Casanova Expanded
Casanova Expanded is a video installation by Sara Francesca Tirelli, created in collaboration with the ARCHiVe Digital Centre of Fondazione Giorgio Cini, with Hiroaki Yamane. The artist has drawn on the digital heritage of art collections, photographic and documentary archives, books, and historical objects, processing—also through AI—over one terabyte of data.
Casanova’s journeys across Europe form the narrative thread that unfolds through a digital map, expanded with tableaux vivants depicting the places of his life, his interests, encounters, and the visions of his era.
The installation is inspired by pre-cinema and the tradition of 18th-century magic lanterns, evoking the esoteric dimension that fascinated both Casanova and his time. By elaborating archival images with AI and gaussian splatting, as well as portraits and illustrations from books on pyrotechnics, electricity, astrology, mathematics, and the Kabbalah, Tirelli guides viewers into the 18th century—into the hidden recesses of an explosive and unconventional culture.
The film was produced for Casanova e l’Europa. Opera in più atti, an exhibition project by Fondazione Giorgio Cini, with scenographic collaboration by the Fondazione Teatro La Fenice di Venezia.
