Extimacy. Art, intimacy and technology

Inside the immense flow of data exchange, the new technologies have
facilitated an interdependency between the spheres of what is private
and what is public, between interior and exterior, leading us to reveal,
in an increasingly natural manner, our experiences, thoughts and
feelings, enlarging the circle of intimacy to the point of sharing our
inner life with the invisible, abstract audience of Internet users.
Things personal become collective, things belonging to others become our
own and intimacy is no longer something that is preserved and kept in
our innermost circles, but something that is projected in all directions
in an eccentric movement. Thus intimacy turns into extimacy, to use the
term created by Jacques Lacan to define the existence, within the most
intimate sphere of the I, of a “foreign body”, that which is external to
the individual and with which one identifies.
 
“Extimacy. Art, intimacy and technology” is a group digital art
exhibition which puts forward a proposal that spectators reflect on
these concepts through the presentation of works by recognised artists
from the international scene. Interactive installations, mainly, that
involve spectators in what is active participation with the work, which
never ceases to be a piece with its own identity, the fruit of the firm
artistic background of creators who combine art and technology in their
work. In an era in which the user adopts an active role in the diffusion
and manipulation of information on web
2.0, in art, too, a change in roles between spectator and work is
taking place, with interactive art as the best expression of this new
paradigm. The works of some great names from this sphere, such as
Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer or Paul
Sermon, for instance, are combined with the creations of promising
artists like Gazira Babeli, Clara Boj and Diego Díaz, Gregory Chatonsky,
Carlo Zanni or Martin John Callanan. All of them exhibit the multiple
facets a concept as complex and at the same time as simple as extimacy
can present, from different angles and with diverse intentions.