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How ARS Electronica works

The ARS Electronica has existed since 1979 - Mecca for connoisseurs of media art. This is one of the largest festivals of technological art in Europe, which is becoming more every year. This year, thanks to the Eunic and the Austrian Cultural Center, the Russian curator and media artist Anna Titovets became his invited curator and at the request of CoLTA.RU kept a diary while working on a grand festival.

ARS Electronica 2015 in the Austrian Linz-the largest festival for 36-year history both in the number of visitors (they were counted about 80,000) and in the number of participants and the scale of the occupied area. The festival was held at 11 sites of Linz. The central project is located at 100,000 sq.m. According to the chief curator of ARS Elec Tronica Herfried Snester, there were about 1000 participants. The catalog of the festival (and there is also a separate catalog of Cyberarts , which lists Prix projects ARS Electronica ) came out thicker than another encyclopedia-190 pages, despite the fact that not all projects managed to get there due to the compressed print terms.

But I still did not know all this, when, being delirious, the cold, with 35 degrees of heat, first found myself in front of the yellow wall of the production office and met with the festival team in an incredibly beautiful surroundings of one of the festival sites-a giant postal distributor. I was greeted with the phrase " let ' s Share This Summer Time " . Well, let ' s Share .

Team

The festival team is relatively small for such a scale. 90% of the team are artists or people with art history or cultural education. One of the main “fighting units” of the festival is the Project Managers that perform the functions of the producer, curator, manager and (then the list varies depending on the skills that a person has) a widget, a graphic designer, a musician, a translator, etc. According to one of the directors of the festival, Martin Gonzik, even the techniques that work on the installation of exhibition projects are not random people. I could see this on my own experience when, after a weekly installation marathon, along with the technician assigned to my projects, after night installations until 4 in the morning and the suspension of countless randalf plasm, nor in a word, he had not kept his art-nestedness during work, said that he was not only a valid artist, but a couple of months before the festival began his installation in the start of the festival. Moscow Gallery! This fact explains why the local installers, unlike Russian ones, are ready to pretend to be with you for hours how best to arrange the plasma on the wall: 10 centimeters higher, 5 lower, no, no, let's try vertically.

© Anna Titovets is one of the most important places for the festival team. “Conferences” with the main map of Post City hanging on the wall. Landscape of multi -colored stickers denoting projects and the place where they are located constantly moved on the map during preparation

The work schedule of the ARS Electronica team is hard. Unlike Moscow, the working day in Linz begins strictly at 9 in the morning. Project managers diverge no earlier than 10-11 pm, in the best situation-in 9. But, again, unlike the irregular Moscow working style, when processing are of granted, in the contracts of my colleagues, the conditions were clearly prescribed for which they receive compensation for every hour of super-war work. If the processing happened due to objectively insurmountable circumstances - that is, not just because it is not to be in time, but because the artist comes and you need to talk with him or you have to be at the meeting, then this watch is paid with an even greater coefficient of the allowance. These circumstances dispelled the image of the heroes-martyr, who, after the first week of work, developed against my associates. The final calculation of overtime clock doubles, or even triples their original salary.

The main way to move around the festival sites during installation were scooters. Otherwise, moving through a huge building, which requires endlessly to rise and sink to different levels, would take many times more time. There were not enough scobes for all the members of the team, so one of the unspoken rules for using them was “to take the scooter of the other and be prepared for the fact that you will have to go back on foot”.

I used the privileged position of the “invited curator”. I was allowed to come to the office by 10 in the morning, otherwise the time for my Moscow projects would not have remained at all. My functionality was not too clear, because I joined the team at a late stage, but in the end I covered the whole range of possible involvement in the process of creating a festival. At first I worked on the preparation of a half -year exhibition project for ARS Electronica Center , a little later moved to the "battle wing" of the central site of the festival, where she worked on the post project Post City KIT (umbrella name for the main festival exhibition project of this year). I worked out the concepts of the presentation of several artists as part of the festival theme, in particular, on the lower floor, where whole trains with parcels and letters had stopped before, I worked on a mini-exhibition of Slovenian artist Maya Shmrekar-several of her works were combined into the project “Topology K-9”, the central part of the space was occupied by a 6-meter “Cave-Rog Cave”, and the abundant-rope, abundant, upholstered. wolf wool and emitting serotonin artist and her dog when the viewer approaches; There were also part of the laboratories where hormones, lightboxes with the materials of the scientific research underlying the project, video documentation of the performance and a three -meter print, which was made to us with great efforts, were located there. Opposite the Maya project is an installation where my role imperceptibly moved towards the artist (or art designer): one of the ideas with which I worked at the festival was that it was necessary to “creatively” process the history and heritage of the building, its postal past and throw the logical bridge to the theme of the festival and modern projects. Thus, several collective installations arose that strictly needed to remain in the Nek-Art field; Conventionally, I gave this strange phenomenon the name "Inter -program".

