From 1 to 4 December 2022, 1Metro sotto la metro returns, the widespread exhibition of metropolitan interactive art curated by Arianna Forte and organized by Fusolab 2.0 in collaboration with Atac and Flyer. Seven interactive and new media art works, exhibited in three stations of the Metro C in Rome – Pigneto, Teano, Gardenie – for the last ‘stop’ of a three-year project which in previous editions recorded over 15,000 visitors and involved all 20 artists and 8 stations of the third metro of the capital. 1Metro sotto la metro is an immersive experience, designed to involve the ‘passing through’ public who finally becomes the protagonist of a space that they pass through casually every day without ever being truly experienced. Metro C stations thus become dimensional doors and the works on display are passages that lead to new points of view on the world and new stations of the imagination.
The project, promoted by Roma Capitale-Culture Department, is the winner of the Public Notice Simultaneously Rome 2020-2021-2022 curated by the Department of Cultural Activities and is carried out in collaboration with Siae. The exhibition, entirely free, will be open from Thursday 1st to Saturday 3rd December from 12 to 20 with a special novelty: every day, at 17.30 and 19, the curator Arianna Forte will lead visitors on a guided tour to discover the installations exhibited, accompanied by the protagonists of the project. The exhibition area is located outside the subway turnstiles, therefore a Metrebus ticket or season ticket is not required to enjoy the event. There will also be workshops, with free participation with reservation, this year conducted by the artists Ginevra Petrozzi, Collective CIRCE and Nexus, scheduled for Saturday 3 and Sunday 4 December in the spaces of Fusolab 2.0 in Viale della Bella Villa 94.
Stops and installations: Pigneto: “Portrait of a Generative Memory”, by the media artist Indiara Di Benedetto, weaves new technologies with organic materials and reflections on archeology. In this installation the lukasa, an ancient mnemonic tool of the Congolese tradition, is “augmented” with digital technology, inviting the viewer to generate a series of abstract and unrepeatable portraits starting from the personal memory of a face. Pigneto: “Exposure” is a virtual reality installation by the emerging Martina Carbone which investigates the relationship between technological media and sensory aspects of experience, immersing the public in a dystopian future where human beings will be almost extinct and now locked up in a glass case in a museum run by post-human creatures.
Teano: “Ossa”, the interactive installation by the Italian artist based in Helsinki Roberto Fusco, reflects on the similarities between human and animal species through the act of incarnation, allowing the viewer to observe his own body transformed into that of another to be. Teano: “Lumina Fiction #2”, by the Paris-based Iranian artist Golnaz Behrouznia, is a huge immersive installation that reproduces a virtual ecosystem of luminous microorganisms in interaction with each other and with visitors. Teano: “Distantia”, by the Roman musician and digital artist Franz Rosati, is a multimedia audiovisual project which, through the assembly of images obtained from satellites, reflects on how distance can mediate our ability to observe.
Teano: “The Shielding”, by the Palermitan artist and photographer Salvatore Vitale, is an audiovisual investigation into the pervasiveness of technologies on critical thinking. An artificial intelligence composes a video narrative that changes in real time based on the input it receives from the audience. Gardenias: “Exolove Encounter”, by French artists, programmers and researchers Antoine Schmitt and Hortense Gauthier, is an installation animated by an artificial creature made up of pixels and sounds capable of experiencing – really – pleasure in contact with the viewer. The creature reproduces a real “artificial hormone” and offers an alternative sensory approach to the cognitive approach of artificial intelligence.
“The scheduled installations and workshops are visionary and critical reflections on the future of our planet and on possible interactions with other species and with intelligent technologies. A third and final edition that is certainly ambitious and is proud to host artists of international standing”, says Arianna Forte, curator of the 1Metro sotto la metro exhibition.