Michael Obrist
in conversation with
in conversation with
Lorenzo Romito
Hosting the unexpected
Wohngespräche
3. November 2020
Lorenzo Romito
Michael Obrist spricht mit Lorenzo Romito zum Thema "Hosting the unexpected".
Lorenzo Romito (STALKER, Architect, Artist, Activist and Curator)
Hosting the unexpected
The future, which in modern times was proposed on an ideological and deterministic basis, is hypothesized and consequently planned through the algorithmic processing of big data collected by spying on the present in all its aspects, an enormous amount of behavioral data on whose basis they develop probabilistic calculations according to a technological method considered scientific today. A method that is however fallacious above all because it is incapable of grasping the great changes that come just unexpected, changes that have come into reality from the sphere of the possible but not the probable, as the statistical and projective techniques cannot calculate the entire spectrum of the possible but only the small, though very broad, spectrum of the probable. A method with which to effectively predict what is legitimate to expect but not exactly the unexpected. But it is precisely the unexpected, possible but not probable, that in reality can produce a great change in the common perception of the present, especially in a historical era as uncertain as ours, generating, already for this reason alone, spontaneously a perceptual shock in the way of looking at the present and consequently of imagining the future.
Lorenzo Romito is an architect, curator, artist and activist, based in Rome, IT. He is a founding member of STALKER, a laboratory of urban art and research on territory, active in the research in between art, architecture, urban social and environmental studies, and the networked realities.
Lorenzo Romito (STALKER, Architect, Artist, Activist and Curator)
Hosting the unexpected
The future, which in modern times was proposed on an ideological and deterministic basis, is hypothesized and consequently planned through the algorithmic processing of big data collected by spying on the present in all its aspects, an enormous amount of behavioral data on whose basis they develop probabilistic calculations according to a technological method considered scientific today. A method that is however fallacious above all because it is incapable of grasping the great changes that come just unexpected, changes that have come into reality from the sphere of the possible but not the probable, as the statistical and projective techniques cannot calculate the entire spectrum of the possible but only the small, though very broad, spectrum of the probable. A method with which to effectively predict what is legitimate to expect but not exactly the unexpected. But it is precisely the unexpected, possible but not probable, that in reality can produce a great change in the common perception of the present, especially in a historical era as uncertain as ours, generating, already for this reason alone, spontaneously a perceptual shock in the way of looking at the present and consequently of imagining the future.
Lorenzo Romito is an architect, curator, artist and activist, based in Rome, IT. He is a founding member of STALKER, a laboratory of urban art and research on territory, active in the research in between art, architecture, urban social and environmental studies, and the networked realities.