So there were a rather large -scale installation of PAST Post Continuum , which turned into my personal hunting throughout the building over hours and loudspeakers, as well as training of the eye and ingenuity (as exactly and in a certain geometry, place 60 loudspeakers and 30 hours in an audiovisual composition and connect the cables to them in accordance with the logic of building the sound design); the room of the artifacts found by the postal life (it was present in one of the distributors of the stickers with naked women painted by workers) with an “endless” letter traveling in a circle on a post-post in the middle; room with metal sculptures (subsequently dismantled); Clockwork on the floor in the Central District Post City KIT (both serving navigation and imposed into confusion with various messages) and some other "inter -program installations."

Among other things, to me (probably, as the only Russian representative of the festival team), they handed over the chicken in the project of a Ukrainian culturalist and a media art specialist Yanina Prudenko. Her research project “Mythogenesis” was dedicated to media constructing the image of the hero-military during the Russian-Ukrainian conflict: this was one of the most politicized and extremely interesting projects at the exhibition. Also, as a Russian -speaking curator, I helped the community project Soundartist.ru and Sergey Kasich Russian Sound Art Showcase , which was the first collective exhibition of Russian sound art abroad.

City and festival

Due to the tight schedule at the festival, its organizers have absolutely no chance of buying food and generally eat. All shops in Linz are closed at 6:30 or 7 o’clock in the evening, and on Sundays they do not work at all (and on Saturdays they strive not to open due to some religious holiday or simply because August). Find a working kitchen after 10 pm-a quest, in the city only a couple of places that can offer such inhuman luxury (and most likely it will be something like a tiny Turkish kebab). According to Yukhan, who collects the opening program of the festival, as well as the entire evening program, “not only to eat there is no chance, the problem is also with clothes - there is absolutely no time to wash it! Therefore, during the preparation of the festival, it is better to live with someone who will take on the function of the chover. ”

Take a scooter of the other and be ready for the fact that you will have to return back on foot.

But thanks to this phenomenon of the Lyntsevsky siesta, I, by chance, managed to wander into the Haribo factory. Having arrived once on Friday at 1:30 a day in one large printing company, where I had to discuss the quality of prints, I found a closed door and hours of work-until 12:00 on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, of course, non-working ones. Busted up, caught herself thinking that in the air there is an attractive smell of sweets. It turned out that there were a plant and a company store of the famous Bear Haribo , where I successfully restored my emotional balance.

Linz is a small city, only 200,000 inhabitants, but these 200,000 account for two museums of contemporary art ( ARS Electronica Center and Lentos , standing almost each other, opposite each other on the opposite sides of the Danube and Moving with LED facades), the OK cultural center with a bunch of galleries and many theatrical and musical points. It is necessary to book housing for a trip to the festival in advance - 1.5 months before the start of all hotels (not to mention the private sector, which is very small) sold. At the same time, surprisingly, not all local residents are aware that they have such a giant festival annually. According to Martin Gonzik, 80% of the festival visitors are foreigners.

Process

At one of the very first meetings with Herfried Skorida in ARS Electronica Center during the discussion of the future exhibition Art And Science Elements (“elements of art and science”) I heard a phrase that smashed my idea of the stable and measured, carefully planned life of the festival: “The style of the ARS festival Electroni CA is the maximum flexibility and improvisation. ” In the future, in different variations, I heard from different people the interpretation of this motto. The most outstanding was given by the technical team, which called the process of working on the festival "organized chaos." This is largely due to the scale and difficulties associated with obtaining various permits, changing agreements with partners who suddenly discovered installation features in the building or notorious multifunctionality and sometimes not quite obvious distribution of duties among the participants in the process.

For example, a few weeks before the festival, it was necessary to completely change the concept of the evening program, the opening and logic of the movements of people during evening performances, since the railway monopolist, which belonged to the part of the building, refused to issue permission to find people on its territory for security reasons. And the official paper that visitors to the festival can be located on all floors planned for visiting, came exactly 5 days before the opening of the festival. A week before the festival, one of the former toilet rooms, in which the “inter -program” (auxiliary, working with the theme of the building) was already mounted, the installation, urgently had to be returned back to the toilet, as it became clear that these vital rooms are disastrous.

