Coinciding with the Biennale, one of the world’s few nomadic cultural events arrives in Venice before continuing to New York. Its global character leads us to explore fundamental themes of our time, deeply connected with our existence.
Through cooperation between art and visual languages, technology and science, the exhibition highlights the vulnerability and fragility of human beings and the natural and cybernetic context surrounding them.
CYLAND MediaArtLab presents the International Media Art Festival CYFEST 15
CYFEST, one of largest international media art festivals, was founded by a group of independent artists and curators in 2007. Since its inception, its main objective has been to examine the dialogue between different visual languages and technological cultures, exploring various forms of cooperation and sharing between art professionals and scientific communities. CYFEST brings together artists, curators, educators, engineers, programmers and media activists from around the world, creating a platform for mapping, mediating and documenting new media art at regional and international levels.
CYFEST is one of the world’s few nomadic cultural events: during the year, the festival’s projects are presented at leading cultural institutions around the world. Each year, the festival programme includes several exhibition projects, sound art, video and educational programmes.
The first CYFEST featured a small programme of events. The festival’s presentation began with Andy Warhol’s Silver Clouds installation, brought from the artist’s museum in Pittsburgh, USA. The festival also presented the exhibition “History of the E.A.T. 1960–2000”, devoted to the Experiments in Art and Technology laboratory of engineers Billy Klüver and Fred Waldhauer and artists Robert Rauschenberg and Robert Whitman. In subsequent years, CYFEST expanded steadily, becoming increasingly wide-ranging. Between 2007 and 2023, more than 350 artists and collectives took part. These included electronic music pioneers and some of the most influential experimental musicians in US history: David Rosenboom, Phill Niblock and Al Margolis; Austrian post-conceptual artist, media art curator and theorist, and director of the Z.K.M. Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, Peter Weibel; artist, founder and editor-in-chief of “e-flux” Anton Vidokle; innovative video artist Bjørn Melhus; conceptual artist and creator of the first total installations Irina Nakhova; and others. Between 2019 and 2023, the festival’s projects in Venice and New York were organised in collaboration with the Kolodzei Art Foundation and brought together works by major contemporary artists: Erik Bulatov, Ilya Kabakov, Mihail Chemiakin, Ernst Neizvestny, Francisco Arana Infante, Valentina Povarova, Lydia Masterkova, Komar and Melamid, Faith Ringgold, Chakaia Booker and others.
Since 2020, CYFEST has collaborated with Leonardo, the International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology (ISAST), contributed to Leonardo Journal and organised LASER Talks. The latest issue of Leonardo, published by M.I.T. Press, contains texts by the world-renowned French artist ORLAN, whose work enacts the most significant biotechnological and transpersonal metamorphosis in art history, and by the internationally recognised multidisciplinary collective of artists, designers and writers Slavs and Tatars.
CYFEST 15: Vulnerability comprises a series of touring exhibitions held around the world at major cultural and public institutions. It took place in Yerevan and Miami in 2023 and will continue in Venice and New York in 2024.
The new large group exhibition brings together the (anti)fragility of biological, social and cybernetic spaces, personal memories and scientific imagination, facsimiles of rain and indexing, semiotic writings, artistic exploration of nonhuman co-authorship, and the connection between knitting patterns and Mandelbrot sets.
The programme includes installations, performances and discursive content. Among the highlights is Tuula Närhinen’s multidisciplinary project Drop Tracer, which addresses nonhuman agency and the relationship between images and the natural world. Ann Marie Maes’s bacteria-grown skins investigate the sculptural potential of organic materials and the interfaces between the human and the nonhuman, the macroscopic and the microscopic. Among the pioneers of Science Art, the Where Dogs Run collective examines terms of Mandelbrot sets expressed through knitting patterns in a live performative installation. Through the technique of frottage, Mariateresa Sartori gives value to unexplored geology and sheds light on the little-known history of the Rosà quarry in Vicenza. Elena Gubanova and Ivan Govorkov’s multimedia installation recreates the concept of “time density” developed by Soviet astronomer Nikolai Kozyrev. The exhibition also presents the rarely exhibited Re-Pressions monotypes by acclaimed Armenian artist Samvel Baghdasaryan (1956–2017), experimental video art by Fabrizio Plessi, inflatable fabric sculptures by Irina Korina, architectural and urban objects made from recycled LEDs by Alexandra Dementieva, Anna Frants’s new installation and much more.
Artists: Samvel Baghdasaryan, Ludmila Belova, Max Blotas, Alexandra Dementieva, Alexey Dymdymarchenko, Yvetta Fedorova, Anna Frants, Elena Gubanova & Ivan Govorkov, Irina Korina, Natalia Lyakh, AnneMarie Maes, Phill Niblock & Katherine Liberovskaya, Tuula Närhinen, Nao Nishihara, Fabrizio Plessi, Mariateresa Sartori, Monica Naranjo Uribe, Where Dogs Run.
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Theme: Vulnerability
Dates: 15 April–30 August 2024
Venue: CREA – Cantieri del Contemporaneo, Giudecca 211-b, 30133 Venice
Programme
15–19 April — Press preview
19 April, 17:30 — Opening evening with a performance by Nao Nishihara
22 April, 17:00 — Vulnerability. The panel will bring together internationally renowned thinkers and professionals from various disciplines (art, science, technology, economics and design) to discuss the value of vulnerability. More information here.
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CYFEST 15 is organised by CYLAND International MediaArtLab. The project’s main sponsor is One Market Data. This project was made possible through collaboration with Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, the Center for Studies in Russian Art – CSAR, LEONARDO ISAST, Samvel Baghdasaryan Art Foundation, and Weave.
English translation of the original Italian announcement.