We met the award-winning multimedia artist Enrico Dedin, whose practice has obtained international recognitions as a finalist for the 16th edition of the Videoart Yearbook, for Collettiva Giovani Artisti at Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa and for The Wrong. By retracing his artistic career in the last decade, the artist talks to us about the most recent AI experiments which counts an aesthetics of simulation. Dedin will represent the Italian Pavilion at the International Art Biennial of Durres from October 5 to November 24, 2024.

Enrico Dedin, “NR Code”, video, 2017, still image, courtesy of the artist

Sara Buoso: You have established yourself on the emerging contemporary scene by virtue of experimentations with new media and multimedia art practices. Drawing from the model of the world-wide-web, your research investigates the social, economic, anthropological, semiotic and representative dynamics of this network according to an artistic reading. Which observations do you feel like sharing regarding the generation you represent? How have digital media modified the communication and perception of art? How to bridge the gap between global and local in a phygital era?
Enrico Dedin: I was born in 1996; my generation will be the last to know what the world was like before the advent of social media. This, in my opinion, is a great responsibility. Digital media are in fact much more than simple mediums, as they inevitably modify the experience and perception of reality itself. With this tsunami, the public is more and more approaching virtual, collective and shared artistic forms, influencing the perception of art. However, I believe that in terms of communication, there is still a lot to do, especially with regard to the immense Italian cultural heritage. From here we can start to bridge the gap between global and local: identifying, preserving and telling the “genius loci”. After all, if we don’t know who we are, how can we face the world outside?

Enrico Dedin, “Nature Training Center”, video, 2021, still image, courtesy of the artist

Contemporary art and design today are strongly influenced by the standards of the so-called “communication culture”. You discuss these topics in the works NR Code (2017), where you deal with a hypertext, in Digital Tribalism (2017), where you talk about connections from an anthropological and social perspective. Why is communication so important in your projects? 
Aristotle teaches us that the human being is a social animal. The need to communicate is intrinsic in every individual. Today we are literally surrounded by communication, it is the infosphere, the habitat in which we live. Precisely for this reason my works, which often have anthropological views on our present, cannot help but grow from this humus. In some projects I have transformed the work itself into a sort of “fake brand”, with the intent of accentuating this condition of ours in an ironic and provocative way.

Enrico Dedin, “#Observatory”, photographic project, courtesy of the artist

Not only language, but also the theme of representation plays a fundamental role in your works. You discuss it in the ambitious photographic project #Observatory (2019), an anthropological and social digital archive that aims to document the connections present on the Instagram platform through practices of appropriation that you define as re-photography. What is the goal of such an ambitious project? In an era of bulimia of images, what role do creativity and art still have?
#Observatory aims to preserve a significant trace of this era invaded by images consumed at the speed of light. This ambitious encyclopedic project, through hashtags, challenges and recurring canons, aims to develop a visual atlas of the different representative “types” of our time. It is methodical and documentary work in some ways similar to the famous Men of the 20th Century by August Sander. I believe that today art can be an “antidote” against the bulimia of images, preserving the value of reflection and contemplation.

Enrico Dedin, “Fungi-Fi”, installation at Nōdus, 2022, ph. credit Numthong Art Space, courtesy of the artist

However, you are aware of how the inevitable technological progress must be accompanied by sustainable practices and policies, as you address in the works Nature Training Center (2021), Fungi-Fi (2022), and Socialhenge (2023). What are your considerations in this regard?
First of all, we should re-educate ourselves to mend our relationship with nature. A bit like what I also try to do in the works you rightly mentioned. Where both human alienation from natural spaces or urban green areas and the rare moments of reconnection with the environment are addressed.

Why should artists and viewers have faith in techno-scientific progress? What future scenarios do you imagine?
I think techno-scientific progress will lead to a tendency towards disintermediation in art, with also a probable massive increase in artists thanks to advanced technologies. That said, I believe that the confrontation between us humans and Artificial Intelligence will not be simple. In any case, we should always remember that algorithms and software are based on known laws, while the human mind remains partly unfathomable.

Enrico Dedin, “FAQ”, installation view mockup, 2024, courtesy of the artist

You will represent the Italian Pavilion for the exhibition Artificial Intelligence: the Hybrid Future curated by Ph.D. Oltsen Gripshi, artist, curator and art historian, for the International Art Biennial in Durres. You will present the unpublished work F.A.Q. Frequently Art Questions, a work that interrogates a famous AI chatbot by asking 118 rhetorical questions to define an imaginary dialogue at the Aleksandër Moisiu Theater in Durrës. Would you like to describe the research beyond your work? How would you define prompt practices differently from other mediums in the perspective of a simulated experience?
First of all, it must be said that the 118 questions are addressed to the “Art System”. The questions, transmitted in a video, focus on existential, sociological, economic, work-related, philosophical, historical aspects, as well as those related to success, fame, the art market and the daily difficulties that emerging artists face. For this reason, the title already plays with the homophony with the word “Fuck”, in addition to the non-random choice of the number of questions that ironically corresponds to the telephone number of the Italian Emergency Room.
As for this project, the prompt is a practice that places greater emphasis on language and intentionality. With the prompts, the AI artist acts as a sort of catalyst of virtual possibilities. The final work does not appear immediately as one might imagine, but is often the result of a dialectical process, a stratification of meanings.

Info:

https://www.instagram.com/enrico.dedin/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/enrico-dedin/
https://www.facebook.com/enrico.dedin/
https://tiktok.com/@enrico.dedin
https://www.behance.net/enricodedin

Sara Buoso

She is interested in the visual, verbal and textual aspects of the Modern Contemporary Arts. From historical-artistic studies at the Cà Foscari University, Venice, she has specialized in teaching and curatorial practice at the IED, Rome, and Christie’s London. The field of her research activity focuses on the theme of Light from the 1950s to current times, ontologically considering artistic, phenomenological and visual innovation aspects.