Massimo Contrasto in Carrara

A new project planned for “COM.UNITÀ DELL’ARTE DIFFUSA” (abbreviated as C.O.M., an acronym for City Open Museum): the diffuse art project (transmedia, multimodal, interactive), led by the Academy of Fine Arts of Carrara, which brings together Italian regions, academic, and cultural institutions, with the aim of promoting Italy’s artistic heritage and transforming cities, villages, and squares into a single shared creative space. From immersive and multidimensional environments to new possible worlds, the revitalization of disused urban spaces, and visual explorations, here are the upcoming events in Carrara.

The Academy of Fine Arts in Carrara presents Massimo Contrasto, a project curated by Clemente Pestelli, Lorenzo Antei, and Sara Molho, comprising two study days, an exhibition, and a multimedia publication, dedicated to the figure of Massimo Cittadini (1959–2024), artist, professor, and one of the founders of the School of New Technologies in Art.

A year and a half after his passing, the initiative serves as a space for research and reflection on one of the most significant figures in the Italian interactive art scene, capable of crossing and redefining the boundaries between artistic practices, technological experimentation, and critical thought.

At the heart of the project is a two-day study session on May 11 and 12, conceived as an open forum for dialogue among scholars, artists, and students. The panels will explore themes ranging from the genealogies of media activism to the political and relational dimensions of interactivity and issues related to the preservation of digital art. The conference will also be accessible remotely and will include an experiment in broadcasting, VJing, and archiving developed in collaboration with THE VOID, an expanded publishing platform promoted by the Institute of Network Cultures in Amsterdam. In this context, the media dimension is not limited to transmission but becomes an integral part of the construction of discourse and its memory.

Alongside the conference, the exhibition at the Ex Paretra venue—opening on May 11 and running through May 31—offers a broader reconstruction of the context in which Cittadini’s work took shape, situating it within the electronic and media scene of the 1990s and 2000s, with particular attention to the Florentine scene and DIY practices. The historical works are thus presented not as isolated episodes but as part of a cultural ecosystem made up of experimentation, collectives, independent circuits, and hybrid practices spanning art, music, and technology. In this sense, the reactivation of the works interrogates technological memory and its modes of transmission.

The project also extends to the creation of a multimedia publication that will bring together contributions from the panels, interviews, archival materials, and documentation of the works and practices activated during the event. Conceived as an expanded platform, the publication aims to convey the complexity of Cittadini’s work and the context in which it developed, continuing over time the research process initiated by the event.

Together, these three levels—study days, exhibition, and publication—form a unified framework that does not merely restore a memory but reactivates it, relating it to the present. Cittadini’s work thus emerges as a fundamental node for reinterpreting the transformations of interactive art in Italy and for questioning, today, the relationship between technology, participation, and imagination.

With Massimo Contrasto, the Academy of Fine Arts in Carrara opens a workspace that intertwines research, education, and production, reaffirming a vision of art as a living, collective, and constantly evolving practice.