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7/11/2005

Break

Zavod K6/4, Ljubljana

The purpose of the multimedia festival Break (previously known as Break 2.2 and Break 21), which is realized for the 8th time this year, is to explore new artistic expressions and contemporary topics and to emphasize emerging poetics whose artistic discourse has not yet been deep-rooted within firmly established standards, criteria and cultural values. By successfully supporting innovative and intellectually stimulative new art, festival Break has become one of the significant global events within contemporary art and broader cultural framework.

Nowadays, the forms of artistic production are transforming from closed-in, self-sufficient form to dynamic processes that frequently include active involvement of the observer/user. The artworks are not presented as the ultimate truth but rather as experiments searching for new possibilities and suggesting different, innovative points of view.
This year's theme of the festival Break 2.3, New Species, has been designed to stimulate original poetics dealing explicitly with invention, fabrication, innovation, experimentation and the pursuit of untrodden paths.
If some practices originate from previously existing conditions and can be predicted on such basis, then the interest of Break 2.3 festival was focused on those practices that present new species, and are not directly predictable from already familiar laws and forms. A special emphasis was placed on the creative ambitions that do not look for the new within the framework of the existing institution of art, but instead seek to find new possibilities and offer new presentations of current cultural issues. In such tendencies, artistic practices spontaneously look out for other, non-artistic disciplines, in order to connect with them, use them or even take an active part in them. Art is currently witnessing new possibilities and the institution of art is changing. A visitor of the Break 2.3 festival therefore most frequently meets artistic expressions that cannot be easily automatically included in the established conception of artistic work, and thus rather becomes a researcher. Numerous creative approaches are connected with natural science and social sciences, and often also with new technologies.

What does the intrusion of high technologies and sophisticated sciences into our everyday life mean? The potentials of creative artistic acts in establishing alternative life forms can be considered as possibilities of transgressing modern anthropocentrism. All living organisms, regardless of their size and morphology, strive for communication and socialization. In a society of highly developed communication systems and with the support of computer technology, we tend to develop a kind of a universal language that would provide mutual communication to people, animals, machines and new species. The intrusion of high technologies into our lives has allowed for the possibility to develop new technological species? In the context of art, what does the option of a computer generated life mean? Microbiological and medical research into artificial life, bioengineering and the findings of cognitive psychology, the potential of improving intellectual capacity, sexual drive, mood, reproducibility … Contemporary society and culture are characterized by biotechnologies due to their presence in all areas of modern life (we consume genetically modified products, take advantage of tissue engineering in medicine, and deal with both animal cloning and the possibility of human cloning). Thus, we are confronted with the changes in our living environment of the future: in the possibilities of artificially produced meat products, body organs or even limbs, in possible body alteration, in the selective options of reproducing our children, as well as in a total social control of individuals. The prospects of telecommunications combined with computer sciences which provide a greater flow of information, create a new structure of space and the world, different perspectives of the world, modify the organization of life itself … These changes open numerous social issues. Can art provide an insight into long-term consequences? In the expended field art wishes to address and provoke each single member of the contemporary society.

The visual, sonic, performative and multi- or new media projects, presented within the scope of this year's festival, mainly involve high technologies and are mostly interdisciplinary. Numerous works have been developed in cooperation with scientific corporations, quite few of them deal with organic or wet materials, including living organisms. Frequently, the observers are also expected to interact within projects.
The lecturers on theory and philosophy of art and new media, humanities, sociology, art history, psychoanalysis, as also microbiology and physics provide important analytical and theoretical reflection on the theme of this year's festival. In addition, visitors are also invited to actively participate in some theoretical and practical workshops.

The call for submission for the Break 2.3 festival was published in March 2005 and dispatched all over the world. We had received 329 project applications, out of which 38 were selected. The festival takes place in November 2005 on four locations in the city of Ljubljana. The central location of the festival are the halls of an ex-intestinal factory on Poljanska street 95 where 14 installations are exhibited, 12 different performances are performed (one of them is shown twice due to the limited number of visitors), and a symposium with 19 lectures, 4 of which include a workshop, are held during the first week of the festival. At the Kodeljevo castle, the festival presents an exhibition of 16 installations. Due to its specific character, one of the artwork is realized at the Botanical garden in Ljubljana, and another at the Kapelica Gallery, which is also its producer. We present a total of 63 projects realized by 68 authors and some cooperators from the following countries: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bulgaria, Brasil, Canada, Croatia, France, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Japan, Macedonia, the Netherlands, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Serbia and Montenegro, Slovenia, Switzerland, Ukraine and The United States of America. Afterwards, we intend to publish a book of collected theoretical contributions – those that are presented at the festival and some additional ones.

Polona Tratnik, Art Director of the Break 2.3 Festival

Zavod K6/4
Kersnikova 6 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia

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