[spectre] Break21 - 6. International Festival of Young Emerging Artists

[jaka zeleznikar]

Break21
18 June – 7 July 2002
6. International Festival of Young Emerging Artists
DEAD OR ALIVE

http://www.break21.org


On June, 18th, the 6th International Festival of Young Emerging Artists,
BREAK21 will start with the intense program, which will shake the public.
During its three weeks (until July 7) Zavod K6/4 (Kapelica Gallery, Club K4,
Cyberpipe) in Ljubljana (Slovenia) will be venue, where over 100 contemporary
works of art by artists from throughout the world will be presented. All these
projects address the topic of the festival – “Dead or Alive” in direct and
radical way.

In the title, the initial question appears. It questions death and life; it
demands an answer to the question about definitions, what is actually dead and
what is alive. To what extent something is dead, though only inert; to what
extent something is alive, though tends to be prolonged with the help of
machines; how to understand organic material in the cryobanks and how
biotechnical mechanisms/organisms? Are the cyber space and avatars with
artificial intelligence, which are present in the Hollywood apparatus of the
imaginary or the top cyber laboratories, our or the parallel world?

Interconnecting sides of reality – death and life will be manifested through
exhibitions, net art, performances, fashion as well as comics, short and
animated films. Theoretical background to the festival’s topic – “Dead or
Alive” will be given at the symposium. The exhibited projects are divided into
three thematic sets: the dark side ‘dead’ will be presented in the first
week,
the second week will try to find balance around the delicate ‘or’ and the
last
week will inevitably come ‘alive’.

Besides younger, not yet recognised artists who modulate their artistic
expression within research artistic practice, we have invited authors, whose
known works may add up to the entire exhibition. These projects are in our
opinion, important for the discourse, pursued by the festival. At the end of
the festival we will publish a book, which will consist of texts and artistic
projects, presented at the Break 21, and projects, which influenced the
development of the selected theme greatly, for which we would like to become
the reference in the future.

http://www.break21.org



PERFORMANCES

Among the invited artists, Franko B. (GB) will certainly attract the most attention. He is already an internationally acclaimed visual artist living in Great Britain, whose performances are usually sold out well in advance. The psychoanalytic theory would characterise him as an ultimate painter while he himself claims that he does not deal with death in his 'blood letting' performances, but with a thin line between the concepts of life and real experience. He exposes his naked and bleeding body which forces the audience to rethink their own ideas of beauty and suffering and the connections between the two.

On the Festival he will present his ultimate performance, a fashion show in which he will mark the way with his own blood on a white path. This performance will present a unique contribution to Slovenian reality. During the symposium Aljoša Kolenc, who compares Franko B.'s work to the once revolutionary Cezanne, will attempt to interpret his performances within the frames of  psychoanalytic hermeneutics.

Body as an instrument of artistic expression is also used by Dietmar Bruckmayr-Didi (AT). He will open the Break21 Festival on June 18 with a vocal performance "Aria of the lost genes". All he needs to perform his act is a microphone, which he holds in his mouth and makes sound by hitting his body and head. The author treats his body in a very suicidal fashion. 

Besides Franko B, and Didi there are some other interesting performers invited as well as selected:

invited: Niko Raes (BE), Kira O'Reilly (GB), Havve Fjell (NO), Elena Kovylina (UA).
selected: Boris Šincek (HR), Marijan Crtalić (HR).


EXHIBITION in Kapelica Gallery will be open from June, 18th until July, 7th every day between 12.00 and 20.00 hours during the festival.

A renowned Slovenian artist Franc Purg, currently working in New York, will present his recently finished video for the first time, as a part of the exhibition.  
His 30 minutes long video film presents a story of the 20 year old Leon, a Macedonian born in Slovenia, whose life was forever marked when he killed his father at the age of 12. His life that culminated in this tragic event is unique, because of his forced pilgrimage through many reformatories and similar institutions throughout ex-Yugoslavia and his perseverance, which helped him walk the way from Bosnia to Slovenia several times as well as his frankness in telling his brutal story.

Fred Pelon is a Dutch artist known mainly due to his technique of recording, projecting and additional recording. He will show his experimental and autobiographic documentary "The Dutch Act", where he explores the world of suicides and practical use of chat on internet to communicate about them. 

Invited: Franc Purg (SI), Stephen J. Shanabrook (US), Talent (YU), Zoran Todorović (YU), Charles Krafft (US), Davide Grassi (SI), Bureau of Inverse Technology (US)

Selected: Andreas Troeger (US), Petra Vargova (CZ), Vukašin Nedeljković (YU), Danko Friščić (HR), Fred Pelon (NL), Slavica Peševska (MK/SI), Sašo Sedlaček (SI), Bojana Romić (YU), Mario Horvat (HR), STRUP production (SI), Emir Jelkić (SI), Polona Demšar (SI), I. J. Pino (HR), Christopher Morris (GB), Jelena Radić (YU), Christian de Lutz (US/DE), Ljubica Andjelković (HR), Liane Lang (UK), Emir Jelkić (SI), Martin Sastre (UY), Mario Mišković (HR), Christian Keinstar (DE), Philip John (GB)

NET ART
 
Net art will be presented on Cyberpipe computers during all three weeks of the festival between 12.00 and 20.00 hours. 
Web art consists of works made and transmitted with net based technologies. They are accessible through the Internet, but lose their main characteristics and can only be documented, when transferred into another medium.

