Nora Turato. To the Best of My Knowledge | Art City 2026 Special Project

From 5 to 8 February 2026, as part of Art City 2026, the Main Hall of the University Library in Bologna hosts To the Best of My Knowledge, a durational performance and environmental sound installation by Nora Turato.

The research of Nora Turato investigates the collective experience of the incessant flow of information that characterizes contemporary life. Through a practice that exploits the ephemeral, mutable, and performative nature of language, the artist articulates performances, videos, and textual and graphic works in which words become plastic, sonic, and conceptual material.

On the occasion of ART CITY Bologna, Turato develops a new site-specific commission for the spaces
of the University Library BUB, presenting a performance and an environmental sound intervention. Entitled
To the Best of My Knowledge, the work proposes an imperfect and “economical” conception of knowledge, in critical dialogue
with the overabundance of data and the illusory sense of reliability of digital content. By examining the transformation of interpersonal communication and our cognitive abilities in an era marked by increasing interaction between humans and artificial intelligences, Turato develops a disalienated practice that values the concrete and limited scope of individual memory.

At the core of the project is the concept of “grounding” – literally, to root oneself, to touch the ground – understood as a process of knowledge that recalls the need to return to a sensory, embodied, and erotic experience of knowledge and language. Also used in the field of machine learning to indicate the verification and anchoring of information to reality, the term “grounding” here takes on a more experiential than cognitive value: an invitation to reconnect with the present, with the here and now of the bodily
and relational experience of communication. In the performance, voice, movement, and breath intertwine in a
composition in which speech dialogues with the sharp stamping of feet on the floor, a percussive gesture that
becomes an integral part of the score. As if probing a pre-linguistic and physiological origin of language, the action focuses on the search for a point of connection with tangible reality that also becomes a common and translinguistic ground. What the body communicates, before or while speaking, echoes a distant era: the Age of the Gods evoked by the philosopher Giambattista Vico, a key reference for the artist. In this mythical time, language is still mute and expresses itself through gestures, images, expressions, and mimicry, constituting a
primordial degree of communication in which Vico identifies the true poetic root of language.

Turato thus reclaims a linguistic dimension that recognizes the body as the instrument through which to
fracture communicative clichés and prefabricated formulas, restoring to words their bodily, lyrical, and vital dimension.