The Start of a New Digital Venue: The Playground

Along with its student Journal and Portfolio archive, the launch of I’M Firenze Digest is bringing a new key feature to the creative platform of Istituto Marangoni Firenze: its brand-new Exhibition space, a digital venue to host special projects produced within the different areas of the School of Fashion & Art.

by I’MF News Desk. Artworks by Alexandra Konopleva and Chiara Muracciole 

In October 2021, I’M Firenze Digest will present inside its brand-new digital Exhibition platform, “The Playground”, a double-solo show curated by Istituto Marangoni Firenze alumna Elizaveta Reznikova.
Through the notion of games in human culture, “The Playground” brings together two visual artists graduated from Istituto Marangoni Firenze, Alexandra Konopleva and Chiara Muracciole, who accepted the curatorial challenge of playing, over a period of more than two months, the Surrealist game cadavre exquis, updating its possibilities using 3D digital sculptures as the main medium.
According to artists Chiara Muracciole, the medium chosen by the curator brings an opportunity to give “life to the characters through animation processes, which would be impossible if created on paper.” She says, “I think digital adds a new layer to the game, as it’s not just your imagination and collaborative work with another person, but also a dialogue with contemporary technologies and AI.”
The rules of the game are simple and there are no losers or winners.  Also known as exquisite corpse, cadavre exquis is a Surrealist method to assemble a collection of words or images. Each collaborator adds to a composition in sequence, either by following a rule or by being allowed to see only the last element of what the previous person contributed. The name is derived from a phrase that resulted when Surrealists first played the game: “Le cadavre exquis boira le vin nouveau [The exquisite corpse shall drink the new wine].”
For the curator “the idea of using 3D images as the main medium arose from the belief that the century-and-a-half long dominance of lens-based media in art came to an end in the twentieth century, and that the production of art has now returned to the paradigm that existed before the 1850s, or before the spread of photography. Today, images are once again produced by skilled craftsmen, who manipulate reality using graphics and video-editing software.”
Using the website as a natural space, the exhibition creates a direct connection between the viewer and the digital artworks on display, with a new immaterial sculpture gallery to visit here. 

Alexandra Konopleva is an Istituto Marangoni Firenze Alumna. She graduated in Multimedia Arts in 2021.
Chiara Muracciole is an Istituto Marangoni Firenze Alumna. She graduated in Fashion Styling & Creative Direction in
2021. 
Elizaveta Reznikova is an Istituto Marangoni Firenze Alumna. She graduated in Arts Curating in 2021.