Chiara Di Leone & Luiza Crosman
The human face, argue Luiza Crosman and Chiara Di Leone, is a design project. Far from being the innocent, natural vehicle of human individual expression, the face has turned into an operationalized feature by larger, automatized systems. In other words, faces and bodies are becoming critical infrastructures. The widespread use of masks as key features to make our body properly acceptable and safe, as well as contagion tracking apps, datasets and models during the COVID-19 pandemic have only accelerated such a process. In the meantime, unable or unwilling to meet in real life, we supply our data bodies to extractivist platforms and access control systems, from access to our private devices to online video platforms connected to nearly monopolistic user profiling systems. In their research proposition, Face as Infrastructure, Di Leone and Crosman investigate what are the social and political challenges of this epocal shift in the centuries-old notion of face and body.
Artist and writer, Luiza Crosman's work spans installations, speculative design, education and institutional dynamics with special interest in infrastructural methodologies. She explores the feedback between forms of human organization, new technologies and global and planetary systems. Crosman has exhibited and developed projects with Casa do Povo, aarea, 33rd São Paulo Biennial, WIELS, CAC Vilnius, SFMoma, amongst others. Recent texts have been published in Passepartout Journal, TANK, Strelka Mag, Arts of the Working Class.
Chiara Di Leone is a writer and researcher on economic narratives, anticipatory governance, and climate interventions, among other things. Her essays appear in several publications including TANK, KALEIDOSCOPE, Strelka Mag, and RealReview. Chiara regularly advises institutions through design research - clients include BBC R&D and Serpentine Galleries.
► On 18 March 2022 - See full programme here
UPDATE: Due to the dramatic circumstances after the violent and unlawful invasion of Ukraine by Russia, Chiara Di Leone will not be able to join the conference.