The “Digital Refuge“: a new exhibition space inside an anti-aircraft tunnel. A place dedicated to the promotion of digital art, where architecture, design, photography, cinema and literature also interact with each other. A contemporary space where creativity can be explored through the current language of technology.

It was the studio that reconfigured the 33-meter tunnel after a major recovery operation Arche Associati. Therefore, a space of 165 square meters opened to the public, conceived as a versatile structure dedicated to welcoming and organizing exhibitions, events, presentations, but also debates, lectures or simple dialogues. Therefore, a place designed for constant and always dynamic change, which characterizes it from a traditional art gallery.

Archea Associati, Digital Refuge, Florence, 2022, photo by © Pietro Savorelli & Associati

By reproducing unprecedented visions, and more, through 16 screens arranged along the tunnel, Florence provides itself with a space in which the connection between arts, people and technology generates an unexpected and interactive visiting experience.

The new exhibition space (refugedigitale.it) arises from the foundations of an ancient anti-aircraft tunnel, the “Fornace Refuge“, was started in 1943 as the last place of defense from the bombings of the Second World War. The programming of the events, by Forma Edizioni, was started with the inauguration on 13 April (in collaboration with Tornabuoni Arte) of a work of Fabrizio Plessiconsidered one of the forerunners of video art in Italy.

Archea Associati, Digital Refuge, Florence, 2022, photo by © Pietro Savorelli & Associati

For the new space, Fabrizio Plessiwhose works are exhibited in the most important museums in the world, he created “Gold“, a site-specific work that starts from the translucent walls with which this space is covered to create a gigantic golden mosaic that, melting, moves and breathes” in its underground liquidity, shining and sumptuous “.

The artist has imagined a single large work that, almost biologically, can coexist with this anomalous and sensorial circular architecture. The nocturnal and luminous reverberation of the golden surfaces of the work changes, alters, swells and expands like the waves of an evocative and abstract sea, in continuous movement. “The Digital Refuge is nothing more than an innovative cultural crossroads which, precisely in a city like Florence, finds stimuli to confront and overlap the existing one” declared Fabrizio Plessi.

Archea Associati, Digital Refuge, Florence, 2022, photo by © Pietro Savorelli & Associati

The original state of the refuge before the intervention, courtesy Archea Associati

Rifugio Digitale can be visited through an online platform Rifugiodigitale.it which will illustrate the program and contents of the exhibitions and will allow the visitor to stay constantly updated on events and meetings thanks to textual and video insights to supplement the material on display.

from Mariagrazia Barletta