Teorie di Topi
2019 - 2020
3 channel video, color, sound, 5’18’’
Video, color, sound, 18’05’’
Digital print on flag 100x150 cm
Teorie di Topi is a project that faces the issues of post-colonialism in relation to internet’s infrastructure and phenomenology.
These stories of identity, of bodies and of digital memory pass through interviews to a lawyer, a UX designer and a IT engineer.
They pass through the words of Guido Morselli, author of the post-apocalyptic novel Dissipatio H.G.
And finally pass through the element of the mask as social media filter, which in this case is used both to censor faces with a symbol inspired to the first version of Speedy Gonzales, mexican toon character immigrated to the US, and as symbol for a flag of a state without nation nor borders.
Through my collaboration with the NO CPR network I discovered that among the reasons of the protests of immigrants inside CPRs there is the destruction of their smartphones operated by police. This prevents irregular immigrants that arrive in Italy to record violence and abuses, to have contact with the outside world, to prove the degrading conditions where they live. These non-places of humanity are very similar to the invisible bunkers of virtual power, data centers: inaccessible buildings for common citizens, where public data are held in custody by private corporations.
This data sovereignty is what Achille Mbembe called necropolitics. A cultural fantasy that joins war and security, users and user value, participation and opposition. In other words, the cloud.
Teorie di Topi Cycle:
Teorie di Topi:
Installation views at Voga Art Project, Bari. Photo: Giada Giannoccaro