“The Internet is an alien life form,” declared David Bowie in 1999: today, the prophecy has come true, and our digital tools have become magical portals with mysterious properties, windows that overlook a dimension bordering between dream and reality.

Beyond the screen mirrors we comfortably carry in our pockets, we have discovered a region haunted by strange presences—sometimes threatening, sometimes surreal, occasionally fascinating, and other times nonsensical. These are the same presences that, over the past fifteen years, have shaped what we now recognize as “internet aesthetics,” that ensemble of subcultures, popular narratives, and visual and auditory languages through which the alien entity has finally revealed itself to humanity. The net then reveals itself for what it truly is: a threshold as physical as it is mental, where bizarre things happen, time is warped, and we find ourselves inhabiting an intermediate dimension, a territory that is “neither here nor there.”

Valentina Tanni is an art historian and curator. She is interested in the relationship between art and technology, with a special focus on internet cultures.

COLOPHON

Valentina Tanni Exit Reality

Translated by: Anna Carruthers

Editorial coordinators: Janez Fakin Janša, Lorenzo Micheli Gigotti Design: Lola Giffard-Bouvier Cover image: DRake Cappi (CarrotwithaK), Hallway of Hues, 2021

Published by: NERO Editions and Aksioma – Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana In the frame of the project .expub

Rome, May 2024 | © Valentina Tanni, NERO, Aksioma