Portrait of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola — Anonymous, 15th century · Accademia Carrara, Bergamo · Wikimedia Commons · Public domain

Origin · Rome, 1486

Humans are not finished beings. We become what we make of ourselves.

After Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, 1486

In 1486, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola published 900 theses and called scholars to Rome to dispute them in public.

The disputation was stopped. The speech he wrote for it was never delivered.

Its central claim remains: a human being has no finished form.

We become through judgment, choice and action.

When we routinely hand the final choice to an algorithm, we delegate more than work. We surrender part of the practice through which we form ourselves.

The name

HUOMO

HUOMO is an old Italian spelling of uomo: the human being. The name is a reminder. Agency is not something we simply possess. It is something we practise.

Set in HUOMO 1463. A light cut after the Venetian types of Aldus Manutius, 1495–1501. Named for the year Giovanni Pico della Mirandola was born.