VALENTINA PERI

GC: What kind of study and professional path led you to the research fields to which you dedicate yourself as a curator?

VP: I have a background in Cultural Anthropology, I specialized in Anthropology of Art with a thesis on Contemporary African Art and the Dakar Biennial. Back in 2007, I left Italy for an Erasmus echange program in Paris, and there I attended courses at EHESS, a French grand ecole dedicated to human sciences. Later on I attended art history courses at the Ecole du Louvre in Paris and I took part of the Masters in “Curating New Media” at the University of Sunderland in the United Kingdom. Let’s say that my current research fields are therefore the result of a mix between participatory observation that owes a lot to my training in anthropology, a great curiosity for contemporary social and cultural phenomena, many readings and a good dose of self-teaching in various fields.

The interest in digital art comes from the passion for electronic music, cultivated during the university period in Bologna. Without any doubts, the gateway to digital art was for me a mythical festival based in Bologna called Netmage, curated by Xing. When I arrived in Paris I broadened my horizons in this area thanks to a solid art scene, institutionalized and well funded by various programs of the Ministry of Culture and Communication. When I arrived at Galerie Charlot in 2011, I took the great opportunity to develop a program dedicated to digital art in a young gallery that had only been founded six months before and was looking for its own identity. After a few years of intense and passionate work, Galerie Charlot has established itself on the international scene as an essential reference in the panorama and in the digital art market. It is within those walls that I presented my first exhibitions and built my identity as a curator.

GC: From 2011 to 2021 you worked in an art gallery specializing in digital art, with offices in Paris and Tel-Aviv: a quite long period of time which, undoubtedly, offered a privileged view on the evolution of production and art market. What have been the most significant projects that can trace a recent history of these artistic practices?

VP: Without any doubt, the key period of digital art, the golden age if we can define it that way, was the period 2013-2016. Specialized fairs, biennials, festivals, anthological exhibitions appeared everywhere in Europe and also internationally. These are the years of “art after Internet” (Omar Kholeif), of the new aesthetic (James Bridle) and of Post-Internet Art. A truly interesting period in terms of content, production, and the digital art market. Euphoria, interest, and large investments brought to the international scene a group of artists in their thirties, who now are international references of digital art (Evan Roth, Quayola, Rafael Rosendaal …)

Then there has been a sort of slowdown in the sector around 2017. From an institutional point of view, on contrary, it was precisely around 2016 that the great exhibitions dedicated to digital art have multiplied, I am thinking for example of Electronic Superhighway at Whitechapel, London; Artists & Robots at the Grand Palais, Paris; or New Order at MoMA NY. Obviously I do not pretend that this analysis is exhaustive. Maybe someday I will write a book about this experience!

GC: You recently published Data Dating. Love, Technology, Desire (2021), which you co-edited with Ania Malinowska. Acts of desire and relationship practices are at the center of this essay: how are they influenced and how do they change and build in a technological present?

VP: I will answer with an excerpt from the introduction chapter of the collection: modern cultural theory censures high technologies for diluting and corrupting ‘the event of a human encounter’. The culprits are social platforms and the computational control of a meet-up. Badiou, who writes extensively about the collapse of loving under the protocols of online dating, claims that zero-risk policy, exerted by socially and psychologically biased profiling for an impeccably accurate match, has flattened the romantic pursuit. As the mystery and alterity have disappeared from dating, love has yielded to the pre-eminence of availability and self-presentation. In The Agony of Eros (2017), Byung-Chul Han explains that contemporary technologies transform togetherness – understood as the desire to form a ‘we’ – into a pleasant symbiosis of self-invested display (a form of ‘reciprocal narcissism’). Media environments, Han explains, encourage narcissistic preoccupation with self to the point of killing self’s interest in/for the Other.

Some media theorists counterbalance that view with claims about the possibility of ‘navigat[ing] a world saturated with opportunities for social connections […] without losing sight of one’s self and of losing the sight of others’ (Papacharissi 2018). There is a conviction that ‘technology can help us reimagine and reinvent how we understand love and life’ (Papacharissi 2018: n.pag.). As a major site of practicing togetherness, romance needs reinvention, especially in how it dominates the expression of loving and its social legitimacy. This is the more urgent as all the elements of romance’s excitement and drama are being transferred to technological environments with the hope for better efficiency (see Berlant 2012).

Would technology unveil the cultural flaws of romantic love ?

GC: Data Dating is also an exhibition project that was presented in different spaces, from ZKM to Galerie Charlot and Tel Aviv: there were different receptions of the project by the public and what were the most relevant aspects, from a curatorial point of view?

VP: Data Dating was first unveiled in the space in Paris in 2018, a key moment in the development of dating apps in France. The response from the public was truly incredible: some visitors thanked me for having addressed issues that remained taboo at the time, or at least that were difficult to talk about. Other visitors, of all ages, stopped to tell their stories. The gallery has been transformed into a space for dialogue and exchange, which has made it possible to create links between the visitors and us, the staff of the gallery. It was one of the greatest satisfactions of that experience, as I think that the most important function of art is precisely to create meaningful bonds and safe spaces.

