'Love Data' by Monia Ben Hamouda and Michele Gabriele at Alios 16ème Biennale d’Art Contemporain / Théâtre Cravey Pavilion, la Teste-de-Bûch

It is now almost 20 years since the democratization of the internet has transformed the world and our lives: modes of consumption, social relations, circulation of images and information, politics, technology, culture, it is no longer an area that has not been impacted by the digital revolution. Well!

Nevertheless, how did this "virtual" world concretely influence our relationship to reality? How have our inner lives, our imaginations, our eyes changed? How did time, space, and images become intertwined, mixed, and fragmented? How finally does the accumulation of data (this inalienable memory) upset our relationship to otherness?

Of course, historians, sociologists and scientists have studied and are still studying these questions. But what about artists? There is in fact a whole section of the visual arts, all over the world, that has taken these subjects head on. Artists dig, explore and revolve around the multiple facets of the phenomenon to better show the particularisms, underlying tensions and new or established forms of perception that our digital practices suggest. For this 16th edition of the Biennale Alios of la Teste-de-Bûch, entitled "Love Data", I had the ambition to make the panorama (not exhaustive of course) of a number of artistic practices that have, in their creative process or their dissemination purpose, an acute awareness of this alter-digital world. I also wanted to show, by the choice at the same time local and international of the artists present at this biennale, a certain diversity of point of view. Finally, and this is probably the most important, I wanted to show this ability of the human being (and artists in particular) to produce, despite the formalism of the technique, the feeling, the moods, doubt, questioning, sensations and why not love! Human, too human for the machine, that's all the meaning of this edition and this title: Love Data

— Irwin Marchal