TABOO - TRANSGRESSION - TRANSCENDENCE

The proposal aims to present the results of a one-year research project by curator Arianna Forte, conducted as part of a fellowship with the Italian Council in 2024: Casting a Spell in Computational Regimes: Ritual Practices for a Trans-Feminist Counter-Apocalypse. The project critically reflects on the ongoing cultural and existential transformation, shaped by data and computation, which have redefined our global presence and revealed new forms of domination. Philosopher Franco Berardi describes the current state as a "techno-social dimension of the mind," focusing not on growth but on extinction, anxiety, and degrowth.

The study investigates how these forms of domination are imagined, processed, and resisted, particularly through artistic practices that employ witchcraft and magical thinking to challenge techno-scientific systems. These practices, defined by De Martino as contemporary rituals, function as cultural tools for protection or redemption amid a collapsing universe of meanings. They address the entropic crises present at every level of human experience, including the pervasive digital systems, biomedical engineering, climate collapse, and surveillance regimes of late capitalism.

The research explores artistic practices that create rituals of resistance to computational regimes and informational entropy. Some of these practices can be understood within a common theoretical framework called transfeminist counter-apocalypse: an opposition to apocalyptic rhetoric by embracing precariousness and vulnerability, shared by all living beings, irrespective of gender, race, or intelligence. This concept draws on Johanna Zylinska's alternative narrative to the Anthropocene, reshaping extinction and crisis from a feminist perspective. The project aligns with the theoretical frameworks of Donna Haraway, Anna L. Tsing, Rosi Braidotti, Karen Barad, and Silvia Federici, influential thinkers referenced by many of the artists involved.