Beyond Cinema
Third event of the 2025–2026 academic year for the ARCHiVe Online Academy, dedicated to the digital evolution of moving images and our relationship with them. The course Beyond Cinema, curated by Sara Francesca Tirelli with Miriam De Rosa, will explore archives, post-production, artificial intelligence and new audiovisual aesthetics, offering a critical perspective on cinema and contemporary visual practices.
Starting from an analysis of the transformations of the moving image in the digital age, the course aims to explore how technological evolution reshapes both artistic practices and our everyday relationship with images. At the intersection of cinema, art and new technologies, Beyond Cinema signals a shift away from the idea of the finished film towards forms of practice that weave together research, writing, editing and programming, as well as a bridge between pre-cinematic experiences and contemporary audiovisual practices. Central to the course are the construction and reworking of archives, the care of data and visual fragments, which become tools for observing how images are generated, circulate and sediment—and how artistic practice can still open critical spaces within the technologies that produce them.
The course will be held in Italian.
programmE
23 February | Class 1
The first lecture, given by Miriam De Rosa, expands this reflection by examining the increasingly active role of users in producing and reworking images, the aesthetics emerging from the creative use of digital interfaces and the significance of the archive as a dynamic space for rewriting and reinterpretation.
–
If the contemporary moment is one in which we witness a transformation of images—now freed from their frames and embedded in our everyday experience—then the ways in which we approach, work with, and archive images become crucial. Starting from the assumption that, as users of digital technologies with a good degree of media literacy, we can do things with images rather than merely receive and consume them, this session broadens the reflections linked to the paradigm of immersivity and introduces examples of grassroots (and other) creative practices that make use of technology even without major production infrastructures. We will consider the tendency to turn digital interfaces into an aesthetic motif, examining how this occurs and with what outcomes. We will also question the role of the archive, understood not only as a repository of images but as a living space in which stories—and history—can be rewritten.
25 February | Class 2
The second lecture, led by artist and filmmaker Sara Francesca Tirelli, will focus on the analysis of her research and artistic practice, aimed at overcoming the boundaries between film, the visual arts and digital technologies, and on how processes of capturing reality, post-production and AI are reshaping the very notion of film and the visual archive.
–
The artist and filmmaker presents her research at the intersection of cinema, art and new technologies, exploring territories where traditional visual languages intertwine with the possibilities offered by contemporary digital tools. The artist talk focuses on how the recent technological paradigm shift is profoundly transforming the very nature of the moving image, redefining its form, function and modes of experience. Processes of capturing reality, post-production and artificial intelligence become the tools of an artistic practice that interrogates the ways in which our perception organises the visible today. The image is no longer conceived solely as a linear projection on a screen, but takes the form of an immersive and dynamic environment, capable of transcending the limits of the screen and simultaneously spreading across devices, digital platforms, archives and computational infrastructures, opening up new possibilities for interaction and aesthetic experimentation.
Booking
