Archive for the ‘festival’ tag
Pixxelpoint 2008 – Press Release
PIXXELPOINT 2008 / FOR GOD’S SAKE!
Kulturni Dom Nova Gorica (Slovenia) is pleased to announce the 9th International New Media Art Festival Pixxelpoint, that will open at the Nova Gorica City Gallery (Mestna galerija Nova Gorica)
on December 5, 2008, at 8.00 PM. The festival will run from December 5 to December 12, 2008.
Pixxelpoint is one of the most successful and renowned festivals of new media art in Slovenia and also abroad. Its purpose is firstly, to bring the information technology and new media art closer to
the general public, and secondly, to raise awareness about a different potential to use computer among the young.
Pixxelpoint 2008 – Catalogue text
- PASH*, Moonwalk, 2008, Youtube video, 2:20 min
- PASH*, Moonwalk, 2008, Youtube video, 2:20 min
FOR GOD’S SAKE!
[Text written for the catalogue of the exhibition Pixxelpoint 2008 - For God's Sake!, Nova Gorica, Mestna Galerija Nova Gorica, December 5 - 12, 2008. Downloadable catalogue here. ]
“God Always Uses the Latest Technology.”
In the little town in northern Italy where I live, which is economically prosperous, culturally sleepy, religiously bigotted and politically conservative, there is a small but interesting “Museum of Art and Spirituality”. It presents part of the collection of contemporary art that belonged to Giovanni Battista Montini, a.k.a. Pope Paul VI, an illustrious local man and possibly the last Catholic pope to believe that contemporary art could convey a religious message. After a brief look at the collection, it is easy to agree that Pope Paul’s faith in art, was, as they say, blind. While alongside a few daubs, he managed to collect a number of undisputed masterpieces, by artists including Sironi, Morandi, De Chirico, Chagall, Kokoschka, Dalì, Matisse, Manzù and Giacometti, in this art it is difficult to find the populace-educating power of Medieval and Renaissance art, or the astounding emotional impact of Baroque art. None of these works has the catalyzing power of an icon. Contemporary art alters the rhetoric of religious art, learns its stylistic approaches and tackles it from a secular point of view. At times it conveys a private form of spirituality, not necessarily linked to any religion. And often, when it tackles official religions, it does so in a provocative, iconoclastic way: take Martin Kippenberger’s crucified frog, for instance, or the cross submerged in the urine of Andres Serrano, or Maurizio Cattelan’s Nona ora, or the Virgin Mary blackened with elephant dung by Chris Ofili, or Vanessa Beecroft’s recent Madonnas. All of these works are undoubtedly imbued with their own form of “sacredness”, yet they would hardly be hung in a church. Read the rest of this entry »
Pixxelpoint 2008 – For God’s Sake!
PIXXELPOINT 2008 – FOR GOD’S SAKE!
9TH INTERNATIONAL NEW MEDIA ART FESTIVAL
DECEMBER 5TH – 12TH, 2008
NOVA GORICA (SLOVENIA)
OFFICIAL WEBSITE: http://www.pixxelpoint.org/2008/
Contemporary artistic projects have often raised such issues as technological fetishism, the oracular nature of the internet, the fideistic attitude we have towards the media and the evangelizing bent of those who produce them. This art often takes a critical approach, but also looks for an authentic vehicle of spirituality in the media. Taking this as its theme, Pixxelpoint 2008 addressed saints and heretics alike, showing projects which explore the relationship between media and spirituality at a key point in human history, a time of civilization clashes and neocon upsurges, apocalyptic nightmares and hopes for a new enlightenment.