Direct speech

Herfrid Shtotkore, artistic director of the festival: “ ARS Electronica It works with three concepts - art, technology and society. We do not position ourselves as an art festival in its pure form, we sit “between several chairs” and form a program based on the needs of different types of audience. As for my functions in the festival system, I do not want to call myself a curator, my work is to create a concept common to the festival, and then develop each of the areas of the topic separately with each of the participants. I am not a curator in this case, but rather a guide. At the same time, there are a lot of ideas that appear at the beginning, then either are not realized due to objective circumstances, or turn into something completely different. You are unlikely to find at least one person at the festival who would thoroughly know absolutely everything that is happening on him. This is simply impossible taking into account the number of participants and projects. ”

Another principle of the festival, familiar to many organizers of cultural events around the world, is all that can be obtained for free, we must try to get free. Everyone is engaged in this-from prostect managers, technicians, marketing and to the director of the festival. My search for partnerships was very limited by the google translator, so I had to regularly resort to the linguistic assistance of colleagues. Perhaps this was the only annoying restriction in the use of my professional qualities. Among the amazing objects obtained by the festival team, for example, were: mushrooms in banks (40 pieces), neon sign, a thermal control system, a giant LED globe, which was disassembled into LED garlands and was one of the elements of the light design of evening performances.

You are unlikely to find at least one person at the festival who would thoroughly know absolutely everything that is happening on him.

Any festival has two coolest points of preparation. The first is when, after the months of negotiations, clarifications, correspondence, meetings and speculative conclusions, the process goes into the active stage of installation. And now, when everyone is already very tired of “represent” and “negotiate”, the moment comes when empty spaces, before that filled only with phantoms of ideas, are filled with boxes, installation noise, running people, trucks, coffors; Everything suddenly begins to change at a terrible speed. Suddenly, a small group of people related to each other, day and night working on the preparation of the festival, turns into a city of strangers who continue to arrive every day - and each has their own history, their own mission and their own concerns. This is a moment of happiness for absolutely all members of the team - to feel the beating of the life of the upcoming festival. The second point is, of course, the beginning. When everything that before was the internal territory of the festival team becomes public space and is filled with spectators.

Projects

Work worthy of descriptions on ARS There were many Electronica -the festival is drawn on the mini-biennal in scale. Therefore, very briefly - I will mention only the most remembered.

The Cyberarts exhibition, held in the OK Cultural Center and was a 20-minute walk from the main site, was one of the most interesting in terms of the presented art projects, since the winners of the annual Prix contest were exhibited there ARS Electronica , the owners of the Golden Nick and Honorary Mentions. It collected projects selected by the international jury and thus perceived as more or less objective flags of relevant processes in the media art.

Среди представленных проектов — победитель в номинации sound - art , японский художник Нело Акамацу с саунд-инсталляцией «для традиционных японских садов» Chijikinkutsu , где множество стаканов с водой выстроены в определенный паттерн, внутри каждого стакана — намагниченная иголка, которая издает звон о бортик стакана, когда электромагнитное поле изменяется. Этот проект перекликался с работой другого японского художника, показанной на основной площадке в рамках Post City Kit . Соитиро Михара представил стеклянный хрупкий купол-объект: внутри него расположен микрочип, измеряющий уровень радиации, который соединен с китайским колокольчиком внутри купола; чем выше радиация — тем чаще раздается мелодичный звук, несоотносимый с опасностью.

Еще один победитель в номинации «Анимация» — интерактивный видеоарт-проект Idle Times Алекса Верхаеста ( Alex Verhaest ) . Этакий АЕС+Ф на бельгийский манер: на экране показывают обработанных компьютерной графикой и снятых в рапиде персонажей, которые сидят за столом, вокруг летают фантастические насекомые, рядом указан телефон, по которому зрители могут позвонить, чтобы один из героев поднял трубку и запустилось действие на экране. Что особенно приятно, на выставке Cyberarts среди победителей Prix Ars Electronica был представлен российский проект Димы :: vtol :: Морозова Oil , который получил почетное упоминание в этом году. Эта работа была показана в начале года в «Гараже»: зрителям предлагается поместить любой предмет под гидравлический пресс и получить саундтрек разрушения своего предмета.

Отдельным блоком в рамках Cyberarts шла программа «Пионеры медиаарта»; победителем в этой номинации стал легендарный Джеффри Шоу, и его двухчасовая лекция на фестивале была отдельным ценнейшим подарком.

В один из дней конференц-зал фестиваля оказался оккупирован черным интернет-рынком Yami - ichi . Это японское изобретение, путешествующий по миру фестиваль, придуманный художником Exonemo и коллективом IDPW . org , на котором художники продают и обмениваются в офлайне артефактами интернет-культуры. На рынке можно было прикупить спама, лайков красивых девушек, связать для своего интернет-кабеля «пальто» или получить из банана уникальный пароль для интернета, который суперсложно взломать (как, впрочем, и абсолютно невозможно запомнить).