This year Break21 presents Jimpunk visiting an almost 13 years old girl Mouchette. The visit takes place in the morgue as Mouchette decided to commit suicide as the answer to her life's problems. Her identity lives on though through an unknown French artist - Mouchette whom we will visit in her afterlife. Innergirl presents her Suicide Journal, while Melinda Rackham thematizes Hepathitis C in her work Carrier.

Invited: http://www.subtle.net/carrier, http://suicidejournal.com
Selected: http://www.mouchette.org, http://www.jimpunk.com/www/m.org.ue

SYMPOSIUM

You will be able to listen to a series of lectures and presentations in the Cyberpipe lecture room (their texts will be published in the catalogue) in the beginning of the Festival (19, 20 and 21 June at 18.00, 19.00 and 20.00 hours). The symposium will be dedicated to some extreme areas of artistic expression exposing the question of life and death as well as contents and materials through which they are expressed. Our point of interest will be the artistic poetics and also practical problems that occur while dealing with such complex and usually taboo theme. Some invited lecturers don't have an artistic background but are exposed to the subject of life and death in different scientific fields and therefore
often represent inspiration for works of art. Together we will discuss the question if art has the privilege of enlightening and reflecting upon such delicate themes and contents. 

Oron Catts (AU) is a member of the SymbioticA group within which he, as artist, collaborates in the scientific processes. SymbioticA is a research laboratory dedicated to the exploration of scientific knowledge in general, and biological technologies in particular, from an artistic and humanistic perspective. It is located in The Department of Anatomy & Human Biology at The University of Western Australia. SymbioticA is the first research laboratory of its kind, in that it enables artists to engage in wet biology practices in a biological science department. Developments in science and technology, in particular in the life sciences, are having a profound effect on society, its values, belief systems and
treatment of individuals, groups and the environment. Oron will present their last project - the creation of wings for a pig under lab conditions.

Other lecturers who will present their views and thoughts on the symposium include Barbara Borčič (SI), Andrej Marušič (SI), Adrian Heathfield (GB), Aljoša Kolenc (SI), Stuart Swezey (US), John Duncan (US), Rachel Armstrong (GB). 

FASHION SHOW

In the newly discovered exhibition area of the Kapelica Gallery - roof - fashion designers will present their dress concepts on 27 June at 21.00 hours. Fashion show will be an event that exposes clothes worn by newborns, dead, warriors, suicides, fetishists and clothes that protect us during crrying out the tasks of life performance. These are clothes that aim at the sublime beauty, although we would rather never wear them.

Invited: Stahl Stenslie (NO), Denise Kaelin (CH)
Selected: Jasminka Končić (HR), Anita Mudronja (HR), Ivana Žanko (HR), Irena Funduk (SI), Ana Hribernik (SI)

SHORT AND ANIMATED FILMS

During all three weeks of the festival the Kinoteka, Kolosej and Cyberpipe cinema room will show screenings and  rescreening of short video and animated films.
Eight international animated films that deal with the edges of death and life in purely individual ways and use experimental approaches while telling their stories have been chosen. For the first time on the big screen it will also be possible to see professional short films, half an hour of concentrated storyline that break the viewer's conception of 
(non-)existence.

Selected:
Short films: David Brooks (US), Fariborz Kamkari (IR), Boris Hars-Tschachotin (DE), Jorg Wagner & Stefan Prehn (DE), Marianela Maldondo (GB/NO), Alain Escalle (FR/JP), Kenneth Kainz (DK), Virgil Widrich (AT)
Animated films: Rene Castillo (MX), Sally Golding (AU), Neels Britz (ZA), Jo Goigne (BE), Bruno Razum (HR), Igor Lazin & Bense Sandor (HU), Balasz Pal (HU), Martha Colburn (NL/US) 

COMICS

Comics have traditionally been the arena of the worst possible violence. Their black-and-white images cut into the limits of our perception which are struggling with the cold reality. Some situations caught in ink stare at us like frozen screams of horror, others show those few seconds when the Earth is still approaching.

Selected: Ivana Armanini (HR), Beppi & Mary Knott (US), Frederique Cabaille (BE), Goran Cvek & Emil Jurcan (SI), Andreja Kladnik (SI), Dragomir Križić (BA), Miroslav Lazendić (YU), Miroslav Nemeth (HR), Ivan Mitrevski (SI), Dalibor Rajninger (HU), Zoran Stojilković (YU), Rui Sanguinho (PT), Willem Verburg (NL)


For additional information please contact:
http://www.break21.org

Mija Lorbek, PR
mija.lorbek@k6-4.org or break21@k6-4.org
+386 1 438 03 00 
+386 41 390 643