawn with political power, social status and economic flourishing. Subsequently, the emerging middle classes in the 19th century embraced the lawn with enthusiasm, and as the Industrial Revolution spread the middle class and gave birth to the lawnmower and later the automatic lawn sprinkler, millions of families could suddenly afford their own patch of grass. In addition, the lawn found another, more practical use, functioning as a ground for sports such as football, tennis or baseball, which began their global triumph in the course of the last decades of the century. This exponentially strengthened the lawn's character as a positive projection surface for dreams.

In this respect, artificial turf can be understood as a surrogate or cheap simulation of an established status symbol that has hardly been questioned historically. Furthermore, artificially produced turf takes on a further connotation through its exoticisation in the German-speaking world, in that it seems to imitate not only a sign of financial prosperity but also paradisiacal holiday resorts in their entirety. Thus, the artificial grass carpet in its tendentious, two-dimensional form represents the cartographic attempt to depict a three-dimensional place flattened/unwrapped. As philosopher Sybille Krämer discusses in the lecture "Digitalität und die Kulturtechnik der Verflachung" at re:publica 2019, the cultural practice of flattening creates an artificial space that can be surveyed, controlled and manipulated. We live in a three-dimensional world, but we are surrounded by artificial surfaces, Krämer said. From cave paintings and skin tattoos, to the invention of pictures, graphs, diagrams, tables and maps, to computer screens, the band of planar representational practices stretches. In this respect, the arbitrary special nomenclature of artificial turf pushed by German DIY stores suggests an artificial form of representation of real places that embodies dreamy holiday destinations in an abstracted way, flattens them and turns them into purchasable products.

Pizza Bismarck: A Taste of Whiteness

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3D Animation, 1:45min, 2020

Exhibitions

• The danger of a single story, online exhibition curated by Prof. Aram Bartholl

"Bismarck" is the name of a traditional Italian pizza with tomato sauce, mozzarella, ham and a fried egg. In 1862, the then Prussian Prime Minister Otto von Bismarck gave a speech to the budget committee of the Prussian House of Representatives in which he claimed that "blood and iron" [Blut und Eisen] were needed to bring about change. Historically, the phrase was mistakenly translated in Italian as "blood and egg" [Blut und Ei] and Otto received a pizza named after him.

*Project developed with the conceptual support of Prof. Aram Bartholl.

**Request the screening link here.

Anatomy of a Pasta al Pomodoro

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VR Performance & 3D Collage, 2020

Exhibitions

• Post-Humanism explained, online exhibition curated by Prof. Aram Bartholl

The VR performance "Anatomy of a Pasta al Pomodoro" is based on the attempt to translate an analogue space into a virtual one through movement.

While cooking, the VR controllers dysfunctionally attached to the forearm tracked the movements in the form of a blue spaghetti-like line in virtual space. The blue digital tangle emerged from the performative act - cooking - and functioned as a floor plan for the 1:1 translation of the analogue kitchen into its virtual equivalent. Subsequently, two-dimensional images of the kitchen were stitched together in the virtual space to create a sense of space so that the users could keep being performative and performant in both digital and analogue space.

*Project developed with the conceptual support of Prof. Aram Bartholl.

Self—Love VRClinic

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VR App, 2020

Exhibitions

• Post-Humanism explained, online exhibition curated by Prof. Aram Bartholl

How can we experience physical intimacy in a virtual space? How does digital self-love look like? In Self—Love VRClinic, a hybrid and mechanical crying creature resembling the Capitoline she-wolf, a mythological creature standing for motherhood and care, approaches the user begging to be petted. In her digital solitude, she is unable to feed: she asks for the virtually disembodied user/ performer/ agent to be empathetic with her. The avatar, whose visage resembles the user's one, comes towards the user and floats for a while trough and around them. The user/ performer/ agent is fully disembodied in the virtual space, their default body is pure absence, a traceless phantasm. In order for the user/ performer/ agent to pet the avatar with the VRhands, they end up cuddling themselves with their own haptic hands in the analogue world. After a while the avatar goes away and the user has just to wait for it to come back again. A Self–Love Mantra is to be heard during the whole duration of the treatment and functions as a catalyst for creating a safe and reassuring psychic environment.

This performance based VRgame can be played while standing outdoor or laying in your own bed. Since the pandemic, it got more difficult and potentially dangerous to get physical affection from others and Self-Love got a new meaning and extent in our daily life. The immersive work "Self—Love VRClinic" deals with these questions speculating if the usually algid digital space could be used as a safe space for taking care of one's self-esteem and well-being. The idea is to create a personalized VRSpace where users/agents are able to cuddle themselves and so to produce oxytocin - the so-called "cuddle hormone" or "feel-good hormone." The VRarchitecture is a glitched temple-pharmacy. A distorted texture of skeletal muscles gives haptic materiality to the pixellated virtual algidity. "Self—Love VRClinic" investigates the ecology of love while seeking for alternative ways of self-care in times of analogue fragility.

*Project developed with the conceptual support of Prof. Aram Bartholl.

Devine Tête—Version Nice

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Speculative Game, 2019

Exhibitions

• SNOOZE, Project Statement Frappant e.V.; Parallel Vienna, Vienna (AT)

With its idyllic pebble beaches and the famous "Promenade des Anglais," the Riviera city of Nice is one of the most popular holiday destinations among wealthy tourists. However, the picturesque city has been undergoing a structural transformation for some years now: it has become a dystopian crime-fighting laboratory due to the widespread use of CCTV cameras and facial recognition technologies. The aim of the mayor of Nice, Christian Estrosi, who has been in power since 2008, is to improve "safety and calm on the streets" and thus to promote the city as an exemplary and avantgarde model for a "Safe City" in France. As part of the "Safe City" agreement, the first facial recognition test was carried out in 2019 during the famous "Carnaval de Fleurs."

Today, the country’s fifth largest city in terms of population is de facto the "most watched city in France." More than 2,600 cameras have been installed on the street - one for every 128 inhabitants, thus an increase of 1111% since 2007.

Based on Adam Harvey’s style tips against facial recognition technologies, the speculative game "Devine Tête - Version Nice" was designed as a fictional, special edition to the game series "Devine Tête Grands Classiques," "Nomade (Jeu de Voyage)," and "Mimes (Jeu de Société)" already marketed by Megableu.

The players attach a card with the name of a famous person to each other’s foreheads and have to guess who they are at the moment. For this special edition, an extra image of the area between the nose, eyes and forehead of each famous person has been printed on the back of the cards, which is an essential feature for OpenCV’s face recognition algorithm. By covering one’s own nose-eye-forehead area with that of a celebrity, the game becomes a wearable against the facial recognition technologies introduced in Nice.

*Project developed with the conceptual support of Prof. Aram Bartholl.