.ART

Auronda Scalera and Dr. Alfredo Cramerotti are among the most innovative curatorial duos working at the intersection of art and new technologies today. Their practice is defined by an ongoing exploration of how art, technology, and society interact and shape each other, whether through the blockchain, NFTs, or immersive digital experiences. As curators of major projects like Art Dubai Digital 2024 and co-curators of the exhibition Web to Verse, they bring a deep understanding of the evolution of digital art from its earliest stages to contemporary practices. They are committed to supporting diversity, inclusion, and a more equitable future for digital art, ensuring that voices from the Global South and marginalised communities are included in the conversation.

Curatorial philosophy of Auronda Scalera and Alfredo Cramerotti is centred on the concept of co-creation. They believe that artworks, especially those in the digital realm, should foster interaction between the audience and the work, transforming passive viewers into active participants. This is particularly evident in their approach to curating exhibitions that utilise advanced technologies to encourage audience engagement, blurring the boundaries between creator, spectator, and the artwork itself. For Scalera and Cramerotti, co-creation mirrors the shifts happening in our digital culture, where the line between the physical and virtual, human and machine, increasingly dissolves.

Collaboration is at the heart of their practice, not just with artists but with each other. As a curatorial duo, they merge their different visions and approaches, drawing on their complementary strengths to create cohesive and dynamic projects. 

.ART (denoted by the initials of  our staff writer DK) has recently talked to Auronda Scalera and Dr. Alfredo Cramerotti about their curatorial practice and on-going projects. 

DK: How have you ended up in the realm of digital art, new media art? 

AS: I studied digital art almost 20 years ago at the time when no one cared about digital art. I was one of the founders of an art gallery in Rome, and as the first exhibition, I organised an exhibition with Olga Tobreluts, who was the Helen of Troy with camera. It was my first exhibition in the realm of digital art. And then I started to work with contemporary art, because for me, contemporary art and digital art are not detached. Six or seven years ago we met with Alfredo, talked about digital art, and discovered some similarities. So we started to work together on the crossroad of digital art, new media art and new technology. 

AC: Originally I come from the field of design. I studied design, retail design and then I went into media production back in the 90s: TV, radio production, early websites. Later on I went into curating. I was building my career for over 20 years. Auronda and I were talking a lot about early experiments in computer related art, women working with mathematical patterns from the 60s–70s, experiments in art and technology at MIT. And we found we’ve had this very similar passion. There was a precise moment in which we connected—it happened when we were talking about women artists. The whole scene was dominated by male artists. Nine of the ten NFT artists were male. We questioned—why are women artists not visible? Personally we knew a lot of women artists, who were creating amazing works. We started to interview women artists we know and we started to publish them on a beta-website. 

DK: Currently it seems like you are very much focused on the Global South. Does it have to do something with the fact that the  Global South is indeed right now sort of like a mecca for digital art and festivals? 

AS: In my opinion, there are diverse factors: for example, the main cities where we are working are Doha, Dubai, Riyaad. They are in a process of constant change. Dubai is a massive city, which didn’t really exist 20 years ago. There will be so many new buildings, new facilities, and new museums in the region. There are a lot more requests for digital art as well. 

AC: It is also a necessary change of perspective. I ran a museum for 11 years in the UK, and I decided to take a new position as a museum director in Doha precisely because I was ready to shift my perspective. After working in Europe for 20-25 years, it was important to put yourself in another situation: to have other perspectives, to raise different questions through exhibition making or text writing. Global South is more or less 75% of the world population. 

DK: I would like to talk more about your curatorial practice and philosophy behind it. How do you approach the relationship between societal changes, technology, artistic expression. What are the main domains you are diving in, theme wise? 

AS: There is a concept that we have recently explored—we realised that while organising exhibitions, these things happen all the time. It’s about the concept of co-creation. It’s about the interaction of the public with the artworks. The artworks are interactive, so the audience is not a passive viewer.

AC: Co-creation is a big theme for us. Obviously it’s not new, as it comes from participatory art and happenings in the 60s. With the development of art and advanced technology the idea of having the audience generating not only meaning, but actually the work itself, in collaboration with the artist, creating an environment where the art can happen without the audience wouldn’t happen, is more prominent. A lot of the artists we are working with are creating a situational environment where things can happen. It has taken a more centred position in the digital realm. There are a couple of recurring themes: one is the body and the digital, the body and the technology, another one—how to reinscribe the text elements like poetry, for instance, into the realm of digital. One more theme is spirituality, the whole holistic approach to using technology as a way to recenter yourself.  

We don’t follow specifically one theme or another, or one approach or another. We work on developing ideas, statements, and narratives. Maybe there is an unconscious desire to reconnect the physical and the virtual.

DK: You were talking about co-creation, but let’s also talk about co-curation. How do you build the dialogue in your curatorial duo?

AS: We still have fun working together, we talk a lot. Even if we have different visions, we find a way to merge these different visions together. 

AC: We do have complementary skills. We have different working systems: Auronda works at night, I work during the day. To work as a duo is the same as to work as a collective. Sometimes in order to make it work, you have to somehow take a step back, to allow the other person to bring forward certain ideas.