Tactics&Practice #15: Node #3, Valentina Tanni & Total Refusal
10.05.2024
The 15th edition of Tactics&Practice explores how the ambiguous quality of data can be used as a tool to influence real world outcomes. How can the act of purposely creating data provide agency within data-driven systems? Is it possible to manipulate data to create specific real-world outcomes? https://aksioma.org/unrealdata/
This year’s edition comprises three programme nodes, consisting of exhibitions, lectures by artists and workshops, which take place at various locations in Ljubljana, including the UL ALUO. In Node #3, we will host both a lecture (Valentina Tanni, Internet Aesthetics: a Journey Beyond the Threshold, at Erjavčeva Street) and a workshop (Total Refusal, Stories with an Open End, at the Tobačna Gallery). You are cordially invited to join us, more information below!
NODE #3
LECTURE
Valentina Tanni
Internet Aesthetics: A Journey Beyond the Threshold
15 May 2024, 15:00-15:45
ALUO, Erjavčeva 23 (lecture room 7), Ljubljana
Free of charge.
The digital space that extends beyond our screens is a vast territory that takes shape thanks to the contributions of countless intelligent entities. Over the years, the internet has absorbed an incalculable mass of ideas, feelings, and fears, turning into a gigantic, monstrous repository of human (and non-human) sensibility. This territory, despite being immaterial, has its own features. It’s a browsable map that contains landscapes, buildings, and rooms. The talk will explore the theme of space—natural and man-made—by analyzing its symbolic meaning within the framework of web culture, with particular reference to the realm of Internet Aesthetics.
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Valentina Tanni is an art historian, curator and lecturer. Her research is centred on the relationship between art and technology, with a particular focus on internet culture. She teaches Digital Art at Politecnico University in Milan; New Media Aesthetics and Contemporary Art Language at NABA – New Academy of Fine Arts in Rome; as well as Meme Culture and Aesthetics and Digital Media Culture at the John Cabot University in Rome. She has published three books: Random: Navigando contro mano, alla scoperta dell’arte in rete (Link Editions, 2011), Memestetica: Il settembre eterno dell’arte (NOT/Nero Editions, 2020–2023) and Exit Reality: Vaporwave, backrooms, weirdcore e altri paesaggi oltre la soglia (NOT/Nero Editions, 2023).
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WORKSHOP
Total Refusal
Open-ended Stories
15 May 2024, 16:00-18:00
ALUO, Tobačna 5, Ljubljana
Free of charge. Registration required: https://pretix.eu/aksioma/unrealdata/
Materials and knowledge required: laptop
No prior knowledge required.
The rendered spheres of video games are an attempt to recreate fantasies of our world as superlatives. However, these interactive moving image excesses usually end at some point, becoming fragile at their borders. Wallpapers with painted skylines, mountains or oceans are mounted to their edges. These fascinating open worlds, which seem to extend into infinity, are amazingly modelled on their physical-real counterpart and even exceed it – a pastiche of the Earth, that is, an imitation that emulates and alienates its template. However, other games truly never end, stretching into infinity with the help of procedurally generated galaxies. Sometimes the hinterland beyond the frontier territory becomes subject to other, extra-terrestrial laws: stones float in the air or sunken islands of past times suddenly appear.
Takeaways:
Enter the body of an owl and fly beyond the limits of physical laws. Together with Total Refusal, you will learn to appropriate games in the open-world video game Red Dead Redemption 2 and repurpose them for artistic, activist or nonsensical projects.
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The artist, researcher and filmmaker collective and pseudo-marxist media guerrilla Total Refusal appropriates contemporary video games and writes about games and politics. They upcycle the resources of mainstream video games, creating political narrations in the form of videos, interventions, live performances, lectures and workshops.
Since its foundation in 2018, the group has received over 50 awards and honorary mentions, including the audience award at the Animateka Film Festival in Ljubljana and the European Film Award for best short film in 2023. Total Refusal’s work has been screened at over 250 film and art festivals, such as Berlinale, MoMA’s Doc Fortnight or the Oberhausen Film Festival, and exhibited at various exhibition spaces, like the Architecture Biennial Venice 2021, HEK Basel and Ars Electronica Linz.
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Related events:
- BPM, an exhibition by Total Refusal at Aksioma Project Space (opening: 15 May at 19:00, on view until 14 June 2024)
- Let’s Play: Brexit Reality with Valentina Tanni and Total Refusal, on 16 May at 7 PM at Slovenska kinoteka.
In the framework of the programe Tactics&Practice #15: (Un)real Data – Real Effects.
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Produced and organised by: Aksioma | Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana
For the series: Tactics&Practice
In partnership with: Academy of Fine Arts and Design, University of Ljubljana
Supported by: the Municipality of Ljubljana, the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia