Vortrag Valentina Vetturi

In the frame of the seminar Arts and Mathematics

hosted by Prof. Delio Mugnolo

Institute of Analysis, Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science

FernUniversität in Hagen

What does it mean to consider research as a performative practice?

Beginning with this question, the talk will explore some key cycles of work by Valentina Vetturi, whose collaborative artistic practice is deeply interdisciplinary and unfolds over time through long-term projects.

Vetturi will share insights from her latest performative research, Mimosa Pudica (2024/), on how learning alongside plants about their memory can inform principles of digital ecologies. At the core of this research are two questions that have fueled Vetturi’s practice for over a decade: how do we remember and forget individually and as a society? And what remains of us when we no longer remember anything or if we remember too much? The movement created between these experiences shapes the essence of our mutating, hybrid identities. Mimosa Pudica collaborates with plants, observing their behaviours and structures as a form of shared inquiry. It searches for keys to interact with the techno-cosmos that shape our daily lives.

The talk expands on themes explored in Vetturi’s previous works, such as Alzheimer Café (2014/), which addresses the persistence of musical memories to neurodegenerative conditions, and a series dedicated to the processes of digitization and digital memory, among which The Math of the Secret (2023/)andTails (2023)focused on the idiosyncrasies of generative AI training and the materiality of the web infrastructures.

Mimosa Pudica is a path to discover the consonances and divergences between digital human and plant memory. Remembering, forgetting: What do they mean? How are they done when we transition from humans to other species and then to digital?

BIO

Valentina Vetturi is a visual artist and researcher whose transdisciplinary practice explores digital ecologies and forms of collective memories. Working across performance, writing, sculpture and new media, her projects unfold as long-term research shaped by open-source methods and processual, context-responsive configurations. Vetturi holds a Law degree, a Master’s in Landscape, Art, and Architecture from the Polytechnic University of Milan (2007), and a Master’s in Digital Currencies from the University of Nicosia (2020). In 2024, she was awarded the Italian Council research grant; she collaborates with institutions, including Lagos Biennial, Museum MAXXI Rome and Strauhof Zurich. Alongside her artistic practice, Vetturi lectures and leads workshops internationally. She is currently an Adjunct Professor at the Academy of Fine Arts Bari, where she teaches Pedagogy of Multimedia, Didactic methodologies for audiovisual languages and Video installation .

www.valentinavetturi.com

The talk is part of Mimosa Pudica, a project granted by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture under the Italian Council program (13th edition, 2024), which aims to promote Italian contemporary art worldwide.

Einladung (PDF 50 KB)

Flyer (PDF 4 MB)