CoLaboratory | Collaborative digital artworks @Clujotronic

DIGITAL ARTIST RESIDENCIES REZIDENȚE ARTISTICE DIGITALE DIGITALE KÜNSTLERRESIDENZEN

DIGITAL ARTIST RESIDENCIES REZIDENČšE ARTISTICE DIGITALE DIGITALE KĂœNSTLERRESIDENZEN The last months were under the sign of change and adaptation, of rethinking and reflection. The cultural and artistic fields were some of the most affected by the current situation. The way in which the pandemic influenced the artists, art in general, but also the public’s behaviour was and continues to be discussed.

CoLaboratory is our response to the isolation in which artists and their art had to live in for the past months.

In a difficult time for the cultural sector, the German cultural centers in Romania and the Republic of Moldova together with partners from the visual arts sector have joined forces to support local artists and give them the opportunity to connect digitally with artists in Germany. This is how CoLaboratoryđ?—–đ?—źđ?—&#x;đ?—Žđ?—Żđ?—źđ?—żđ?—Žđ?˜ đ?—źđ?—żđ?˜† was born: a series of digital artist residencies.

HOW WILL THE POST-PANDEMIC WORK OF ART LOOK LIKE? This project invited artists to exercise their imagination: to reflect on the changes the artistic process went through and to think about the new directions their art will take at the end of this unpredictable episode. What kind of alternative formats will emerge from this situation? How does technology help us cope with physical/social distancing?

The goal of the project was to create a dialogue platform for the artists in Romania, the Republic of Moldova and Germany, as well as to stimulate the artistic creation and the cooperation amongst them, by means of granting 14 creation scholarships and offering them the opportunity to present their artworks to an interested public in seven different cities.

Within the interdisciplinary residency program CoLaboratory, we brought together 14 artists from three countries, by grouping them in pairs made of Romanian or Moldavian artists and German artists. The duos have cooperated for one month and have created a work of digital art combining two forms of artistic expression: image and word.

ORGANIZERS & PARTNERS CoLaboratory was initiated by the German cultural organizations from Romania and the Republic of Moldova: German Cultural Center Brasșov, Goethe-Institut Bucharest, Goethe-Zentrum Chișșșșțăsinaău, German Cultural Center Cluj-Napoca, German Cultural Center Iasși, German Cultural Center Sibiu and German Cultural Center Timișsoara.

Each German cultural organization invited a local partner from the visual arts sector, along whom they have organized the artistic residencies. Their role was to provide the pairs with mentoring during the creative process, as well as with a platform for bringing their creations in front of the public.

All the results of the residencies will be presented in the fall of 2020, in all partner cities.

The showcase of the results will take place at the festivals or galleries that have been selected as project partners: AMURAL FESTIVAL BRAȘOV RADAR NEW MEDIA ART BUCUREȘTI GRAPHKIOSK, ARTCOR – CREATIVE INDUSTRY HUB CHIȘINĂU CLUJOTRONIC – ELECTRO ARTS FESTIVAL CLUJ-NAPOCA BORDERLINE ART SPACE IAȘI MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART, BRUKENTHAL NATIONAL MUSEUM SIBIU SIMULTAN FESTIVAL TIMIȘOARA

AN ARCHIVE OF SOLITUDE

TANDEM BRAȘOV MENTORS: AMURAL FESTIVAL & GERMAN CULTURAL CENTER BRAȘOV

VIKTOR DALLMANN [DE]

Viktor Dallmann, born 1997 in Dresden, Germany, is an artist whose work circles around the subtle transition of literature into ephemeral interventions and poetic installations in public spaces.

After his Bachelor’s degree at the Deutsches Literaturinstitut in Leipzig, he is currently studying in the international Master of Fine Arts program “Public Arts and New Artistic Strategies” at Bauhaus University in Weimar.

Viktor Dallmann has held many readings at diverse occasions all over Germany - most recently in Leipzig, Frankfurt, and Berlin.

