Re:Humanism Art Prize's "Timeline Shift" exhibition rethinks time beyond the algorithm.

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We live in an elusive and insubstantial present, anchored to the reassuring solidity of the past and the increasingly algorithmic prediction of the future. It is a "wrong time," in which reality loses its friction and depth, forced into patterns that exclude the unexpected and the new. A present diluted by technologies, which take refuge in accumulated data to predict what is to come. The challenge is to imagine a new time, capable of surprising and breaking the chain of the already seen. Timeline Shift —the exhibition hosted from June 19 to July 30, 2025, at the Fondazione Pastificio Cerere in Rome —asked artists to break this paradigm.

This is the fourth edition of the Re:humanism Art Prize , curated by Daniela Cotimbo. The initiative brought eleven international artists to rethink the relationship between artificial intelligence, art, and time . The desire to transcend the Western conception of time—conceived as a straight line—to embrace a more complex and layered one—made of rituals, simultaneity, interweaving, and memories. Here, artificial intelligence is no longer just a tool, but an agent capable of generating new spaces of imagination.

The first-prize winning project, " Concept Drift " by the South African collective Lo-Def Film Factory (François Knoetze and Amy Louise Wilson), responds to the Re:Humanism challenge with originality. It is an interactive work, a video game that blends postcolonial narratives and visual archives. It uses AI-generated 3D models and constructs a counter-archive of South African culture, questioning the role of digital technologies in historical reworking and in perpetuating—or breaking—colonial logics.

In second place, Isabel Merchante , with "One Day I Saw the Sunset Ten Thousand Times," offers a poetic reflection on how the perception of nature is being transformed by algorithmic mechanization. Here, AI, originally designed to optimize and simplify, is transformed into a contemplative device, obsessively observing the sunset. The result is a meditation on the standardization of emotion—the emotion that usually accompanies the vision of the sun completing its daily cycle—and the loss of the uniqueness of experience.

Rounding out the podium is Minne Atairu with " Da Braidr ," a conceptual startup that uses AI to enhance and protect the tradition of Afro-braiding. The project denounces the rhetoric of technological progress as a mask for colonial dynamics, placing the cultural and economic autonomy of Black women at the center and challenging the stereotypes that somehow limit their expression of identity.

Alongside the award-winning works, the exhibition features other works that broaden the reflection on the multiple ways of inhabiting time. Federica Di Pietrantonio , with "Net Runner 01," presents a wearable installation that explores the influence of virtual worlds and decentralized forums on the construction of the self and relationships. Amanda E. Metzger , in " Ever ," aims to create a generative archive of AI-generated diary entries based on her personal writings: a multimedia carpet that becomes a shared space for memory and predictions about the future.

In the basement of the Foundation, Daniel Shanken's " The Pit " creates an immersive experience exploring the contradictions of rare earth extraction, a fundamental yet invisible resource for artificial intelligence. Meanwhile, Adam Cole and Gregor Petrikovič 's " Me vs. You" explore the nuances of queer intimacy in an increasingly technologically mediated world, dramatizing a tension between presence and distance.

The exhibition concludes with " Datalake: Contingency " by Franz Rosati , winner of the APA Prize. This ever-changing installation blends natural scenarios and synthetic images, evoking the ambiguous relationship between nature, data, and artificial imagination.

In an age that seems to be racing ever faster toward automation, Timeline Shift is a laboratory for critical thinking, a place where art and technology intertwine to restore time's richness, plurality, and capacity for surprise. It's an invitation to elude the straight line and rediscover complexity.

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