3rd Quadrilateral Biennale
Media Art - Angles and Intersections
The 3rd Biennale Kvadrilaterale (Quadrilateral Biennial) for the first time focuses on new media art—art that uses digital technologies as a medium. This focus seems an appropriate choice: digital media have profoundly shaped contemporary societies, which raises numerous issues surrounding cultural production and the status of art. Wireless networks and "nomadic devices"—Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs); smart phones such as Blackberries and iPhones; and mobile devices with embedded GPS—have blurred the boundaries between the translocal (connections between different sites) and the locative or site-specific. The Internet, mobile computing, and social media allow for new forms of connectivity that have a profound effect on how we communicate on a local and global level and on how cultural content is produced. At the same time, art that is created, stored, and distributed by means of digital technologies remains underrepresented in the art world at large. Each of the distinguishing characteristics of new media art—which is potentially time-based and dynamic, interactive and participatory, customizable and variable—seems to pose its own set of challenges for museums and the traditional art world.
The Quadrilateral Biennial will explore the different angles and intersections that emerge from the connective qualities of new media in relation to specific political, economical, and cultural contexts. In relationship to new media, the concept of a Quadrilateral Biennial itself invites several questions. A main goal of the Quadrilaterale (a cooperation between Slovenia, Hungary, Italy, and Croatia formed in 2000) was to bring together four countries in the same geopolitical and interest area and to integrate its member states into "Euro-Atlantic structures." One could argue that the key characteristics of the digital medium—networking, connectivity, and interrelations—transcend the traditional boundaries of nation states and support a multilateral approach. While this may be true, artistic practice is still often embedded in a culturally specific context, and resources for art are dependent on a local and national framework of institutions and organizations. The slogan "think global, act local," which has become a catchphrase of the information society, points to this relationship. It is interesting to note that the phrase originally appeared in the book Cities in Evolution (1915) by Patrick Geddes, connecting ideas of urban planning, social conditions, and education. The increasing interest in the locative and site-specific within digital media counterbalances the promise of the "any time, any place" slogan associated with instant, "global" access and connectivity provided by digital networks.
As a new media art exhibition, the 3rd Quadrilateral Biennial offers an opportunity for an aesthetic reflection on the relationships between national alliances, geopolitical areas, globalization and artistic practice as they have been shaped by digital technologies. Be it in a poetic and metaphorical or a concrete and literal sense, the Biennial engages with new aesthetic constellations brought about a medium that is multilateral by nature.
The process of curating the Quadrilateral Biennial itself was highly dependent on the digital medium. I invited four curators from the countries of the Quadrilaterale—Darko Fritz (Croatia); Nina Czegledy (Hungary); Elena Giulia Rossi (Italy); Peter Tomaž Dobrila (Slovenia)—who in turn chose four works by artists from their respective countries. All of the four curators are deeply immersed in the field of new media and have made invaluable contributions to it through their exhibitions and writings. As a group, we had regular virtual meetings via Skype across time zones and continents and exchanged ideas on a Wiki created for the exhibition. The fact that the works included in the Biennial are not only featured at the museum but at additional sites, such as the roof of a building in Rijeka's harbor, the Peek and Poke Retro Computer Club (Informatics Museum), and the Astronomical Center, again highlights the networked structure of the digital medium.
Biennials by nature tend to be more focused on taking the pulse of the time and capture a moment of artistic practice rather than presenting an inclusive and cohesive survey of a specific theme. The works chosen by the four curators for the Quadrilateral Biennial do not strive to present an in-depth exploration of the theme of "angles and intersections." Yet the curators' selections offer various perspectives on today's art and culture, and draw attention to multiple connections between forms and themes. Among these are intersections between different media, such as cinema, photography, performance; between time and space (enabled by telecommunications); local and personal histories and politics; and natural and technological space. A prominent theme emerging from these intersections is the layering of time, space, and movement that emerges from a flux of data that is translated into different visual forms. The video by Elastic Group featured in the Biennial specifically reflects on the flow of economic data, statistics, image transmission, and people that characterizes digital culture.
Intersections between media surface in several artworks in the exhibition, demonstrating that new media is a truly hybrid form that incorporates and redefines traditional media and remains difficult to classify. A group of interactive or real-time videos (by Júlia Vései, Marko Košnik, Helena Bulaja, and Carlo Zanni, respectively) creates crossovers between the cinematic, computational, and photographic, and illustrates how digital technologies have affected the language of the moving image. The digital medium does not rely on the ultimately linear structure of the film frame or electronic image; it transforms the image as well as image sequences into discrete units that can potentially be remixed in new constellations, be it through software processes or interaction by the viewer. Disparate visual elements can seamlessly be blended to create a simulated form of reality, a process that is distinctly different from the traditional montage, which juxtaposes components with a distinct spatial or temporal history.
The intersections between different locations, time zones, as well as the physical and the virtual world play a major role in works by Ivan Marušić Klif, Eva and Franco Mattes, and Dalibor Martinis. Martinis' work gathers daily data on the global economy, international relations, ecology etc. and filters this data to assess the state of "humanity" at any given moment. This global mood then determines and changes the color of the 3D logo of the Transadria company, a globe sitting on top of a building in the harbor of Rijeka. The artwork captures a growing area of new media art in which locations and architectures seemingly reflect the presence, movements, or emotions and behavior of people. These types of projects both strive to give physical form to abstract data, and to shift emphasis from the physical structure of a site to an awareness of people's moods or behaviors. Martinis' installation also points to the globalized effects of the current information society, which emerged in the second half of the 20th century as the economy moved from material goods to information goods.
While global connectivity and the simulation of realities emerge in several works included in the exhibition, there also is a pronounced awareness of connections between local, personal, and media histories and politics. In his video installation, Janos Sugar draws parallels between European pre-election political debates, as broadcast on TV, and the art world. Eva and Franco Mattes' reenactment of Marina Abramović's and Ulay's famous 1977 performance Imponderabilia in the virtual world of Second Life raises questions about art, reinterpretation, and simulation. Abramović, who was born in Belgrade, herself appears as a commentator in Helena Bulaja's interactive documentary, which captures the history of technological and social developments initiated by the inventor and electrical engineer Nikola Tesla (an ethnic Serb born in the territory of today's Croatia), an influential figure in the history of new media. A project by Lorenzo Pizzanelli reconstructs Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, the founder of Futurism, as a chatbot—an artificial intelligence program designed to simulate a conversation with visitors. Despite its highly problematic endorsement of violence and association with fascism, Futurism's celebration of technology as cultural factor, and its fusion of activism and artistic research had a lasting influence on other art movements. Like Tesla, whose work contributed to the establishment of robotics, Marinetti is credited in the robotics context for the humanoid automatons that appeared in his play La donna e mobile (and its later version Elettricita sessuale).
The exploration of technological and media history that unfolds in many of the above-mentioned projects is counterbalanced by several works that address intersections between natural and technological space. In Luiza Margan's and Miha Presker's work a natural system, an ant colony, produces art (drawings) and becomes a sociological system of constant progress. Uršula Berlot's projection Pulsation incorporates bio-amorphous forms and seemingly organic natural topology, and Marton Andras Juhasz turns a discarded laptop into a garden, addressing issues surrounding pollution, recycling, and sustainability.
Together, the projects featured in the Quadrilateral Biennial give an impression of the complex matrix of connections and perspectives that form a framework for contemporary media art and culture. The artworks presented in this exhibition both represent "angles" and perspectives that are specific to their geographical context and provide aesthetic comments on the state of today's media culture.
Artistic Director, Quadrilateral Bienale