Among many others, he was last published in „Tippgemeinschaft 2020” which is an annual anthology edited and published by students of the Literaturinstitut Leipzig.

HYBRID LAB [RO]

Hybrid Lab is a studio founded in 2017 by Eranio Petruska and Ana-Bianca Tudorică.

The modality in which our projects are developed tries to follow patterns as diverse as possible, in this way trying to not become serial producers of aesthetical works. That would be the main reason why adaptability and alternative approaches are the basic principles of our studio when delivering a project.

All this has contributed to our experience in animation, video mapping, visual effects, light design, sound design, 3D modeling, LED programming, interactive installations, and scenography.

In order to understand the world, we map – we chop up and pigeonhole.

But what if our mechanisms of order have been obsolete all the time? The era of pandemics will force us to reconfigurate. Our roaming souls get trapped in static movement.

Things we thought were universal, start to dismantle; what they leave behind is vast inner disorderliness.

Our „CoLaboratory“ project aims at confronting the audience with an archive of solitude conveyed through a 360-degree video experience. In this POV scenario, the viewer hovers through deluging textual references and conjunctive soundscape. The seemingly opaque structure unveils a mesh of ontological interdependencies and hybrid narratives.

THE COMFORT ZONE

A COLLECTION OF SYMBIOTIC GIFS TO NAVIGATE THROUGH THE NEW NORMAL

TANDEM BUCHAREST MENTORS: RADAR NEW MEDIA ART & GOETHE-INSTITUT BUKAREST

CLAIRE FRISTOT [DE]

Claire Fristot aka A-li-ce (FR, Berlin) works as a video artist with a special focus in the audiovisual performative and installation fields. She has showcased her work on the international art scene (ZKM (DE), Deutsches Historisches Museum (DE), Mira Festival (ES), RoBot Festival (IT), Mapping Festival (CH), etc.).

Engaged in transmission, she also teaches regularly in art universities across Europe, leading courses and lectures on live video creation processes. What connects us as living beings with our environments, how we interact with each other in critical times, are the driving questions behind her work.

SILVIA GRĂDINARU [RO]

Silvia Grădinaru is from Câmpina. Born in 1989, moved to Bucharest, working in advertising for about 9 years. She entered the Guinness Book of World Records in 2012, as co-author of the fastest (collective) novel ever written. The same year, she published her debut volume, “L’enfant terrible”.

From then, she continued publishing and translating poetry for various magazines, both online and offline. She took part in festivals in cities from Bucharest to Brașov, Iași, Arad, and Berlin. In 2019, she performed poetry at Balkan Trafik in Brussels, in the opening of a Subcarpați concert.

Since 2018, she’s been holding interdisciplinary “Poetry & Advertising” creative writing courses in Romania, and for The Poetry School in London.

Dear Friend, We know. Recently everything around us has been about living and adapting to these new normal times. But what is that exactly?

If we look closely at it, we can surely see life has always been anything but normal. From awkward creatures inhabiting the Earth to cosmic patterns and our own quirky daily habits, instances of new normal have always been with us. So why not normalize the awkwardness?

That’s why we created The Comfort Zone. A safe space filled with a series of symbiotic GIFs to keep you company while navigating the strangeness around.

Each features living species’ components (such as plants, humans and even a panda), natural-urban patterns and poetic texts based on scientific data.

Call them totemic figures or animated mixed-media collages, mantra figures or alienkins.

Either way, they’re here together to tell you their stories and make it easier to push your fears and anxiety away. Just dive in, see how it feels.

And if you want to share a piece of The Comfort Zone with someone close, here’s where: https://bit.do/thecomfortzone See you in The Comfort Zone, Claire & Silvia

COLLABORATORY DISTANCES

TANDEM CHIȘINĂU MENTORS: ARTCOR CREATIVE INDUSTRY HUB & GOETHE-ZENTRUM CHIȘINĂU

GREGOR STOCKMANN [DE] Born at the beginning of spring 1972 in Bavaria.

Studied at the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences (HAW Hamburg).

