Curated by Paola Lagonigro and Laura Leuzzi
Exhibition promoted by Assessorato alla Cultura di Roma Capitale, Azienda Speciale Palaexpo and Fondazione Mattatoio – Città delle Arti
Realized by Azienda Speciale Palaexpo in collaboration with Latitudo
The Abstract Films: a four-part series comprising Yellow Film, Black & White Film, Red Film, and Blue Film (2023–2025) by Chiara Passa, explores the boundary between the real and the virtual, inviting visitors into an interactive and immersive experience at La Pelanda.
The works share a minimalist visual language defined by solid geometric forms and electronic music. Each film has a non-linear, ever-changing structure and offers a different mode of interaction, from manipulating physical objects to AI-driven choices. The narrative breaks apart and reassembles differently each time, combining film, sculpture, and a playful, game-like approach.
The four abstract films grow out of the Roman artist's long-standing research into space, abstraction, and interactivity. At Mattatoio, they enter into direct dialogue with the venue's raw, layered physicality, its time-worn surfaces, metal structures, and irregular volumes become part of the work itself, creating a constant tension between material memory and algorithmic imagination.
This encounter between industrial archaeology and digital abstraction produces a field of forces in which matter, light, and movement continuously reshape one another. Through AI prompts, objects, and interactive devices, visitors are invited to activate a fluid, non-linear narrative, one where the memory of the place interweaves with abstract projections of new and imaginative spaces.
The Mattatoio becomes a computational membrane traversed by algorithmic images, sonic interactions, and abstract architectures in constant transformation.
The Four Films
Each artwork offers a distinct mode of audience interaction:
Yellow Film: a narrative remix using thirty interactive envelopes, set to a suspenseful electronic soundtrack.
Black & White Film: narrative manipulation through thirty sculptural objects and sequences, accompanied by minimal techno.
Blue Film: interaction via AI prompts and remixed sound effects, guiding a dynamic and ever-changing experience.
Red Film: AI prompts combined with sonic and chromatic interactions that continuously redirect the narrative flow.
Together, the four films form an immersive, participatory ecosystem in which architecture expands, reflects, and dissolves into digital abstraction. The audience becomes part of a new emotional map, where urban memory, industrial archaeology, and algorithmic imagination coexist in the same space.
Chiara Passa is an Italian artist whose work explores immersive digital architectures and spatial transformation through augmented reality, virtual reality, and interactive audiovisual environments. Active in media art since the late 1990s, her practice investigates the relationship between physical and virtual space, developing perceptual ecosystems in which algorithmic images, digital architectures, and interactivity continuously redefine the viewer's experience. Her work has been shown internationally at galleries, festivals, conferences, museums, and institutions including the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York), ZKM My work has been internationally exhibited from galleries, festivals, conferences, museums and institutions, including: «RomaEuropa Festival» Ex Mattatoio, Roma (2025); «META-PAN» Palazzo Arte Napoli (2024); «Object (RE) Oriented Reality» Solo show at Panke gallery Berlin (2023); «Still Life» Solo show at Zabludowicz Collection Museum, London (2021-2022); «MADATAC XI» Bienal Virtual de Arte de los Nuevos Medios Digitales, Madrid (2020); «Object Oriented Space». Solo show at Museum MLAC Rome (2019); «Virtual Natives – Sculpture», Roehrs and Boetsch gallery, Zurich (2019); «Oslo Night show», HEK Museum Basel (2018); «InSonic» immersive art show, ZKM | Center for Art and Media Museum, Karlsruhe (2017); «The Ways of something». Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2016-2017); «From live architecture: Dimensioning», mostra personale Furtherfield gallery, London (2016); «Off Biennale Cairo» (2015-2016); «ISEA Disruption» exhibition at Vancouver Art Gallery. (2015); «Morphos», Vortex Dome - immersive media, Los Angeles (2014); «Media Art Histories IV - RENEW» conference, Riga. (2013). «FILE | Electronic Language International Festival», São Paulo. (2011); «Electrofringe - festival of new media art», Newcastle, Australia. (2008); «BizArtCenter», Shanghai (2005); «MACRO – Museo d'Arte Contemporanea», Roma (2004), 11° Biennale of young artists of Europe and the Mediterranean countries: «Cosmos - a sea of art», Athens. (2003); XIV Quadriennale. Palazzo Reale, Napoli (2003); «48a Biennale di Venezia» (with Oreste group), Venezia (1999); «Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa», Venezia (1999).