Rebecca Moccia. Cold As You Are

On December 8 at 6.30 pm, OGR Torino unveils Surface Tension, a new project of commissions that uses light installations to transform the façades of the Corte Est into a vast projection canvas for site-specific works. The inaugural piece in the series is Cold As You Are, a new work by artist Rebecca Moccia, curated by Iacopo Prinetti, commissioned by the OGR and created on the occasion of 27th edition of Luci d'Artista.

As a new entry in the Costellazione section, this work contributes to the City of Turin's annual celebration of contemporary art installations, which has been brightening the winter nights since 1998. Produced with the technical support of Epson, the site-specific video installation blends intimate and public scenes captured by the artist using a thermal camera. These sequences weave together diverse elements and narratives, creating a compelling visual exploration of human connection and perception. The lighting of the new work will take place in the presence of OGR Torino President Davide Canavesio, artist Rebecca Moccia, and Luci d'Artista curator Antonio Grulli.

This work employs a thermal camera, a device combining photographic optics with an infrared system to translate thermal data into a color spectrum, with each hue representing the temperature of a given object or living being. Originally developed for military purposes, like many technologies that permeate our daily lives, thermal imaging evokes imagery tied to contemporary pandemics and wars, where it is used to identify distant targets through a vision-control mechanism that fails to recognize the individuality of subjects, reducing them to mere targets. In Cold As You Are, Rebecca Moccia employs thermal imaging to capture a social diary, blending domestic, festive, and work-related moments with public events, protests, and urban landscapes.

The material and sensory dissonance between the proximity of the projected images, the accompanying soundscape, and the recollection of scenes of control and conflict is carefully crafted by the artist to examine the pervasive, invisible neoliberal infrastructure and its effects on subjectivities through forms of intimate governance—an inquiry the artist has pursued since the Ministry of Loneliness project (2021-2024). At the same time, the medium's inherent lack of definition, coupled with close, subjective framing, fosters a narrative in which public and private, personal and political merge, overshadowing optical vision in favor of a perception rooted in the shared experience of space, environments, and emotions. As seen in AGGRO DR1FT (2024), a film by director Harmony Korine, the limitations of the thermal camera as a visual documentation tool shift the focus away from what is visible or follows a linear perceptual path, directing attention instead to the emotional and affective dimensions of the characters. Similarly, in Cold As You Are, the image transforms into a sensory and haptic experience that goes beyond the visual, reconnecting with both personal and shared experiences, as it activates a perceptual and conceptual shift that challenges our trust in the image itself and its traditional function. In both Moccia's work and Korine's, the thermal camera is used to create depth, in contrast to its use in military and surveillance contexts where vision is restricted, both through the color palette—usually white (alive-warm) and black (not alive-cold)-and through the positioning of those operating the device in relation to their targets.

In Cold As You Are, the thermal image thus challenges the reduction of both human and nonhuman bodies to mere data points in a system, instead emphasizing on everyday interactions that shape an empathetic narrative—one that moves beyond cold detachment. In doing so, the work reveals the increasingly blurred line between the life we lead and the conflicts we believe we are fighting.... read the rest of the article»