He lives and works in Hamburg. Since 2008 he has been working as a stage artist under his stage alter ego „Anton Grübener“. He is performing in English and German. He also works as an illustrator and animator and made animation films for the children’s opera Dortmund and produced educational games and music videos.

As the author of bizarre texts he is reading at poetry slams and reading stages.

He is giving workshops for animation and drawing at schools and universities for many years.

VALERIA BARBAS [MD]

Valeria Barbas, (born 1984) is a singer/composer&multi-media artist, based in Chişinău, Republic of Moldova. She studied for a BA, MA in composition, Academy of Music, Theatre and Art, Moldova, also studied for a BA in singing and painting. PhD in study of art, author of a book about new music in Republic of Moldova. Director/concept author of Tv program Zona Ars at public Tv MOLDOVA 1.

Working medium: singing, sound/music, performance, installation, video-art, film. Collaborates since 2008 with KSA:K Center for Contemporary Art, and Oberliht Artists Association. Co-founder of ARTPLATFORMA NGO. Having a musical background, approaching subjects of sound, time, space and body become of certain interests.

Distance can be different. How is yours ?

The project deals with exploration of distance in different dimensions of perception and understanding.

Both artists Gregor Stockmann (Germany) and Valeria Barbas (Republic of Moldova) are sharing their experience in different mediums, Gregor from the freedom of Bavaria and Valeria from the lockdown in Chisinau. Transcendence of the borders is configured by an intertextual discourse, where text, photos, drawings, videos, animation and sound developped by artists are interconecting and making the Distances Collaborative.

BASIC WORRIES OF EMPTY SEATS AUDIO-VIDEO POEM

TANDEM CLUJ-NAPOCA MENTORS: CLUJOTRONIC & GERMAN CULTURAL CENTER CLUJ-NAPOCA

JASMINA AL-QAISI [DE]

Jasmina Al-Qaisi is a writer and archivist.

She writes as she speaks in her own English, caught between sound and visual poetry, often stepping out of ordinary norms of form.

She investigates intersections between body politics, intimacy, digitally mediated relationships, voice and memory, homes and aways often in close communication with her grandmother. She recently inaugurated the archival methodology for performance and radio format Behind Shelves as part of the art and project space SAVVY Contemporary in Berlin and published the poesy album book Archival Regrets. She often makes waves on free, independent, temporary or mobile radios and is a member of the sound interested artist group Research and Waves. She co-authors diverse audio actions with the artist Ralf Wendt.

ADRIAN GANEA [RO]

Adrian Ganea is an artist born in Romania in 1989. He is drawn to the unreal, intrigued by the magic of the intangible and the ethereal, he seeks the sorcery that incarnates the virtual into solid matter. He is fascinated by the ways the bodiless nonmaterial subject can materialise and transpire into the real world.

In his work, he aims to enact the production of fiction, often reflecting on its increasing automation. His practice ranges from designing scenography to programming CG simulations and composing videos.

He graduated at UDK Berlin, receiving a masters degree in Set Design with his project “Cyborgia” based on Paul B. Preciado’s essay: “How Pompeii invented Pornography, The “Gabinetto Segreto” and the Sexopolitical Foundations of the Modern European Metropolis”. He is also a founding member of artists group virtuellestheater.

Basic worries of empty seats is a joint speculative reflection of two artists that never met in person on ‘the current state of things’ both literally and figuratively. While debating the symbolic relationship between stillness, emptiness, absence, lack of participation, uncertainty for the future and projecting on a possible delirium, they found a common interest in the empty public spaces unoccupied during the current pandemic and moved away from human-centric polarities. The two are focused on what could be the concerns of the spaces and objects that are overlooked during this world wide transformation.

Thus, they decided to make an imaginary exercise to conjure up a source for entertainment not for people, but for objects usually subjected to human use.

Basic worries of empty seats animates ghostly thoughts, alien movements and timeless auras to envision what could be a suitable amusement for the empty seats which occupy empty auditoriums. The art work is coming together in a hybrid form between voiced poetic text and 3D simulations which combine various tenses into a timeless future-pastfuture where speculation within the imaginary comfortably replaces knowing, certainty and hegemonic behaviour of beholding the truth.

