During the period of Covid-19, when the time the world spent in front of screens increased exponentially, Magaldi began to reflect on how the use and abuse of technological devices was changing our relationship with vice. This led to the project,Vices/Devices (once again a play on the homophony of the two words), a series of seven A/V installations in which the artist explored the relationship between technology and human behaviour. “Until thirty or forty years ago, to indulge in behaviour that was considered one of the seven capital vices, a person had to physically go to a specific place to commit that ‘sin’ – explained Magaldi – whereas today, thanks to our devices, we can hypothetically access anything at any time: this innovation has changed our relationship with vice and has created new transgressions”.

The first vice the artist focussed on was vainglory (pride): “This is something I experience personally and that I have felt the need to exorcize. Despite the fact that I am passionate about, and have worked extensively with social networks, at the same time, I have a distinct problem with using these instruments personally. I have always been accustomed to using them incognito or from a performance perspective, as in the case of STOP the Boats. On the other hand, when I have to speak about myself and what I do, I find it very uncomfortable”.
#Vices – Vainglory criticises our obsession for exhibiting ourselves and describing our lives every day on social media, transforming ourselves from our role as a passive subject to become the authors, screenwriters and directors of our own lives.

 The first enactment of Vainglory was produced in December 2021 in the famous Petrella Theatre in Longiano, Forlì-Cesena. An orchestra was composed of a hundred and fifty phones and two hundred and twenty laptops, for which Magaldi selected content from a hundred and seventy different sources downloaded from social media; the users were all involved in different activities (dancing, preparing a recipe, teaching a tutorial, etc.). The devices lit up and provided the sound in the public space, while the dozens of social contents, manipulated by the artist, formed the soundtrack. In this way, the role of the theatre space was completely inverted: the public became the true protagonist of the production, while the stage remained empty. Magaldi described the scene: “During the performance, the public arrived from the rear; very gradually, the various devices were switched on, lighting up the stalls and gallery. The sense of the installation was to show that the masses are not composed of passive subjects but of constantly active creators: today, the public compulsively produces any and every type of content. For the first time in the history of humanity, we find ourselves in a period in which people tell their own stories or delude themselves that they are authors. We are in the era of self-narration. Apparently, there is no longer a need for an artist to describe society, because the public tells its own story”.

Andy Warhol sustained that in the future ‘everyone would have his 15 minutes of world fame’, but Magaldi does not agree. “Today, something different is happening: everybody thinks they will be famous forever, but in reality, this happens only within a restricted circle of people. We are all artists, creative talents, columnists, or at least, we think we are, and even if we have only fifteen followers, we produce this content for them, and we believe it makes sense to continue. We have all become artists and at the same time, our own public”.