Fabio Lattanzi Antinori, 2022, Permutations, 144 x 164 x 45.5 cm, LED, Electronics, Extruded Aluminium, data from SEO platforms.
“Tensions between personal gains and corporate profit, desire and surveillance, privacy and the involuntary contribution of our personal information to an unregulated market of behavioural data.”
In Fabio Lattanzi Antinori's recent solo exhibition, the artist alludes to Unicorns, start-ups that have become synonymous with disruptive software, hyper-fast growth, and an income stream very often derived from tracking and monetising data. It grows from his interest in language, the dynamics of power, and the way market values and ideologies permeate and shape our social relations.
Fabio Lattanzi Antinori, 2022, World Seeks Stable Population and Stable Industrial Output per Person and Business as Usual, 53 x 53 cm, Silkscreen Prints, Acrylic on paper, LEDs, electronics.
Fabio Lattanzi Antinori, 2022, European Customer Satisfaction Model, Proposed Customer Satisfaction Model, Standard Customer Satisfaction Model, American Customer Satisfaction Model, 56 x 76 cm, 4 Individual Screen prints, Acrylic on Paper.
Install Shot Chased by Unicorns, Pi Artworks London 2022.
Central to the show is a series of sculptural and printed works comparing Raymond Williams' notion of key words, a tool to understand how “important social and historical processes occur within language” with current digital marketing's calculated use of keywords. Put simply, terms we look for online and which are secretively used to predict our behaviour and then influence it through advertising techniques.
The artist reflects on the unsustainable nature of the current economic model and on the way happiness, co-opted by advertising and brands, can be used to perpetuate a culture of consumption and production. Combining this with the results of a survey designed to understand the psychological consequences of life as a consumer, with a selection of self-help books, podcasts and transcripts from instructional videos, Antinori trains and later asks an AI model to reflect on the nature of happiness.
Fabio Lattanzi Antinori, 2022, Pursuit of a Happy Person, Opera Performance.
In Pursuit of a Happy Person, opera singer Luciana Di Bella responds to Antinori’s artwork, interrogating the relationship between consumerism and happiness, in turn prompting our own consideration of whether “happiness” as a construct can ever truly exist. The piece involves real-time responses to a public survey that asks the question: “How would you describe happiness?”
The answers are then projected onto a screen for Di Bella to sing however she sees fit in terms of expressing the statements.