BISCUITS RATTLING INSIDE A TIN BOX

TANDEM IAȘI MENTORS: BORDERLINE ART SPACE & GERMAN CULTURAL CENTER IAȘI

DAWID LIFTINGER [DE]

Born in 1986, in Austria, currently living in Cologne / Germany.

In my works I explore sensory and synaesthetic states through hand-built electronics harnessing the essential properties of light and sound across installations and performances.

Since 2018 I cooperate with the Neue Musik Ensemble ElectronicID as a light sound artist.

I am a co-founder with Stefan Tiefengraber of the curatorial soundart project radio433 and I am active at the off-space Gemeinde Köln located at Ebertplatz.

FLORIN LĂZĂRESCU [RO]

Prose writer and screenwriter. He published three novels: What They Know About the Panda Bear (2003), Our Special Envoy (2005), Numbness (2013), and the two volumes of short stories: The Tube with a Hat (2009) and Happenings and Characters (2015). His books are translated and published in 10 languages. Screenplays: The Tube with the Hat (2006, directed by Radu Jude, winner of Sundance Festival for the best international short film), A Shadow of a Cloud (2013, directed

by Radu Jude, premiered at Cannes, 2013), Aferim! (2015, directed by Radu Jude, winner of a Silver Bear in Berlin / nominated for the best screenplay at European Film Academy Awards).

It’s weird how in such a short period of time, the mankind has adapted to a new reality – an absurd one, of an unsuspected pandemic that has changed the very fiber of our behavior, our minds and our whole life. We don’t know what will happen next, but one thing is for sure: the world is to be rethought, almost everything will be different. So strange that even the banality and the boredom of our pre-pandemic days has become the happiness we dream of: to hang around, to meet people, to hug, to be able to talk, to look each other in the eyes. Without fear.

So, that’s why we (two people from different countries, who cannot meet and work normally, face to face, other than online) chose to create an installation that expresses by the silence of a text the story of those absurd, unforeseen events, that definitely changed the course of our lives, starting from childhood by now. A text projected letter by letter on the walls, from inside a metal tube, that silently and slowly flows under the eyes of the viewer.

About those moments everybody experienced while boringly living, when all of the sudden something happened, and you felt that nothing would be the same as before.

DEAR ALEXANDRA SOUND-VIDEO-INSTALLATION

TANDEM SIBIU MENTORS: AMURAL FESTIVAL & GERMAN CULTURAL CENTER SIBIU

LEA SAUER [DE]

Lea Sauer writes fiction and essays. Among her recent publications are the novella “Métro” (SuKultur) and the audiowalk “Ich flexe mich in die Stadt, durch die Stadt, ich flexe mir die Stadt zurecht”. She is co-editor of the book “Flexen – Flâneusen* schreiben Städte” (Verbrecher Verlag). 2020 she holds the scholarship for fiction writing of the Cultural Foundation of Saxony while working on her first novel.

ALEXANDRA ZIDARIU [RO]

Alexandra Zidariu is a visual artist and graphic designer based in Sibiu, Romania.

After completing her studies at the University for Applied Arts and Sciences in Hildesheim, Germany and the Weißensee Academy of Art Berlin, she returned to her hometown Sibiu, where she continues to explore the possibilities of analogue and digital drawing, print and graphic techniques. Her distinctive personal style is a tool for questioning abstract notions of reality, thought processes and socio-cultural constructs. “Of particular interest to me is the activation of a transdisciplinary method of communication between artist and society.

Where do we meet people? How do place and time influence the encounters we have?

