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Talks
Boris Magrini
Curatorial Talk
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What prompts us to develop online connections? How can communication technologies contribute to building emotional bonds? The fascination with relationships mediated by new technologies has inspired numerous artists. In a critical, poetic, sometimes playful way, they have created works that explore new ways of befriending, relating and loving, or have exposed the hypocrisies of existing services and dating platforms. Boris Magrini examines a selection of historical works of net art that address these topics and presents more recent ones created in collaboration with the artists during the exhibitions Future Love, Radical Gaming and the online project Net Encounters, which he curated at HEK (House of Electronic Arts). Questions related to the curatorship and exhibition of such challenging works are also discussed.
Boris Magrini is head of programme and curator at HEK (House of Electronic Arts). He studied art history at the University of Geneva and completed his PhD at the University of Zurich. Curated shows include Radical Gaming, HEK (2021); Entangled Realities. Living with Artificial Intelligence, HEK (2019); Future Love. Desire and Kinship in Hypernature, HEK (2018); Grounded Visions. Artistic Research into Environmental Issues, ETH Zurich (2015); and Mutamenti, Bellinzona (2007). His book Confronting the Machine (Berlin/Boston 2017) examines the traditional narratives relating artistic production to technology. Some of his publications include: “Automation and Intentionality – Photography without the Camera,” in: Automated Photography, Lausanne, 2021; “Alternative Visions. Human Futures,” in: Transdiscourse 2. Turbulence and Reconstruction, Berlin, 2016; and “Hackteria. An Example of Neomodern Activism,” in: Leonardo Electronic Almanac, 20 (1), 2014.