#OFFLINE – Life Beyond the Screen is a visual investigation into presence, body, and public space in the post-digital era. This is because, in recent decades and with exponential growth, global society has entered what sociologist Manuel Castells defines as a “network society”, a reality where the social structure is organized around digital networks and where human experience is mediated by technology.

This is a social phenomenon that is also known globally by the term “alone together”, practically a state of constant connection but emotional isolation. In this context, #Offline is not a regressive call against technology, but a critical framework that analyzes the displacement of experience from the body to the screen, the transformation of memory from a physical and collective archive into an algorithmic database, the commodification of attention (attention economy), and the replacement of physical public space with virtual space.

Philosopher Byung-Chul Han argues that contemporary society has moved from a society of discipline to a society of performance and transparency, where the individual is constantly exposed and exploited through the continuous production of the image. In this reality, physical presence risks being reduced to a simulacrum, while real experience is replaced by its representation. At the same time, Jean Baudrillard’s theories on simulation and hyper-reality make us reflect on the fact that today we often consume the image of life, more than life itself. Against this theoretical backdrop, TIPF, with the theme #Offline, places a research question at the center of its 9th edition of public dialogue: How can the dimension of embodied experience be recovered in an era of total digital mediation?

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