From one chapter to the next, the participants are invited to explore the potential of these platforms. They are invited to narrate, interpret and document their work using digital tools. Rather than positioning the virtual as a substitute for reality, UNBOXING seeks to engage with its codes, subvert its lexicon, and generate a place where new encounters, questions, and tales can unfold.

UNBOXING slides from analyzing the relationship between artist, artwork, and virtuality to rethinking the very concept of digital space. Within this “programmed” field, the content is fed by the virtual environment itself and by its inner limits and assets : accessibility, temporality, (in)visibility, erasure, contamination, perception and attention.

Transcending the opposition between reality and virtuality, UNBOXING opens up the discussion about the use of digital technology, and its impact. The idea is to explore a porous terrain, a terrain of confluences, a terrain that challenges established roles (or otherwise). The goal is once again to use the digital medium by “sidestepping” it, by analyzing its impact in order to contextualize it, in the face of a possible legacy.

On the website, the project becomes an evolving archive where information branches out and proliferates. We explore the idea of an archaeology of the present, of the ruins or relics that make up our personal and collective memory.

UNBOXING generates new questions thanks to the reactions of artists, curators, poets and creative thinkers who use a medium that is never fixed and whose future cannot be predicted.

​Anna Donà, Ombeline de Nombel (trad. Juliet Powys)