Arianna Forte: Casting a Spell in Computational Regimes

Curator Arianna Forte presents the outcomes of her year-and-a-half research project, reflecting on the cultural and existential transformations shaped by data and computational systems—phenomena that have redefined our global presence and revealed new forms of domination. Forte’s research investigates how these phenomena are imagined, processed, and resisted—particularly through artistic practices that employ witchcraft and magical thinking as tools to confront and subvert techno-scientific paradigms.

Drawing on the work of anthropologist Ernesto De Martino, these contemporary ritual practices act as cultural tools for protection or redemption within a collapsing universe of meaning. They respond to entropic crises that manifest at every level of experience—from pervasive digital infrastructures to biomedical engineering, ecological collapse, and the surveillance logics of late capitalism.

The lecture explores a range of artistic practices that generate rituals of resistance to computational regimes and informational entropy. Rather than stylistic coherence, these works share a deep engagement with esoteric tools and strategies, embedded within the languages and complexities of techno-scientific systems.

From cyberwitches to biohacker covens, artists today reclaim ritual as an anti-capitalist gesture—embodying feminist, ecological, and communal struggles. Within this context, Forte introduces the concept of Magic Materialism: a proposal for a new trans*feminist epistemology grounded in incantation, agency, and interspecies connection.


Arianna Forte is an independent curator and researcher based in Rome. Her practice explores the intersections of contemporary art, science, and technology, with a focus on how these fields can create new spaces for critical inquiry and social imagination. Her work is rooted in an intersectional and transfeminist approach, emphasizing collaborative, performative, and site-specific methodologies that engage diverse communities and non-specialist audiences. In 2021, she founded ERINNI, a curatorial platform exploring the intersections of science, technology, and gender politics through a feminist and experimental lens. Her recent research delves into the political and poetic dimensions of emerging technologies, focusing on computational rituals, cyber witchcraft, and magical materialism as anti-hegemonic practices of resistance and care. Since 2016, she has been part of the international collective Witches Are Back, engaging with feminist techno-politics and digital disobedience.


✹ Saturday 27 September, 14:30 @ Cultural Incubator, Koroška cesta 18