In collaboration with GIV 
Maximum capacity of 30, first come first serve!

The tensions we experience in the digital age, between our presence and the technological systems that permeate our lives, are part of a long history of how we have thought about the centrality of human beings. The Renaissance enthroned humans as the measure of all things, that is, as the epistemic and ontological centre. Today, in the post-human and hyperconnected era, that centrality is shifting, and humans constitute merely a node within a network of expansive biological, technological and material networks with diffuse boundaries that generate contradictory dynamics. Digital technologies, for instance, facilitate social interaction among people with functional diversity, but at the same time, they create a space in which individual responsibility is diluted, encouraging cyberbullying and the exploitation of the most vulnerable individuals. Similarly, although these technologies operate as tools of visibility for oppressed populations, the digital footprint we produce on a daily basis is transformed into data, which generates a personalized algorithmic bubble that reduces our critical decision-making capacity and turns the digital experience into a commodity.

Tensions presents an experimental video program that articulates diverse perspectives on human interaction with technology and virtual environments. The eight selected videos offer a journey from post-war techno-utopian optimism to the apocalyptic disenchantment of techno-junk, exploring tensions between surveillance, vulnerability, memory, body and simulacrum. This programme invites us to reflect on how technology intertwines with our needs, values and capabilities, and to imagine what it means to redefine the “human scale” in the digital age.