“Digital PTSD: The Practice of Art and Its Impact on Digital Trauma”

Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea presents the second part of a program of talks, conversations and artworks entitled “Digital PTSD. The Practice of Art and Its Impact on Digital Trauma” developed in the framework of the exhibition Espressioni: The Proposition. 

“Digital PTSD. Part II” is presented at Castello di Rivoli Theatre (free access with museum ticket, booking is essential) and livestreamed on both e-flux and Castello di Rivoli websites (please register here or by clicking the RSVP button at the top of this announcement).

It is counterintuitive, but “Digital PTSD” presents through an online platform a critique of the potential misuse of technologies by proposing an interdisciplinary enquiry into the possibility that a trauma from hyper-digitization may be emerging, at both individual and collective levels. In the context of society’s growing reliance on online technologies and artificial intelligence, “Digital PTSD” questions whether these tools may be sources of psychological distress, undermining physical and mental well-being as well as facilitating the affirmation of a technocracy which ultimately poses a threat to our health and social justice. What are the traumatic consequences of the sudden increase in virtual activities during a period when spaces of aggregation, such as museums, have been in extended lockdown? “Digital PTSD” invites to reflect on screen-based experience, the physical erosion of living matter, the transformation of life into big data and the new digital epistemic regime.

Participants in Part II include: Ed Atkins, artist; Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, artists; Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, director of the museum; Devra Davis, epidemiologist, activist; Irene Dionisio, author, director, visual artist; Aikaterini Fotopoulou, psychodynamic neuroscientist; Vittorio Gallese, cognitive neuroscientist; Vincent Hendricks, philosopher, logician; Catherine Malabou, philosopher; Miao Ying, artist; Otobong Nkanga, artist; Tabita Rezaire, artist, devotee, yogi, doula, soon to be farmer; Legacy Russell, curator, writer. 

The event runs from 3pm to 10pm CEST. 

For further information, the full program, and participants’ biographies please visit the Castello di Rivoli website.

“Digital PTSD. The Practice of Art and Its Impact on Digital Trauma” is a research program initiated and curated by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev with Stella Bottai and Giulia Colletti.

The programs of Castello di Rivoli are supported primarily by Regione Piemonte. This program is also supported by Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo. Institutional funders of Castello di Rivoli are Città di Torino, Città di Rivoli, Fondazione CRT and partners Intesa San Paolo and Gallerie d’Italia of Intesa Sanpaolo.