A dinner inside a church in Lucca. It is Rachel Lee Hovnanian's work against technological drift.

From Aug. 7 through Sept. 6, Lucca ’s Church of San Cristoforo, in the heart of the Tuscan city, hosts Dinner for Two, a multimedia installation by American artist Rachel Lee Hovnanian (Parkersburg, 1959), whose research focuses on the drifts of new technologies.

Curated by Annalisa Bugliani and Alessandro Romanini, the exhibition starts with the installation created with the intention of stimulating reflections on the “zeitgeist” and the state of human relations and celebrating the power of art to awaken consciences and act as a stimulus and guide in the dark moments of civilization. Dating back to 2012, the installation Dinner for two shows the viewer the consequences of alienation produced by technological devices and increased at this historical juncture, by social distancing. The installation, housed in the nave of the ancient church (which dates back to the 9th century), is declined according to a site-specific dynamic for the exhibition space, as demonstrated in the artist’s recent exhibition at the Southampton Art Center in New York.

The work consists of a sumptuously set table, a symbol of conviviality and the fulcrum of human interactions, where we find diners in the form of a digital video presence and who, despite the ritual sharing of the meal, are immersed in silent isolation interrupted only by the notification sounds of smartphones.

“From the very beginning of her artistic career,” the two curators explain, “Rachel Hovnanian’s work has focused militantly on the drifts provoked by the technological means of communication, on the structural fragilities of society undermined by unbridled hedonism and the widespread narcissism characteristic of our media civilization; phenomena that have deflagrated in a macroscopic way with the recent pandemic and distancing. The American artist, stimulates in visitors an active attitude freed from the passive contemplation characteristic of mass media, bringing to the forefront, once again, the power of art and culture, to guide us through the winters of the spirit and the separation of bodies.”

The exhibition also includes other small works, and the display is intended to illustrate these dynamics, spurring reflections on phenomena amplified by the technological development of mass media and social networks, but already highlighted in prophetic texts such as David Riesman’s 1950 Lonely Crowd and analyzed in essays such as Marshall McLuhan’s epochal 1967 The Medium is the Message or the one the following year by Guy Debord entitled The Society of the Spectacle, which highlights the ability of technological media to exert a very powerful flattery on people that hypnotizes us into a “narcissistic stupor.”

The exhibition can be visited Tuesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 6 p.m. to 11 p.m. Admission is free in compliance with anti Covid regulations such as spacing out and wearing a mask.

A dinner inside a church in Lucca. It is Rachel Lee Hovnanian's work against technological drift.

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