ORGANIZED BY

PRO&CONTRA International Symposium
Moscow, October 8-11 2011; Krasnoyarsk, October 14-16 2011

The project is realized with Mikhail Prokhorov Foundation support
Under the patronage of Ministry of Culture of Russian Federation
Organized by "MediaArtLab" Centre for Art and Culture
Co-organized by Artplay on Yauza Design Centre
Partners: Royal Netherlands Embassy, Goethe Institut, Moskau, Austrian Cultural Forum

2011 Theme: Total Observer

“Today media constructs reality. Digital technologies change the society, politics and economics, but we are also changing with them. Technologies are extensions of our nervous system. We mutate gradually and become part of it. Under the pressure of the infinite number of cameras, stucked in the web, on one hand, we loose our freedom. But on the other - we expand our rights day by day via technological innovations. Art is not an outsider now, it's a trendsetter with new ideas and introduction into various fields is not directly connected to it. Only art with its intuition and power of imagination not limited by either discourse, or status, or norm becomes able to perceive the vague outlines of the future...”

Olga Shishko, PRO&CONTRA curator

Partners

General partner

Under the patronage of

Supported by

Open Society Institute

Красноярск

Площадка проведения

Screen Media

The PRO&CONTRA Symposium consists of six sections which include talks by theoreticians, artists, curators and public figures, as well as discussions, classes on various subjects and a presentation programme.

SCREEN AND INTERACTIVE MEDIA SECTION

Co-curated by Karina Karaeva, Head of Cinema and Video Art Department at National Centre for Contemporary Arts (Russia)

Roswitha Schuller. Palaces & Courts, 2010. A collaborative work by Markus Hanakamn & Roswitha Schuller and Karin Mihatsch (researcher, Paris/FR). Installation view. Courtesy of the artists

Media art draws its participants into an active interaction with an object of art, using various audiovisual means including video, technical vision technologies, telecommunications, sensory feedback devices, acoustic characteristics, performance basis, site-specific and theatre experiments. Preference is given to projects where the interactivity principle is not something additional, but a central element of meaning and where distinctiveness and relevancy of the concept is completed with  a high-quality technical rendering.

Interactive media are expanding onto territories of performance, cinema and media. They include use of both inner and outer intercation element. The interactive component now permeates a work of art simulteneously expanding and concentrating the meaning of the work. Thus under conditions of interactive intervention the traditional narrativity is interrupted and a work of art is transformed into a collage. The technical execution here is undoubtedly fundamental but it doesn’t define the quality of a work, only adding to its meaning and the knowledge of its interactive structures. The structure of interactive media is a definition of context for various forms of communication, a use of artificial forms, or rather a distortion of a traditional meaning of an image. Here a disruption and deformation of an image and its integration in an other interactive form is in highest demand.

Julika Rudelius. Dressage, 2009. Video installation, HD video. Courtesy of the artist

OCTOBER 8

18.00 SCREEN AND INTERACTIVE MEDIA SECTION

Discussion panel, moderated by Karina Karaeva

Boris Debackere (Art director of V2_lab at Unstable Media Institute, Netherlands) — Augmented Reality;
Kirill Razlogov (Professor, Director of Russian Institute for Cultural Research, Russia) — The future of screen and post-screen forms of creation;
Karina Karaeva (Head of Cinema and Video Art Department at National Centre for Contemporary Arts, Russia) — The trick of the screen media. Death of idea;
Constantine Bokhorov (PhD in Cultural Studies, curator, Russia) — Interactive media — between attractiveness and social criticism. 

20.00 PRO&CONTRA OPENCALL — SCREEN AND INTERACTIVE MEDIA

Presentation and discussion. Projects of the 2011 nominees.

Where the dogs run — "Precipitate", Olga Kiseleva — "Conquistadors at the North Pole", Dmitry Bulnygin — "Flowers", Gor Chahal "Free Love", Taus Makhacheva — "Bullet", Fedorova Tatyana — "I want to London", Natalia Arefieva, Anna Kolosova — "H2Opera", Anna Khodorkovskaya — "Bears".