Themes

Герфрид Штокер, художественный руководитель фестиваля: «Мы начинаем думать о теме следующего фестиваля сразу же после окончания текущего. Когда я только начинал заниматься фестивалем, интернет-технологии не были еще развиты так хорошо, и мы спокойно жили в ситуации, когда можно было абсолютно точно сказать — “это будет очень хорошая тема, которая будет на пике через год. Никто до нее еще не додумался”. Сейчас такая ситуация невозможна, все меняется слишком быстро, и темы подхватываются на лету. Какая-нибудь группа студентов может устроить свою конференцию, где они будут обсуждать ту же тему, которую выберем мы, и даже в более интересном разрезе.

Все, что можно добыть бесплатно, надо постараться добыть бесплатно.

Обсуждения темы — как правило, очень интенсивный процесс, и в него вовлечено довольно много людей на начальной стадии, но затем настает момент, когда я единолично должен принять решение. Лично для меня каждый год это самый сложный момент — когда я должен сказать людям, что я решил. Звучит, конечно, немного банально, но это действительно похоже на рождение ребенка. И есть опасность промахнуться или спустя несколько месяцев узнать, что кто-то еще взял эту же тему и делает мероприятие раньше по времени, или спустя несколько месяцев может произойти что-то совершенно новое и глобальное, что напрочь перечеркнет актуальность чуть раньше по времени выбранной темы.

Как правило, я объявляю тему фестиваля в январе. Но философия фестиваля — всегда быть гибкими, реагировать на изменяющиеся обстоятельства, и мы всегда во всех процессах оставляем возможность до самого последнего момента поменять что-то. В том числе и тему. Биеннале обязаны показывать best of The best (лучшее из лучшего), а мы — ежегодное событие: этот факт ставит нас на позицию лаборатории, люди не ожидают увидеть самое-самое, мы вольны показывать изменения и эксперименты в рамках текущего момента».

В этом году даты проведения фестиваля совпали с интенсификацией миграционного кризиса и активного перемещения сирийских беженцев в Европу. На Ars Electronica 2015 эта тема активно обсуждалась и нашла отражение во многих представленных проектах. Аудиотеатральный перформанс Diaspora , специально подготовленный для фестиваля, был полностью посвящен этой теме — в сценографии присутствовали хор детей, спасательные круги, чемоданчики со знаками долларов и евро. На выступлении Брукнерского оркестра видеосопровождение изобиловало инфографикой и визуальными материалами о беженцах, насильно выселенных людях и реалиях миграционного кризиса, на дискуссиях и конференциях тема беженцев регулярно как эхо появлялась в разных форматах, некоторые художники напрямую вписывали контекст миграционного кризиса и Сирии в свои работы. Тема беженцев могла бы остаться на уровне заявочном, художественном, но волею судеб, как только фестиваль закончился, пришла новость о том, что в здание, где проходил фестиваль, срочно должны заселиться 700 беженцев, переправляющихся через Линц в Германию. Все сотрудники фестиваля, оставившие мечты о спокойном демонтаже длиной в неделю, принялись разбирать «тысячу и одну архитектурную модель» (так назывался один из проектов, где действительно было представлено примерно такое количество архитектурных моделей) в конференц-зале, которому предстояло стать временным пристанищем для беженцев. Этот поворот событий — «от искусства к реальности» — стал лучшим финалом для фестиваля, который «сидит на нескольких стульях» — искусства, технологий и общества.

На время фестиваля в гигантском бывшем почтовом распределителе был построен настоящий город в городе — с улицами, переулками, сотнями деревьев, кибер- и фермерскими маркетами и многими другими проявлениями городской культуры. Поражает количество вложенных часов работы в фестиваль, который длится всего 5 дней. По словам Мартина Гонзика, «в суперконцентрации идей и ресурсов в короткий промежуток времени и есть суть и ценность фестиваля. U Ars Electronica нет особых планов расширяться во времени, но есть обширные планы расширяться географически. И, в частности, Москва — одна из точек интереса». В следующем году Ars Electronica совместно с Политехническим музеем представят большой проект в Москве. Это действительно суперновость.

22 октября в Электромузее открывается первая в России выставка гиф-арта GIF-GIF-GAF, куратором которой является Анна Титовец. Там же, в галерее SA))_gallery, состоится выставка Атональная архитектоника: построение» , на которой будут представлены работы 11 российских саунд-арт-художников и коллективов, участвовавших в фестивале технологических искусств Ars Electronica 2015.