VDA students and graduates for the first take part in Ars Electronica Festival in Linz
For the first time, the VDA Department of Photography, Animation and Media Arts (FAMM) has been invited to participate in the Ars Electronica Festival and to offer an exhibition and a series of performative events in the Campus programme. More than 20 BA, MA and PhD students, and alumni from Lithuania and Ukraine are participating. The main idea of the exhibition "When the Wind Blows from Everywhere, We Make Art and (Sur)render Reality" is to present the reactions of young artists to the changed geopolitical situation and their attempts to (sur)render reality through art forms.
The current theme of the festival is "Planet B", while the Lithuanian artists are asking how to survive the sudden awakening in an alternative planet? How to make DIY devices to communicate and act in a suddenly stressful survival situation. And, of course, how to make art, not war, to protect lives and minds. Young artists will invite the audience to think and work with them to construct scenarios and tools for a backup world and humanity.
The exhibition features 17 works: installations, virtual reality, moving image works and even a special smell created by Jan Georg Glöckner under the code name CN V CN V₁ CN V₂. The programme was prepared by commissioner and curator Vytautas Michelkevičius and co-curator Gailė Cijūnaitytė, in collaboration with young artists.
The Campus exhibition, which will take place at the Linz University of Art and Design from 7-11 September, features students and graduates from 33 art academies and universities from all over the world, from Chile to Japan. More about the Lithuanian exhibition and works.
The festival will also feature a mobile media-lab-van for young artists from Vilnius, where the artists will interact with festival participants and share their strategies for survival and creation in unstable times. This lab will later present the results of the testing and creation in the public spaces of Vilnius city and SODAS 2123. These will be the opening events of the second edition of the festival ūmėdė in 2024.
Ars Electronica is the world's largest and oldest media art festival (since 1979), taking place in Linz, Austria's third largest city. Since then, it has continuously explored the interactions between art, technology and society. The last live festival in 2019 attracted 110,000 visitors. Its prestige and significance in the field of media art is on a par with the Venice Biennale and Documenta in the context of contemporary art. Only a few Lithuanians took part so far: Mindaugas Gapševičius, Julijonas Urbonas (who received the Prix Ars Electronica 2010) and a few others. For the last two years, the festival has been mainly online and hybrid. In the 2020 version of the festival, the VDA FAMM department had presented a hybrid programme of events, Vilnius Garden.
Partners and sponsors: Vilnius Academy of Arts, Erasmus+, Institutio Media, MENE, Vilnius City Municipality, Lithuanian Council for Culture, Alt Lab and Mindaugas Gapševičius, LTMKS, SODAS 2123, Festival ūmėdė.
Participating artists: Ignas Pavliukevičius, Jan Georg Glöckner, Tata Frenkel, Gailė Cijūnaitytė, Natalija Lokcikaitė, Julija Kuprijaškinaitė, Jokūbas Vaicekauskas, Margarita Valionytė, Yuliia Yeromina, Diana Nakrevič, Evelina Bernatonytė, Ainė Petkūnaitė, Vilija Simutytė, Eva Rodz, Martyna Kairaitytė, Žilvinas Baranauskas, Dagnė Petkevičiūtė, Dominykas Andriuškevičius, Kotryna Maraugytė, Miglė Markulytė, Violeta Tvorogal, Pijus Chraptavičius, Gabija Grigalaitytė, Vytautas Michelkevičius.
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