Speculum Artium Festival

Established in 2008 and taking place in the industrial town of Trbovlje, the Speculum Artium Festival is an annual venture into the field of new media arts and contemporary techno-culture. By delving into territories such as information technology, robotics, bio-mechanics, and virtual reality, it acts as an intermediary between art, technology, and the society.

A part of the Trbovlje, The New Media Setting initiative, the festival is organised by Delavski dom Trbovlje Cultural Centre. As of 2010 it runs a special sub-programme – the video art festival DigitalBigScreen.

Creed

The name Speculum Artium refers to a theoretical text by the Austrian artist, curator and theoretician, Peter Weibel. In his text titled the The Post-Media Condition (2005, see link bellow) he writes about the nature of the "relationship between art and politics which can be expressed as the speculum artium, or the mirror of art". In line with Weibel's theory, the festival sees new media technologies as potentially highly emancipatory spheres.

Speculum Artium presents not only various new-media productions but also strives to establish a critical reflection of the contemporary society, of its political and technological conditions.

Background

The festival was initially set up as a collaborative project under the supervision of the Academy of Fine Art and Design, Ljubljana, featuring also the ArtNetLab society, the Academy Of Fine Arts Prague, and the University of Applied Arts Vienna. It was held in the City Art Gallery Ljubljana.

In 2009 the festival moved to Delavski dom Trbovlje, with Peter Weibel curating the festival.

Collaborations

Speculum Artium often invites various art academies and education and research institutions to participate in its programme.

Beside the protagonists mentioned above, the festival has worked with the Faculty of Computer and Information Science, Ljubljana, the Arts Academy of the University of Nova Gorica, the Jožef Stefan Institute, the University of Tokyo, the University of Art and Design in Linz, and others.

Programme

Each year the festival is structured around a particular concept. Some of them were Art and Science to Empower (2017), Reality Under Surveillance (2016), Integrity of Reality (2015), and Exit Strategy – Art or Technicism (2010). The festival invites various curators (such as Herwig Steiner from Vienna, Srečo Dragan from Ljubljana, and Michaela Ortner from Linz), together with whom it presents emerging new media practices around the world as well as talks and presentations by scientists (like Hiroshi Ishiguro and the crew from Honda Robotics, presenting the humanoid robot ASIMO ) and theoreticians.

Some of the artists invited were Stelarc, ARART, Veronika Krenn and Špela Petohleb, Dorcas Müller, Brigitta Zics, Dan Scott, Michael Fisher, Juan Suanca, Lisa Hall, Aram Zarikian, Paolo Zappala, Jessica Pinney, Philip Cornett, Marc Bonet Folgosa, Christoph Schwarz, Julian Palacz, Thomas Frierss, Nik Skušek, Jure Fingušt, Dorian Španzel, Reinhard Gupfinger, Travis Kirton, Maša Jazbec, Group V.A.T., and Tiago Martins.

The festival usually also includes the exhibition of students' artworks, reflecting the issues of contemporary society by way of audio and video installations and interactive projects. It also has a rich accompanying programme with performances, happenings, workshops and concerts (hosting, for example, Laibach).

Speculum Artium 2010 by Ziga Zibert on Vimeo

DigitalBigScreen

The DigitalBigScreen Festival, enacted since 2010, enables the viewing of video art in a movie theatre with a big cinematic screen (using a digital Sony KA4 projector), thus offering contemporary visual practices a very powerful medium. It also makes possible the transmission of the submitted works into the Slovenian Art Cinema network, therefore extending the audience and the reach of the target audience, that usually have no access to such contents.

The submissions for the screening come from all over the world. There is usually an international expert committee, bestowing awards for the best video. However, the programme of the festival varies from year to year, with, for example, the focus in 2017 being the Fluxfilm Anthology.

External links

Gallery

Besides screening regular films, the cinema hall of the Delavski dom Trbovlje Cultural Centre also hosts the Digitalbigscreen, a video art festival that is a part of the Speculum Artium Festival, 2011

Laibach at open air Speculum Artium Festival in front of Delavski dom Trbovlje Cultural Centre, 2009

The Algorithmic Search For Love audiovisual installation by artist Julian Palatz at the Speculum Artium Festival in Trbovlje, 2011

The Araneus Machinamentum exhibition by artist Thomas Frierrs at the Speculum Artium Festival in Trbovlje, 2011

DigitalBigScreen international video festival, an accompanying event to the Speculum Artium Festival in Trbovlje, 2011

Posters announcing the Speculum Artium Festival in Trbovlje, 2011.

The Apparatus Monolith project by Maša Jazbec, first presented at Speculum Artium Festival and later also featured at Ars Electronica in Linz, 2012

The younger visitors of the Speculum Artium Festival watching a project set up by the Jožef Stefan Institute, 2013

The Telenoid™, designed to appear and to behave as a 'minimalistic' human, was featured at the Speculum Artium Festival, as was its main inventor, dr. Hioshi Ishigura, 2013

Asimo by Honda, supposedly the world's most advanced humanoid robot, hosted by the Speculum Artium Festival, 2014

The DigitalBigScreen festival, organised as a part of the Speculum Artium Festival, allows for screenings of video art works on the big cinema screen, 2015

Invited by the Speculum Artium Festival, a group of Japanese artists studying Empowerment informatics at the University of Tsukuba meet with Borut Pahor, the president of Slovenia, 2015

Speculum Artium Festival

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