“Beginnings” is part of the program of the side events taking place during the PhotoVogue Festival.
With this exhibiton curated by Marcella Manni, NonostanteMarras dives into the dichotomy between artificial and natural, nowadays translated into the binarism of what is computable and what is not. As a consequence of the Enlightenment culture, as reminded by James Bridle, we associate greater knowledge to a greater quantity of information which should lead to better decisions. It is in this scenario that have flourished the concept of ‘automation bias’: we consider the information coming from software and automated systems more reliable than what we experience. This biased concept has been applied to visual systems and to the production and circulation of images and, in this way, the ever-present question arises: can scientific research and photography guarantee objectivity?
Elena Aya Bundurakis, Mark Dorf, Daniele Marzorati, Marit Wolters, artists with different backgrounds, pursue rigorous artistic research placing tools of production, interaction, digital and analog sharing and communication as the basis of their practice.
Mark Dorf’s research involves various disciplines such as photography, digital media, and sculpture. With a strong interest in technology and science, he analyzes the age of information in an accurate way with the aim of understanding our contemporary ‘dwelling.’ Daniele Marzorati focuses on objects and elements, basing his practice on the concept of displacement on large-format film: he juxtaposes multiple shots on a single film, composing a single frame, a synthesis of many places, objects, and perspectives, which is not a repetition but a multiplication. Marit Wolters interprets sculpture as research on materials and places. The presence, the present, and the transience of the experience are offered in their elements of impermanence, material, and its genealogy, which become a structural and formal element. Elena Aya Bundurakis sees photography as a sensor of perceptions, by taking the viewer back to the origins of the vital element: ‘Ancient is more cyborg than cyborg.’ Invertebrate organisms lived millions of years before the human species and will outlive us.
Natural and artificial, thought and action, generation and regeneration: fluctuating between trial and error, artistic practice challenges the limits, whether online or on life, in never-ending beginnings.