Opening to the public from Tuesday 17 September, at the Salaborsa Library in Bologna, the group show When they see us reflects on the impact of tracking in the physical and digital space of our lives. The exhibition is curated by the cultural organization Sineglossa and promoted by the associations The Good Lobby and Hermes Center for Digital Rights and info.nodes, already active in the campaign against biometric recognition Reclaim Your Face. The exhibition When they see us is also the first initiative of The Next Real, a series of events that Sineglossa is curating in Bologna between September 2024 and June 2025, on art, artificial intelligence and society. To find out more, however, we had the honor of being able to interview Sofia Marasca Communications Manager of Sineglossa, who told us everything that led to the birth of The Next Real and what will happen during the exhibition, from the opening with When they see us, until the end of 2025.
Sofia Marasca, responsabile comunicazione dell’associazione culturale Sineglossa
Sara Papini: How did the idea for The Next Real come about?
Sofia Marasca: The Next Real was born from the desire to propose to the city of Bologna a research that Sineglossa has been carrying out since 2019, on how art is a tool to understand and investigate the challenges that artificial intelligence poses to our personal lives and to democracy. When AI was still unknown to the masses, Sineglossa made it available to citizens to dream of the city of the future. Today, AI has become the technology capable of revolutionizing all sectors of our daily life and we wanted to organize an annual event, with performances, workshops, talks and round tables, to explore the contradictions between the opportunities offered by these surprising intelligent machines and, at the same time, the fears for the transformation of our sense of reality and for the social injustices that they could amplify. We involved artists who transform this technology, designed to solve problems, into artifacts and experiences that generate amazement and emotions and allow a wider audience to become aware of the limits and potential of AI.
Dries Depoorter and Bieke Depoorter, “Border Birds”, photographic print, 2022, courtesy the artists and Sineglossa
What challenges does organizing such a complex event, consisting of many events and spread across multiple locations, involve?
It was essential to work in a network perspective, building alliances with various subjects (universities, research centers, public organizations, non-profit organizations, foundations, informal collectives), to best organize all the events and design new ones. For example, for the study day on authorship, we obtained the use of the Biagi Auditorium in the Salaborsa Library through the patronage of the Municipality of Bologna, and in this way the event, which in previous years took place outside the city, at CINECA, will this year be in the heart of Bologna, accessible to anyone. In addition to our partner CINECA, one of the largest computing centers in Italy and one of the most advanced in the world for high-performance computing, we have collaborated with ART-ER Attrattività Ricerca Territorio to organize some events inside the Tecnopolo Manifattura Data Valley Hub, the 120 thousand square meters space, in the area of the former Manifattura Tabacchi, formerly home to the Leonardo supercomputer and the Centro Meteo per le previsionia medio termine, and which recently hosted the G7 Science and Technology. The list of partners is extensive, including Fondazione Gramsci Emilia-Romagna Onlus, the non-profit organizations The Good Lobby, Hermes Center and info.nodes, Fondazione Bruno Kessler, 24 Frame Future Film Fest and Fondazione Home Movies – Archivio Nazionale del Film di Famiglia. A space is dedicated to the training of students from the Academy of Fine Arts of Bologna, who will participate in seminars and workshops led by the artists featured in The Next Real. We then worked in collaboration with two historic festivals of the city, to include some events of the review in their program: the ROBOT Festival, the electronic music and visual art event of Shape APS, which every year brings numerous artists from the international scene to Bologna, and Festival del Presente, the event of Pandora Rivista directed by Giacomo Bottos.
Dries Depoorter, “Jaywalking”, exhibition view at Mirage Festival, 2019, ph. Marion Bornaz, courtesy the artists and Sineglossa
The Next real moves on multiple fronts and in a very long period: what are the events that you would recommend everyone not to miss between September 2024 and June 2025?
Definitely the opening of the exhibition When they see us, the event that opens The Next Real: on September 17 at 6:00 pm in the Salaborsa Library we inaugurate an exhibition path on the impact of physical and digital tracking technologies in our onlife lives. Then on September 25, again in Salaborsa at the Biagi Auditorium, at 3:30 pm, we will question ourselves on what it means to be an author today, with Giovanni Leghissa, UNITO philosopher among the most brilliant Foucault experts in Italy, Maurizio Lana, digital humanist at UNIUPO, Francesca Lagioia, part-time Professor at the European University Institute in Florence and Senior Assistant Professor at the University of Bologna, the artists Francesco D’Isa, Roberto Fassone and Kamilia Kard and the writer Wu Ming 2. During the ROBOT Festival, on Friday 11 October in the spaces of DumBO, for the ROBOT Learn section, we will conduct a talk to write the science fiction of the future, the one that will inspire the scientists of tomorrow to invent the technologies of the societies we desire, with Carlo Rosselli, musician, actor, director and theatre trainer, Nicoletta Vallorani, science fiction writer, and Alessandro Vietti, engineer, writer and science communicator. Also on Friday 11 October, at 7 pm, we will be at the Church of San Barbaziano, an unusual location for the ROBOT Festival, for the Italian debut of Waluigi’s Purgatory, an interactive audiovisual performance by the duo dmstfctn, with live music by Evita Manji, which previews the installation by dmstfctn that we will present in February at the Tecnopolo.
Tactical Tech, “The Glass Room”, ph. Ahmad AlNemr, courtesy the artists and Sineglossa
The most anticipated event is coming in 2025: in February there will be the international premiere of the new work by dmstfctn, the artists duo we selected to create an interactive audiovisual installation on the theme of fake news at the Tecnopolo Manifattura Data Valley Hub in Bologna. Finally, in April for Fondazione Gramsci Emilia-Romagna Onlus we will exhibit AI MANIFESTA, the creative reworking that the artist Francesco D’Isa is creating, in collaboration with Chiara Moresco, starting from the political messages and posters stored on manifestipolitici.it, the database on political and social manifestos that makes about 16 thousand iconographic documents available for consultation, dating from the early twentieth century to the present day.
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She was born in Genoa but currently lives in Bologna, the city where she graduated from CITEM with a thesis on video art. She works in the world of events in the production sector and is an assistant professor of Visual Studies at UNIBO.
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