Emilio Vavarella
Emilio Vavarella is a media artist-scholar whose work merges interdisciplinary art practice and theoretical research and is centered around the study of the relationship between humans and technological power. His art practice presents a combination of using new technologies with alternative (non-productive, poetic, dysfunctional) goals in mind, imagining technology’s future effects through the use of speculative fiction, and decontextualizing and misusing technology to reveal its hidden mechanisms.
He holds an M.A. cum laude in Visual Arts from Iuav University of Venice, with study abroad fellowships at Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Tel Aviv and Bilgi University of Istanbul. He received a B.A. cum laude in Visual, Cultural, and Media Studies from the University of Bologna and will begin a PhD in Film and Visual Studies at Harvard University in fall 2016.
Part of his master thesis, entitled Error and Metamorphosis in New Media Art: Strategies and Perspectives of Intellectual Resistance, was presented in 2014 at SIGGRAPH, the leading conference devoted to computer graphics and interactive techniques. Emilio has also been invited to present his work at: ISEA – International Symposium on Electronic Arts (2015 and 2016); the School of the Art Institute of Chicago – IEEE VISAP (2015); Koç University – Expressive2015, Parsons The New School for Design (2013) and more recently at the AMRO Research Lab in Linz. In 2015 his installation MEMORYSCAPES was awarded the prestigious First Prize for Emerging Art of the Francesco Fabbri Prize for Contemporary Art.
His artworks have been exhibited at many of the most prestigious festivals of media arts: Stuttgarter Filmwinter – Festival of Expanded Media (2016); Media Art Biennale (2015); NYEAF New York Electronic Arts Festival (2015); EMAF European Media Art Festival (2014), Japan Media Arts Festival (2014); CultureHub Media Art Festival (2014) and GLITCH Festival (2013). Esteemed venues that have exhibited Emilio’s work include: Villa Manin (2016); Museo Nacional Bellas Artes in Santiago (2015); National Art Center of Tokyo (2014); Jarach Gallery (2014); Eyebeam Art and Technology Center (2013); Boston Cyberarts Gallery (2013); the Museum of Contemporary Art Vojvodina (2013); the Mole Vanvitelliana for the Biennial of the Young Artists from Europe and the Mediterranean (2013); Fondazione Studio Marangoni (2013); the ExpoMuseum of Yeosu (2012); the Shanghai Italian Center (2012); and Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa (2012).
Emilio’s academic writings have been published in major peer-reviewed journals such as Leonardo, The Journal of the International Society of the Arts, Sciences and Technology (MIT Press), Digital Creativity (Routledge), and CITAR Journal – Journal of Science and Technology of the Arts. His writings have also appeared in the book Behind the Smart World: Saving, Deleting and Resurfacing Data produced by the AMRO Research Lab in Linz; in HZ Journal andMnemoscape Magazine, and his contribution for the first curatorial program of the Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Foundation – “A Glitched Definition of Glitch” – was included in the exhibition catalogue A Linking Book (2013). Additionally, he has produced artists books in limited editions, most notably fragments (2015), and the MNEMODRONE Series (2014-ongoing).
His work has been discussed in peer-reviewed journals published by MIT Press and Routledge such as Leonardo, Digital Creativity, and Visual Culture and has been frequently covered by global media outlets such as Wired (American, Italian, and Japanese editions), Le Monde, The Huffington Post, LaRepubblica, El País, BuzzFeed, New York Daily News, Mashable, Yahoo Tech, and Folha De S.Paulo, among others. His work also regularly appears in specialized press, including Artforum, Flash Art, Il Giornale dell’Arte, Interartive, Digicult, Exibart, Interalia Magazine and DIVA – Journal of The Society for Art and Science.
