DRAGON’S EGG TRILOGY

On the occasion of the 45th edition of Arte Fiera, TAG Bologna—the exclusive General Aviation Terminal for private flights—transforms its VIP Lounge into a contemporary art gallery. From May 11 to June 12, 2022, the space hosts Dragon’s Egg Trilogy, a project by cross-disciplinary artist and mediator Luca Pozzi, curated by Manuela Valentini. The trilogy is a fascinating three-act sci-fi narrative where art history meets quantum physics, cosmology, and artificial intelligence, allowing us to observe reality through the lens of cutting-edge science.

The journey opens with Dragon’s Egg, a sculpture that “freezes” a tennis ball warped by the speed of a descent from deep space, just an instant before impact. Born from a collaboration with the National Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN), the piece bridges a 5,500-year-old bronze casting technique with a modern “muon scintillator”. This technology detects the passage of invisible subatomic particles and translates it into flashes of light, making tangible the cosmic messages that the universe constantly sends us in the form of dark matter and gravitational waves.

These signals become even clearer in the second chapter, Arkanian Shenron, an example of “technological animism” exhibited here in its digital form via the website www.thearkanians.com/shenron. Inspired by the Dragon God from the Dragon Ball saga, this avatar embodies Pozzi’s entire vision: its wings and hands pay homage to Piero della Francesca and Medardo Rosso, its tail mirrors an IBM quantum computer, while its body and head evoke mathematical formulas and quantum geometry. Equipped with a rudimentary AI connected to Twitter, the dragon acts as a “quantum oracle”: for every 16 cosmic particles captured by the scintillator, the algorithm generates a poetic, divinatory Haiku and posts it in real-time on social media, making the artwork accessible from anywhere.

The trilogy culminates in the performance This is my favorite moment in human history. Activating the physical cosplay kit—a wool hat, a 90s bomber jacket with the LOST hatch patch, and a glass marble—Luca Pozzi transforms himself into “Griffin,” the pan-dimensional character and last Arkanian from the movie Men in Black 3. In a striking live action inside the terminal, the artist steps onto the tarmac and into the hangar: using a black permanent marker, he transcribes the poetic phrases generated in real-time by Arkanian Shenron directly onto the private jets parked in the exhibition space. Through this gesture, the aircraft themselves become modern messengers, carrying quantum oracle poetry into the skies.