Everything is ready in Parma for the contemporary creativity festival

Climate change, habitat change, resource management: the era in which man seemed to reign undisturbed on the planet, today, can only be called into question by the challenges that nature (and technology) are posing to him. In the wake of these reflections, the eighth edition of PARMA 360. Festival of contemporary creativity returns, from 6 April to 19 May, with an edition dedicated to overcoming the anthropocentric dimension. THE PARMA FESTIVAL DEDICATED TO TECHNOLOGY AND NATURE Curated by Chiara Canali and Camilla Mineo, with the title Homo Deus (taken from the essay of the same name by Yuval Noah Harari), the 2024 edition of the Emilian event extends across the entire city, including churches and historic buildings, through five major main retrospectives. The epicenter of the event is Palazzo Pigorini: on the main floor of the eighteenth-century building we find Survival, a tribute to the master of Arte Povera – and ante litteram ecologist – Piero Gilardi, which traces, through his most iconic works, the artist’s complex relationship with the environment. On the second floor, however, the first section of the collective exhibition The work of art in the era of AI (curated by Chiara Canali herself, Rebecca Pedrazzi and Davide Sarchioni) is set up which, echoing the famous work of Walter Benjamin, addresses the upheavals of image production through artificial intelligence. There are as many as 20 artists on display who have worked “in collaboration” with this technology, developing new languages: among these stand out Domenico Barra, Andrea Crespi, Debora Hirsch, Giuseppe Lo Schiavo and Chiara Passa. THE PROGRAM OF THE “PARMA 360 FESTIVAL” the second part of the project dedicated to artificial intelligence takes place in the medieval tower of the Torrione Visconteo, animated by the immersive site-specific video installations by Luca Pozzi, Kamilia Kard and Lino Strangis. The program continues with the sculptor Emanuele Giannelli, who brings the Humanoid exhibition, curated by Camilla Mineo, to the former Church of San Ludovico: there are as many as forty large “anthropomorphic” works on display. Space for illustration, however, at the Open Laboratory of the San Paolo Complex, with the exhibition The Space Between, which brings together four great Italian pencils: Emiliano Ponzi, Bianca Bagnarelli, Antonio Pronostico and Manfredi Ciminale. The full program can be consulted online.[Immagine in apertura: Emanuele Giannelli, Sospesi]