How do we create intimacy in times of social distancing? In Dear Alexandra, writer Lea Sauer and artis t Al exandra Zidariu are l ooking for a new in-between-s pace of communication and getting to know each other. Sauer wrote l etters , Zidariu ans wered with il l us trations. While the recorded letters by Sauer tell a diary-like story of recent times of spatial dis tancing and (s el f-)is ol ation, Zidariu’s il l us trations refl ect on the way we s ee and move through place – a self_Topian place. In this utopian place one can be ultimately intimate, free and close to others. But is this self_Topia really possible nowadays?

THE [C]

WE THOUGHT THE DIGITAL TO BE HYGIENIC, BUT IT IS JUST A NEW KIND OF DIRTY.

TANDEM TIMIȘOARA MENTORS: SIMULTAN FESTIVAL & GERMAN CULTURAL CENTER TIMIȘOARA

SAMUEL J. KRAMER [DE]

Samuel J. Kramer (*1996) is an author, performance artist and activist living in Offenbach, Germany. He studied and studies literature, linguistics and philosophy in Frankfurt.

His texts have been published in numerous anthologies and as video-clips. He often works at the intersection of visual arts, music and literature. He holds seminars for creative writing and performance. In September, his anthology “Poetry for Future” will be released.

OVIDIU HRIN [RO]

Ovidiu Hrin is a multidisciplinary designer & art director working in Timisoara (Romania) and internationally. He has a vast experience in branding & designing complex communication and information systems.

Ovidiu leads the graphic design studio Synopsis: and holds graphic design, communication and calligraphy lectures and workshops throughout the world.

Hrin is actively involved in cultural and educational projects. Since 2015 he is the curator of the graphic design section of Romanian Design Week. In 2011 he launched TypopassageTm, a design and typography micro-museum network in Timisoara.

He has won numerous design awards worldwide and his works have been exhibited and featured by prestigious institutions (European Design Awards, Zgraf Triennale, Golden Bee, Graphis, Type Directors Club).

Audiovisual polyptychon The [C] is about never really meeting (anyone). As a product of collaboration and communication, it reflects the exchange of both knowledge and ignorance (say: artistical, scientific, social) by addressing its own creative process, especially its techno-logistical pitfalls.

The [C] explores the phenomena of layering and loop, of glitch and non-synchronicity. It is manifold misunderstanding. It is the moment when the face on your screen is frozen, but you can still hear someone talking.

It asks: - Can yo$^wefd hear me now? How ab*^&%t * now?

With the kind support of: Octavian Horvath – sound design / voice Cristian Văaduva - film editing

FROM DIGITAL RESIDENCE TO EXHIBITION THIRD CHAPTER: CLUJOTRONIC – ELECTRO ARTS FESTIVAL, CLUJ-NAPOCA

The electro arts festival Clujotronic is the third partner of the CoLaboratory project to host all the artistic results of the digital residencies. The showcase will be part of this year’s hybrid edition of the festival and will be presented at the Art Museum of Cluj-Napoca and the Reflex Gallery.

This year, Clujotronic encourages more than ever artistic collaborations. The fusion between art and technology is articulated through digital interaction without physical contact. New Media installations, collaborative digital artworks, workshops, debates, independent video games and exhibitions will guide the public in the world of creation without any physical limits, highlighting the connection between the individual and the community, mediated by digital tools.

COLABORATORY EXHIBITION AT CLUJOTRONIC

2 – 4 October 2020 Location: Art Museum of Cluj-Napoca (p-ța Unirii 30, Cluj-Napoca) Reflex Gallery (str. Iuliu Maniu 3, Cluj-Napoca) Opening hours: 16:00-24:00 Free entrance

_MUZEUL DE ARTĂ CLUJ-NAPOCA _LIVESTREAM: clujotronic.ro

NEW MEDIA EXHIBITION AV MAPPING INTERACTIVE INSTALLATIONS AR EXPERIENCES COLLABORATIVE DIGITAL ARTWORKS GAME JAM / TALKS / WORKSHOPS

_DAILY PROGRAM: 16:00 – 24:00 _OFFICIAL OPENING: 02.10.2020 | 20:00 _FREE ENTRANCE

Sponsors

Founders

Partners

CMYK

Media partners TM

ART SPACE