Artists in residence

Nicolas Maigret is an artist, curator, and initiator of DISNOVATION.ORG, a research collective set up in Paris in 2012, whose core members include Maria Roszkowska (PL), Nicolas Maigret (FR), and Baruch Gottlieb (CA). 

DISNOVATION.ORG works at the interface between contemporary art, research, and hacking, and composes tailor-made teams for each investigation together with academics, activists, engineers, and designers. More specifically their recent artistic provocations seek to empower Post Growth imaginaries and practices by challenging the widespread faith that ‘economic growth’ and ‘technological fixes’ will solve the ecosystemic disruptions they produced in the first place. 

They recently co-edited A Bestiary of the Anthropocene with Nicolas Nova, an atlas of anthropic hybrid creatures, and The Pirate Book, an anthology on media piracy.

DISNOVATION.ORG’s works have been exhibited, performed, published, and reviewed worldwide, including at the Centre Pompidou (Paris), transmediale (Berlin), the Museum of Art and Design (New York), Palais de Tokyo (Paris), FILE (São Paulo), ZKM (Karlsruhe), Strelka Institute (Moscow), ISEA (Hong Kong), Elektra (Montreal), China Museum of Digital Arts (Beijing), and the Chaos Computer Congress (Hamburg). Their work has been featured in Forbes, Vice, Wired, Motherboard, Libération, Die Zeit, Arte TV, Next Nature, Hyperallergic, Le Temps, Neural.it, Digicult, Gizmodo, Seattle Weekly, torrentfreak.com, and Filmmaker Magazine among others.

Valentina Maini, born in Bologna in 1987, is an Italian writer and translator. She holds an International Doctorate in Comparative Literature (Bologna-Paris) and is the translator of several French and English authors, such as Sophie Lambda, Emma Clit, Emmanuelle Richard, Karen Taïeb and Louise Kennedy.

Valentina Maini is also the author of the novel La mischia (Bollati Boringhieri, 2020) and the collection of poems Casa rotta (Arcipelago Itaca, 2016) for which she won the Anna Osti prize. Her short stories have appeared in numerous Italian and foreign magazines and anthologies. She herself translated into French her report dedicated to obsessive-compulsive disorder, Généralement, ce qui s’altère en premier, ce sont les couleurs, published in October 2021 by Editions la Variation.

Her residency at the Cité internationale des arts is for her the opportunity to work on French comics, focusing on non-fiction titles capable of addressing complex themes such as feminism and mental health. In the context of this project, Valentina Maini intends to consider the unique capacity of comics to convey in an effective, accessible and entertaining way issues that tend to discourage many readers. Her ambition today is to find a title that can address these delicate subjects in an intelligent, moving and original way.

Valentina Maini is recipient of the Farnese Grant for young translators.