Flavia Mazzanti: Beyond My Skin

Opening: Fri 01.03., 19h | MQ Raum D

Since 2019, Flavia Mazzanti has been researching and exploring the relationship between hybrid bodies and their physical and social environments in her artistic practice. Through the use of immersive media, interactive installations, and experimental filmmaking, she often engages with artistic philosophical theories of post-anthropocentrism and new materialism, with an interest in offering alternative perspectives on ourselves and our environment.
Her latest project, Beyond My Skin (2023), is an interactive installation and live performance that explores the themes of identity and digital inclusion in a post-anthropocentric context. The project creates a phygital space where visitors can experience a new form of self-awareness and representation outside of traditional binary and societal portrayals (avatars). In the interactive installation, visitors do not physically touch each other but interact in their abstract virtual bodies generated in real time, exploring together the hybrid relationship between their physical bodies and their digital representation. They investigate something as physical as the feeling of “touch” and its meaning in the digital realm. Within this context, Flavia is interested in exploring themes of embodiment and different ways of experiencing the presence and absence of the sensation of “touch”, challenging visitors to reconsider their understanding of corporeality and digital existence.
In its adapted, non-interactive version at ASIFAKEIL, the project presents different animations recorded in real-time with two performers, here shown in an installative and nonlinear manner, emphasizing the pursuit for connections in our seemingly disconnected world.

A project by: Flavia Mazzanti

Realized by: Immerea
Concept and artistic direction: Flavia Mazzanti

Project Management, design and installation: Manuel Bonell
Performers: Olivia Hild, Imani Rameses

Sound: Brootworth
Technical Artist: Tobias Mayer

Programming: Catherine Joy Calupas, Michael Bonell
Realized with the support of: the City of Vienna and the Austrian Ministry of the Arts, Culture, the Civil Service and Sport (BMKÖS)

Flavia Mazzanti (ITA/BRA, *1994) is a Vienna based artist and entrepreneur in the field of virtual reality and digital media, with a background in architecture. Through the use of immersive media, interactive installations, and experimental filmmaking, her work explores artistic-philosophical concepts on post-anthropocentrism, new materialism, body and identity with the interest in providing alternative perspectives on ourselves and our environment. Flavia graduated with distinction at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, receiving the Gustav Peichl Award for architectural drawing and the Würdigungspreis for artistic work. Her works have been shown and awarded at multiple national and international exhibitions and film festivals – among others the Ars Electronica Festival (AT), DA Z – Digital Arts Festival Zurich (CH), Museum Kunst Haus Wien (AT), ADAF – Athens Digital Arts Festival (GR), m|i|mo – Museum of the moving image (PT). Flavia is also the co-founder of Immerea – an interactive media company focusing on the development of VR games and virtual installations – co-organizer of XRVienna, and active as university lecturer and speaker at national and international symposiums and festivals. She is listed on the Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe list of 2023.