Valentina Tanni is an art historian, curator and lecturer. Her research is centered on the relationship between art and technology, with a particular focus on internet culture. She is an adjunct professor of Digital Art at Politecnico University in Milan and of Culture Digitali (Digital Cultures) at NABA. Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome and Milan. She published “Random. Navigando contro mano, alla scoperta dell’arte in rete” (Link editions, 2011) and “Memestetica. Il settembre eterno dell’arte” (Nero, 2020). Since November 2020 she is a member of Rome Quadriennale Foundation’s Board of Directors.

The era of nonsense. Weirdness, absurdism and surrealism in Internet memes. Favoring drift, serendipity, and the free association of images, texts and sounds, the Internet has multiplied our opportunities to encounter – and generate – weirdness and nonsense. By opposing the category of “common sense”, nonsense can acquire a disruptive value and become a form of resistance to an homologating culture, as well as a creative way to exorcise the contradictions of our time. In an era characterized by a profoundly unstable socio-political framework, and a sense of impending doom, the response – especially among young Western people – takes the form of a Dadaist attitude that manifests itself in a spontaneous way, just as a conditioned reflex.