CURATED BY GEORGINA GASPARIS AND URS STAHEL

Last year, Emidio Battipaglia (*1984, IT) and Augustin Lignier (*1995, FR) were selected by an international jury as the winners of Vontobel’s A New Gaze sponsorship prize for young contemporary art, an award endowed with CHF 20,000. Around 70 applicants from Europe were invited to submit a project on the topic of “Community.” The winning projects by the two artists, who have master’s degrees in photography from ECAL in Lausanne, will now be showcased at a public exhibition in Zurich that opens on Thursday, May 23, 2024. In an interactive installation, Battipaglia will use plants and AI to explore the connection between humans, nature, and technology, while Lignier will present a social experiment on non-verbal communication and community-building. In addition to the prize money and the exhibition, the winners are also rewarded with an artist’s publication.

The Italian artist Emidio Battipaglia is developing an interactive installation that involves plants and AI technology. This technology captures how the plants respond to their environment (e.g., changes in temperature, movements and sounds made by people), while projecting new and unexpected images into the space in real time. Synaptic Dialogues explores how humans, technology, and the environment interact to create a sustainable future. Battipaglia thereby highlights the transformative potential of interconnected relationships and emphasizes the need for us to all pull work together to make our world more sustainable. By creating novel communities, Battipaglia’s work contributes to fostering a collective sense of belonging and shared goals: This is of great significance in times of global challenges. Synaptic Dialogues invites us to reflect on these complex interrelationships and encourages us to think more broadly about community and responsibility. Emidio Battipaglia (*1984) is an interdisciplinary artist who studied photography at ECAL in Lausanne and at Edinburgh Napier University. He lives and works in Milan.

Wink Piece by Augustin Lignier is a social experiment on non-verbal communication and community-building. Drawing on the dynamic nature of digital interactions, he explores the parallels and differences between digital and physical behavior. The French artist took to the streets of Paris, where he winked at passersby and recorded how they reacted. This act turned into a performance, with people’s reactions ranging from returning the wink, to ignoring him or even refusing to be part of the artwork. He documents his findings from these interactions in a spatial installation. What was originally conceived as a playful exploration evolved into a profound social experiment that significantly changed the artist’s understanding of present-day society. By focusing on the subtle nuances of interpersonal communication, the project also sheds light on the complex relationships and dynamics within our modern age. Augustin Lignier (*1995) studied photography at ECAL in Lausanne and art at Beaux-Arts de Paris. He lives and works in Paris.