Immaterial Screen Fantasy, 2022, Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

INSTALLATION PHOTOS BY CHIARA CATALLINI

I grow fixated with grief and nostalgia.
Online, it's easy to seclude oneself into a bubble. That microcosm becomes a type of present, even if it is inconsistent with the world around our screens. It grows clearer and clearer that - for better or for worse - we are living in an epoch defined by hauntology.
Growing up, when I was adding entries to my online diary, through whichever form it took at the time and on whichever platform, I was getting a feedback that pen-to-paper could never provide.
Screaming into the cyber void proffers a unique sensation of anti-loneliness: while I had no particular audience in mind, and perhaps oftentimes no audience at all,
the online played host to my innermost feelings and as a result validated and concretised them. There was a catharsis in sending my notes into the ether. I liked to think of the words tempestuously disintegrating into binary, like in a cliche techno- horror film.
When plugged in, one interacts with others in a realm that subsumes time with something more difficult to ascertain. But while the internet can be a place to find and connect with people on an immense and global scale, it is also a place in which to find oneself startlingly alone.
Immaterial Screen Fantasy explores themes of the unknown (and the utterly familiar) and the sorrow and loneliness that comes with it on the Internet. The intimate relationship between user and computer is manifested through the unequivocal face-to-screen intimacy of curling up with a laptop in bed.