One Body Is Multiple Bodies and Multiple Bodies Are One Body

Crowds exist in paradox: they appear as a unified mass, yet can be broken apart to isolate and identify individuals. This tension lies at the heart of Carlotta Salvatori’s three-channel video installation, which investigates how surveillance technologies fragment collective bodies, drawing connections between contemporary algorithmic tools and the visual strategies used under Mussolini’s fascist regime.

Machine vision software — trained to detect bodies, faces, and gestures — is deliberately manipulated to reveal how confidence thresholds shape what is seen and what remains invisible in archival, found, and original footage. Alongside, a hand-drawn frame-by-frame animation enacts a slower, embodied form of seeing.

By examining how crowds are represented, parsed and politicised, the work critiques the surveillance state’s capacity to read, divide and control collective action. It shows how technological vision curates political reality, particularly in moments of protest, where the crowd becomes both a site of power and a target of repression.