Artists Nicola Genovese
Date June 20th to July 31st 2025
Curator Francesco Urbano
Venue atrium DURAZZI, Via Rosolino Pilo 14, Milan
In a post-capitalist — and perhaps post-war — Europe, the CEO of a digital corporation unveils a new product called Warp: a service that allows users to manipulate the space-time continuum and access a new Lebensform. It promises to dissolve nostalgia and the ambiguous passions that color the future, folding them into the fabric of a never-ending present.
Through an interplay of monologues, choreography, and live music, Desireless reveals the masks, codes, and emotions of a semi-privileged humanity caught between the ruins of a late-imperial world, the bondage of a technocratic hell, and the fantasy of a biomedical Nirvana.
In creating Desireless, Nicola Genovese collaborated with artists Dustin Kenel, Patricia Meier, Dauen Park, Maria Sabato, Thembeka Sincuba, the goth rock band They Die, the musician Magda Drozd (Sopraterra), and various artificial intelligence software. A critical text by Francesco Urbano Ragazzi is integrated into the staging in the form of a multiple-choice questionnaire, which will be handed out to the audience before the performance.
Nicola Genovese is an artist born in Venice and currently based in Zurich. Working across sculpture, performance, video, and musical projects, his practice explores the aesthetics of masculinity in Western societies. Reflecting on his own identity as an Italian who emigrated to Switzerland, the artist often plays the role of the punk or the jester to explore power dynamics between cultures and social classes.