In London, the exhibition was presented in a completely different context from the one of commercial gallery: the Watermans Art Center is in fact a multipurpose and multicultural space, consisting of a gallery, a cinema and a theater and very popular between children and adolescents in a working class district of West London. In that case, I had to think about how to create a sort of restricted area or “adult zone” where to exhibit some works that could have been a little more racy. However, I did not want to create an insurmountable barrier for the public, create a frustration or an expectation that did not correspond to the nature of the works on display which, although related to online pornography, tackled these issues in a critical and creative way. In that case I chose a pink curtain (which was the color of the visual identity of the exhibition) that was wired, passable, through which the works could be glimpsed, but which nevertheless created a visual barrier for children under 16. This device that initially disrupted me, precisely because the intent of the exhibition was to overcome certain taboos and moralisms, finally proved to be an excellent scenic device, which created a “sexy” rather than “oppositional” atmosphere.

In Tel Aviv I presented a video by the Israeli-Argentine artist Inés Moldavsky “The Man behind the Wall”, which describes the use of dating apps in the particular Israeli-Palestinian context. The geolocation through which these apps work obviously does not respect the fictitious border created by the walls and barriers in these territories. In the video, the artist meets various Palestinian men crossing the border prohibited to Israeli citizens thanks to her Argentine citizenship and raises questions about love, intimacy and physical and cultural barriers in a context of war.

GC: Your professional experience extends to a European network, but, focusing on the Italian situation, what do you think about the attitude of Italian institutions (public and private) towards research and the promotion of digital art?

VP: My professional experience essentially developed in France, so I never had solid contact with the Italian context. Perhaps this too is significant in itself: apart from a few recent invitations to online talks (including STILL aLIVE HOSTS with Marco Signorini) I have had no direct experience with the world of Italian institutions, neither as an independent curator, nor when I was directing the Galerie Charlot.

I invited some Italian curators to the gallery (Filippo Lorenzin, Kamilia Kard and Fabio Paris) and some Italian artists, I am thinking for example of Quayola. I mainly collaborated with the Link Art Center in Brescia, which closed its doors a couple of years ago after 10 years of interesting and highly creative initiatives.

There are various quality festivals that compete on the international scene such as Romaeuropa or the Node in Modena. Interesting realities such as Meet | have recently been opened Digital Culture Center and the Novo gallery, both in Milan.

Compared to other European and international contexts, the promotion and dissemination of digital art, as well as its institutionalization, seem to me to remain quite shy in Italy.

GC: Price, use and conservation are three main elements for collecting and for the market in general. In your experience, how is the Italian context of private galleries and fairs managing these substantial elements of digital art?

VP: It does not seem to me that the numerous Italian galleries participating in international fairs are giving a significant space to digital art, much less a reflection on its price, use and conservation. What I can say is that certainly the issue of conservation is a very interesting and exciting challenge to which all those who work in this area contribute.

GC: Always remaining on the subject, what do you think about the new NFT technology applied to the world of art?

VP: It is a very complex theme, a lot of words and a lot of “ink” were spent with great improvisations by the “experts” of contemporary art on this subject. The crypto economy and blockchain processes are immersed in a kind of nebula for many, including artists. I had my first approach with NFTs thanks to one of the artists I was presenting in the gallery at the time of the explosion of the phenomenon towards the end of January 2021, who introduced me to that world and explained to me its basics and operation. I am very grateful to artist Nicolas Sassoon for the time he has spent sending me links and updating me on the evolution of that market. From his experience and from the feedback of other artists (I am thinking for example of Albertine Meunier, Addie Wagenknecht, Quayola) I can say that I find that technology a very interesting channel for artists from the point of view of the “ease” and immediacy of the sale, which it is carried out without intermediaries – apart from the commission of the platform presenting the NFTs. From an artistic point of view, it does not seem to me that there is anything to report: the traditional aesthetic and symbolic values of the art market are completely suspended. 8In any case, I look at the world of NFTs with great curiosity, and I am very happy for the artists who have been able to ride the wave at the right time, and who have supported other artists with less visibility. I’m sure the bubble hasn’t deflated yet. The question of the ecological and human impact that the proof-of-work technology raises for some cryptocurrencies such as ethereum remains, however, a very thorny element.

GC: SWIPE RIGHT inaugurated on October 22nd! Data, Dating, Desire, group exhibition with international artists curated by you at iMAL, Brussels. How does the exhibition continue the research started with Data Dating? Can you tell us something about it?

VP: With great pleasure! Data Dating is an exhibition that reflects on love in the age of the Internet and that tries to show various elements of this universe, such as love mediated by technological devices, online pornography, the verbal violence of anonymous exchanges, construction of the self through social networks, the commodification of love through dating sites and apps, and warned against the use these industries make of user data. SWIPE RIGHT! brings on this reflection, for which various themes already present in Data Dating are found, but it is more focused on the condition of social distancing and non-contact caused by the pandemic. There is no precise data on the phenomenon, but the various lockdowns have prompted many people to try new love and intimate experiences in the digital world. Therefore the exhibition questions these new processes and relationships to the body in relation to technological devices, the often endless search for partners favored by the libidinal economy of online dating, the obsession with screens, identities defined by applications, social profiles, passwords …

SWIPE RIGHT! Data, Dating, Desire explores these new directions of contemporary romance and tries to map the unprecedented connections between desire, emotions, technology, and economy in the post-pandemic world.

Valentina Peri is a curator, art critic and author who lives and works in Paris. The focus of her research lies inside the role of technology in contemporary culture, with a particular attention to love and intimacy in the digital age, to the history of media and to the technologies in the Anthropocene era.

@Valentina Peri and Metronom, 2021

12/11/2021