An exhibition project reflecting on the notions of memory, archive, and identity, and how Artificial Intelligence redefines how we conceive of them
YEAR
2023 – 2024
ROLE
Curatorship
CATEGORY
Art and technology
“Are you not the future of all the memories in you? – Paul Valéry wonders – the future of a passed time?”
Through this exhibition project, artist Paolo Bufalini questions the possibility of deviating the generative models tendency toward standardization, in order to make them a poetic-speculative tool capable of activating a discussion of the archive and memory as active agents.
The Argo exhibition project starts by training generative AI models with a personal data set, consisting of the digitization of artist Paolo Bufalini’s family albums. The models, trained to reproduce the likenesses of the subjects and scenarios contained in the albums, provide their “own” interpretation, resulting in a journey into the past in which the boundary between documentality and poetic invention is blurred.
Its title Argo recalls the topos of homecoming, as it seeks to inhabit the complexity of the concepts of identity and belonging by hybridizing past and present, the actuality and the memory.
Paolo Bufalini
Paolo Bufalini (Rome, 1994) is a visual artist based in Bologna. His research is characterized by cross-media and marked formal heterogeneity, and finds in the investigation of the relationships between psychic, temporal and material depths its primary motif. His work has been exhibited in institutional and independent spaces in Italy and abroad, including: Biennale di Gubbio, c/o Palazzo Ducale, Gubbio; Museo di Palazzo Collicola, Spoleto; Marktstudio, Bologna; La Rada, Locarno; Gelateria Sogni di Ghiaccio, Bologna; Eataly Art House, Verona; Civitella Ranieri Foundation, Umbertide (PG); Dolomiti Contemporanee, c/o Castello di Andraz (BL); Fabbri-Schenker projects, London; Localedue, Bologna; MASSIMO, Milan; Raum, Bologna; Neverneverland, Amsterdam. Recent awards and residencies include: SIAE – Per Chi Crea (2023); Carapelli for Art (2022); Purchase Award Emilia-Romagna Region (2020); Nuovo Forno del Pane (residency), c/o MamBo, Bologna (2020); Ducato Prize – Academy Art Award (2019).
Credits
Argo is an art project by Paolo Bufalini, curated by Sineglossa, developed with the support of Italian Ministry of Culture and of SIAE, within the context of “Per chi Crea” program.
