[-empyre-] Salvatore Iaconesi + Oriana Persico

[xDxD.vs.xDxD]

In answer to "Networking New Work":

COVID and brain cancer: we've had it all.

During the pandemics, my brain cancer returned. The last time it did, in
2012, we started a Franco Basaglia-inspired performance to reposition
disease in society. We called it La Cura (the cure), and it engaged
hundreds of thousands of people all over the world.

La Cura promoted new kinships – both human, non human, systemic – that
corresponded to new solidarities that just could not fit the industrialized
systems of health, communication, information and education.

Data and computation had a major role in La Cura's considerations: they
were not intended as an extractive phenomenon, but as an autobiographical
one, a self-representational one. As such, approaches to data and
computation needed to completely change, to both preserve and evolve our
rights and freedoms.

On top of that, not only human beings can generate data, but also
buildings, forests, neighbourhoods, animals, AIs, thus forming a common
ground which could be explored in search of new forms of solidarity,
closeness, intimacy, publicness and more.
https://xdxd-vs-xdxd.medium.com/a-new-literary-genre-the-algorithmic-autobiography-d387ee05c15c

Now, during COVID – and my respawned cancer – we me and Oriana felt that
this approach was needed more than ever.

First, we started writing articles on newspapers about the fragilities that
were assuming their forms, because of the approach to the disease and to
data and information.
This is the translation of one of them, appeared in Italy on Il Sole24Ore
in April 2020:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1t8I2ejIFC5ibB54pu-4Y-BMmGYiRA4bQSHrSsKv_rXc/edit?usp=sharing

Then, with our research center (HER: She Loves Data https://www.he-r.it/ )
we started to work on this concept systematically.

For example, we couldn't understand how governments and news/information
outlets thought that it would be a good idea to deal with COVID related
data and information in such a violent way: war bulletins, exposing people
to constant spectacles of fear and anxiety.
We're seeing the effects now and we'll see more in the future.

On top of that, we just could not cope with the fact that the models of the
lockdowns enforced by governments all resembled jails and mental asylums.
In all cultures there are beautiful examples of modes of isolations that
uplift instead of smashing down: how are jails and mental asylums more
acceptable than monasteries, hermitages, spiritual retreats?

So we started to unite the two considerations, and produced "new rituals".

Data Meditations:
https://www.he-r.it/project/data-meditations/

Queer, Community AIs:
https://www.he-r.it/queer-data-queer-ai-community-ai-the-importance-of-angel_f-and-iaqos-in-torpignattara-explained-in-a-publication/

New rituals for medicine:
https://www.he-r.it/project/di-protoni-e-dati/

... and more.

This process has created some momentum, and we decided to start to
completely re-model our research center around it:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YUwoq5yLXcHlC5YBelflJQhUZ0cvsU49/view?usp=sharing

And this is where we're at. We founded a new not-for-profit organization
around this concept: Nuovo Abitare (new living) https://abitare.xyz/

We are just beginning this process, and we would really like to receive
comments, feedback and participation.

Kind wishes to all
Salvatore Iaconesi


Salvatore Iaconesi is a robotic engineer, artist and designer. Oriana
Persico is a cyber-ecologist, expert in digital inclusion and
autobiography. The artistic duo Iaconesi/Persico studies the mutations of
human beings and societies due to the advent of data, computation and of
networks and technologies. They founded Art is Open Source and HER: She
Loves Data, the network and research center they use to explore the
relations between psychology, technology and the environment. Together they
wrote Digital Urban Acupuncture (Springer, 2016), La Cura (Codice Editore,
2016), Read/Write Reality (FakePress Publishing, 2011), Romaeuropa
FakeFactory (DeriveApprodi, 2010) e Angel_F: diario di vita di
un’intelligenza artificiale (Castelvecchi, 2009).


-- 
*Art is Open Source *-  https://www.artisopensource.net
*Nuovo Abitare - *https://abitare.xyz/
*Human Ecosystems Relazioni* - https://www.he-r.it/
*Ubiquitous Commons *- http://www.ubiquitouscommons.org
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