They I Sie I Oni

Artists: Iris Blauensteiner, Zorica Čolić, Doplgenger, Marlies Pöschl, Dušan Rodić, Bárbara Palomino Ruiz, Igor Simić, Lisa Truttmann, Katharina Swoboda, Enar de Dios Rodríguez, Katarina Zdjelar

Initiated by The Golden Pixel Cooperative
Curated by Maja Ćirić
Supported by the Austrian Cultural Forum Belgrade

Webdesign by Miloš Nikolić
Programming by Vera Sebert

Date: 15-18. April 2021.


With the benefit of hindsight following the digital turn and the tech-explosion, it is clear that technology IS forever the second self.[1] Permanently hooked to our interfaces, our ways of doing and thinking are being reshaped. If “Physicality is a bug, not a feature,” [2] an online screening is an opportunity to tell a different story about both physicality and bugs. Decentralized and decontextualized, once exclusive frames collide indefinitely with one another.

Contrary to what one may think, dissolving this saturation with images is not the only way to carry on in this second year of the pandemic. The key is to find a way of participating in this virtually expanded reality by trying to capture and also manage attention. What might have been an autonomous screening in the black box is exchanged for the logic of expanded internet art [3] in a sense that it is a continual hybrid becoming. An artistic film is not only a film, it also represents high-quality data competing with the low-quality data of SnapChat and TikTok. The frames are expanding, there is a need for adaptation, for instantaneous change. It is time to get personal—after all, the content is to be viewed in the intimacy of our homes, as a relationship between the subject of the film and subjects outside of it.

They is a way of addressing and testing the exposure of artistic films in an environment of competitive images. It is a public reflection on how connected end embedded filmic parcels can behave within the expanded circumstances. The title They shows respect to non-binary gender identities, while at the same time implying that in a wider view this respect extends to nationality, to other non-anthropocentric entities, to technology, to whatever different perspectives there might be.

Instead of representing bilateral cultural relations, for example between Austria and Serbia, these artistic films connect their authors through the emotions and sensations they evoke, rather than through their national origin. Narratives are not only a subtle manipulation of possible visuals amidst current conditions and the hyper-mediated realities, they also serve as a tool suggesting different ways of looking at and after the environment as well as the experiences of both self and the Deleuzian notion of the ‘dividual’—a person made of data which can be endlessly subdivided and recombined.”

All kinds of subjects are considered as and within They: a melancholic drone, a hard drive with 2.8 terabyte leftover data, a street in the city of Tehran, overlapping melodies, archival images from Yugoslav cinema, tools for bodily ‘enhancements,’ a female Formula 1 driver, a machine weaving an image of the Virgin of Guadalupe, the oldest oak tree in Belgrade, sand dunes. All content is interwoven in an only seemingly binary constellation, because these images representing both a cultural anthropology and ecocentrism consist of a myriad of non-static complexities.

Curatorial text by Maja Ćirić

[1] Turkle, Sherry, The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit, MIT Press, 1984

[2] Moss, Ceci, Expanded Internet Art: Twenty-First Century Artistic Practice and the Informational Milieu, Bloomsbury Academic, International Texts in Critical Media Aesthetics, 2019

[3] Tyler Winklevoss as quoted in Rapkin, Mickey, “‘Beeple Mania’: How Mike Winkelmann Makes Millions Selling Pixels”, 20.03.2021.
https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/a35500985/who-is-beeple-mike-winkelmann-nft-interview




Program:




They I Sie I Oni

Inicijativa The Golden Pixel Cooperative
Kustos Maja Ćirić
Podržava by the Austrian Cultural Forum Belgrade

Umetnici i umetnice: Iris Blauensteiner, Zorica Čolić, Doplgenger, Marlies Pöschl, Dušan Rodić, Bárbara Palomino Ruiz, Igor Simić, Lisa Truttmann, Katharina Swoboda, Enar de Dios Rodríguez, Katarina Zdjelar

Datum: 15-18. april 2021.


Podrazumeva se da je nakon digitalnog zaokreta i tehnološke eksplozije kao posledice 2020. godine tehnologija zauvek postala "drugo ja".[1] Trajno vezani za interfejse, načini rada i razmišljanja se preoblikuju. Ako je „telesnost greška, a ne karakteristika“ [2], onlajn prikazivanje jeste prilika da se ispriča drugačija priča kako o telesnosti, tako i o greškama. Decentralizovani i dekontekstualizovani, nekada ekskluzivni okviri se neograničeno sudaraju jedan sa drugim.

