Through the use of immersive media and experimental filmmaking, her work explores artistic-philosophical theories on post-anthropocentrism and new materialism, with the interest in providing alternative perspectives on ourselves and our environment. Flavia’s work has been screened and awarded at multiple national and international festivals, among others Ars Electronica, DA Z – Digital Arts Zurich, ADAF.
How are you doing today?
I’m doing well, thanks! I am really excited to show some of my works at the PARALLEL VIENNA art fair next week. I am also starting to work on a new project, an interactive media art installation dealing with the topics of body, identity and digital inclusion. The project has been founded by the city of Vienna and should be completed at the beginning of the next year.
How can you describe your art in a few sentences?
I love to experiment with different media at the intersection point between digital and physical worlds. My works range from experimental filmmaking to interactive and VR installations, and game as a medium. Having a background in architecture, space and spatial relations between bodies and environment constantly play a crucial role throughout all my artistic work and research. All my works explore post-anthropocentric and new materialist relationships between bodies, environments and societies, combining philosophical, artistic and architectural theories with the exploration of new technological possibilities. In this regard, I am particularly interested in the way how technology actively influences the way we perceive and experience ourselves and how we relate to our surroundings.
Sympoietic Bodies 
Sympoietic Bodies
What technique do you prefer to use?
Even though the final outcomes of all my works are digital, I like to experiment with both analog and digital techniques. In my experimental short films I like to work with physical props, researching different materials and defining their function in relation to the concept. At the same time, digital techniques play a very important role, as for example the use of motion capturing, point cloud technologies and computer-generated animations, with whom I have already worked on multiple projects.
The challenge for me is always to find the right technology which can transform my vision to reality. Instead of starting to think about which technology or technique to use, my approach is first to define the concept and the vision of the piece, and from there to start visualizing through sketches what kind of effect and meaning I want to achieve. Only afterwards I start thinking of the technical realization of the project in order to reach the desired result.
PARALLEL VIENNA 2022. Room Number?
Building A, 3rd Floor, Room 303. Gallery Statement: ROOM OF FINE ARTS
What are you exhibiting at PARALLEL VIENNA 2022?
At this year’s edition of PARALLEL VIENNA I will be presenting works from “Sympoietic Bodies”, an artistic-philosophical project and hybrid short film completed in 2020. The work explores the disruption of the boundaries between the human body and its social and physical surroundings and arises from my interest in combining post-anthropocentric theories by the American feminist scholars Donna Haraway and Anna Tsing with the exploration of new technological possibilities in the experimental and animation film context. In “Sympoietic Bodies” everything has been recorded from the physical world through the use of different technologies (motion capturing, photogrammetry, point cloud scan, kinect sensor, and digital camera) and then further elaborated and manipulated in the digital. Animation is here used as a sociopolitical tool, where the hybrid use of computer-generated animations and digital shootings aim to provide contrasting perspectives on ourselves and our environment, while creating a continuous interplay between an anthropocentric and a post-anthropocentric point of view.
I have been exhibiting a very selected collection of 9 prints from “Sympoietic Bodies” in my solo exhibition at ROOM OF FINE ARTS in Graz from November 2021 to January 2022 and I am very excited to represent the Gallery at this year’s PARALLEL VIENNA art fair. The exhibition will consist of the 9 prints, 8 original drawings, as well as the projection of the short film.
What message do viewers will have seen in your works at the exhibition?
“Sympoietic Bodies” experiments a post-anthropocentric scenario related to a nowadays society, where the human body gets decentered and deconstructed in its whole. By seeing the exhibited works the visitors should start questioning their own bodies as hybrid assemblages, their relations with others and with our surroundings, challenging the anthropocentric perspective of how we look at things in our everyday life.
I hope that visitors will leave the exhibition with a new awareness on these topics and that they will start looking at our hybrid realities from different and various perspectives.
Which three words come to your mind right now?
Entanglement, digital inclusion, and spatial immersion. I think these three terms are the perfect synthesis of what I love to explore and experiment with, and the message I want to transmit with my work. Entanglement between body and environment, natural and artificial, physical and digital, and which merges in hybrid assemblages whose boundaries are in a continuous process of becoming. This is one of the key aspects of, for example, my experimental short films “Sympoietic Bodies” and “Nexum”. Digital inclusion as a place where to build new forms of identity that are more equal and inclusive for everybody. This is the theme of my currently in development, interactive installation “Beyond My Skin”. And spatial immersion as a fusion of subject and object, where the visitor becomes able to actively influence the perception of herself and her environment – as in the exploration of virtual reality and game as medium in our Startup Immerea.
Flavia Mazzanti – www.flaviamazzanti.com, www.instagram.com/flavia_mazz, www.immerea.com
PARALLEL VIENNA takes place for the 10th time in Vienna from 6th of September to 11th of September 2022 and sticks to its approach of using temporarily vacant buildings as a presentation platform for contemporary art. Location 2022: Semmelweisklinik, Hockegasse 37, 1180 Vienna. www.parallelvienna.com