Suprotno onome što se može pomisliti, jedini način da se nastavi u drugoj godini pandemije nije rastvaranje zasićenja slikama. Treba naći način da budemo deo virtuelno proširene stvarnosti, pokušavajući da pažnju privučemo i da njome upravljamo. Ono što bi bilo autonomno prikazivanje u crnoj kutiji zamenjuje se logikom proširene internet umetnosti [3a] u smislu da je to kontinuirano hibridno postajanje. Umetnički film nije samo film, to su visokokvalitetni podaci koji se takmiče sa podacima niskog kvaliteta poput SnapChat-a i TikTok-a. Frejmovi se šire, postoji potreba za adaptacijom, za promenom za tren oka. Vreme je da se bude ličan, na kraju krajeva, sadržaj je predviđen za gledanje u intimi naših domaćinstava, kao odnos između subjekata u filmovima i subjekata izvan njih.

„Oni“ je način obraćanja i testiranja izloženosti umetničkih filmova u okruženju konkurentskih slika. To je javno razmišljanje o tome kako se povezani i ugrađeni filmski komadi mogu ponašati u proširenim okolnostima. Naslov "Oni" ukazuje poštovanje prema nebinarnom rodu, ali zapravo implicira da se poštovanje takođe ukazuje u širem smislu i prema nacionalnosti, prema drugim neantropocentričnim entitetima, prema tehnologiji, prema bilo kojem drugom uglu gledanja.

Umesto da predstavljaju dvostrane kulturne odnose, na primer između Austrije i Srbije, ovi umetnički filmovi povezuju svoje autore kroz njihove emocije i senzacije koje izazivaju, a ne kroz njihovo nacionalno poreklo. Narativi nisu samo suptilna manipulacija mogućim vizuelnim sredinama u trenutnim uslovima i hiper-posredovanim realnostima, već alat koji predlaže različite načine gledanja i brige o okolini i iskustvima sebe i deleuzijanskog pojma „(in)dividue“, kao „osobe napravljene od podataka koji se mogu beskrajno deliti i ponovo kombinovati“.

Selekcija je organizovana oko nebinarnih zamenica, svaka sa ciljem da se prekorače nacionalne granice i da se promoviše inkluzivnost pomoću čula. Razne vrste subjekata mogu se podvesti pod pojam „Oni“: melanholični dron, hard-disk sa 2,8 terabajta nepotrebnih podataka, ulica u gradu Teheranu, preklapajuće melodije, arhivske slike iz jugoslovenske kinematografije, alati za telesna „poboljšanja“, žena vozač formule, mašina koja plete lik Bogorodice iz Guadalupe, najstarijeg hrasta u Beogradu, peščanih dina. Sav sadržaj isprepleten je u jedino naizgled binarno sazvežđe, jer se ove slike koje predstavljaju i kulturnu antropologiju i ekocentričnost sastoje od bezbroja nestatičnih složenosti.


[1] Turkle, Sherry, The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit, MIT Press, 1984

[2] Moss, Ceci, Expanded Internet Art: Twenty-First Century Artistic Practice and the Informational Milieu, Bloomsbury Academic, International Texts in Critical Media Aesthetics, 2019

[3a]Citat Tajlera Vinkelvosa (Tyler Winklevoss) u Rapkin, Mickey, “‘Beeple Mania’: How Mike Winkelmann Makes Millions Selling Pixels”, 20.03.2021.
https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/a35500985/who-is-beeple-mike-winkelmann-nft-interview




Program:

15.04. Oni I
1. Igor Simić, Melancholic Drone, 7’, 2018
2. Iris Blauensteiner, the_other_images, 17’, 2018
3. Marlies Pöschl, Cinema Cristal, 14’30’’, 2017

16.04. Oni II
1. Katarina Zdjelar, AAA (Mein Herz), 4’30’’, 2016
2. Bárbara Palomino Ruiz, La imagen pertenece al pueblo, 8’, 2016
3. Zorica Čolić, Cutaneous vision, 4' 15'', 2020
4. Katharina Swoboda, Lella (Rehearsal), 3’01’’, 2021
5. Doplgenger, ComradeWomen, 6’ 10’’, 2018

17.04. They/Them/Theirs
1. Lisa Truttmann, Pirate Bay, 6'33'', 2020
2. Dušan Rodić, The Soul is in the Breath, 6'33', 2020
3. Enar de Dios Rodríguez, Vestiges (an archipelago), 40’48’’, 2020

18.04. BONUS All In (termites included)
Lisa Truttmann, Tarpaulins, 78’, 2017