There will come a time when it will no longer be. This motto is the central paradigm of the 14th edition of the SIMULTAN Festival, an event dedicated to interdisciplinary arts, artists, and musicians who experiment with different media or languages of expression, such as time-based media, mainly audio-video.
The festival program includes video art screenings, live sound, and audiovisual performances, presentations, and workshops, which will take place at the Museum of Public Transport “Corneliu Mikloși” in Timișoara, between October 8-10, 2019.
Through its motto, this edition aims to question the different ways and aspects in which the societal and individual life is influenced by technology, but also to explore speculative situations, to disrupt the standardized image of the future, the cult of progress, and infinite development.
The live performance section features artists working with sound, generating, modeling, or processing in various forms – either through electronic sculptural constructions, modular synthesizers, or through custom programs or simply amplifying recordings of sounds from the environment.
Thus, the duo Magnetoceptia – Patrizia Ruthensteiner (AT) and Dewi de Vree (NL) – will present a site-specific radio-ballet, based on two transforming antennas. These antennas have a performative use that derives from the reinterpretation of a famous women’s garment – the crinoline, a rigid steel structure that can be worn under a skirt.
The Danish artist Jacob Kirkegaard, whose works have been on view at MoMA, presents a 4-piece project called OPUS MORS, which includes four listening spaces for one of the most existential and natural aspects of life – death.
Micleușanu M. participates with the project entitled SPECTROOM – concert for a box with bows, leaves, and steam, which probes a sound substratum, generator of states, and perceptions through personalized objects by the artist for musical purposes.
Cedrik Fermont is a musician, activist, and researcher born in Zaire and settled in Berlin. His musical approach ranges from electroacoustics to electronics, from dark ambient to industrial, from field recordings to raw noise.
Jessica Ekomane’s immersive soundscapes explore topics such as the relationship between individual perception and collective dynamics or the investigation of listening expectations and their social roots.
The Vinyl -terror & -horror duo, composed of Camilla Sørensen and Greta Christensen, focuses on the relationship between objects and sound to create a narrative that always makes direct reference to the environment or context in which it is exposed.
Alain Wergifosse is a Belgian artist who amplifies objects and processes them to generate deep textures of sound matter.
Lucian Bardoș, who performs under the pseudonym Syntax, presents a musical project deeply influenced by the study of perception and Gestalt theory, which links the spatial (geometric) form with the temporal structure (sound).
Sillyconductor is one of the pseudonyms of Cătălin Matei. The artist is well known and easy to recognize in the Romanian contemporary art scene, due to his sound installations inspired by scientific, artistic, or technological systems. He will present two of his works. The first one, entitled “Six dots, three lines” interprets ambient sounds in real-time, by converting them into Morse code, and the Morse code into letters and words. The second work, called “BirdHouse,” is an interactive outdoor sound installation based on the sound ecology and ear health theme for which the artist has composed a series of artificial bird songs.
This year, 31 video works of art will be presented at the SIMULTAN festival. These works were carefully selected by our team, following an open call addressed to artists from all around the world. Vera Sebert [AT], Loïc Hobi [FR], Noviki [PL], Mby our teark Jan van Tellingen, Sjoerdter Borg [NL], BeJacqueline Heeley, Philippe Faujas [IE], Luis Carlos Rodríguez Garcia [ES], Iwona Ogrodzka [PL], Zeno van den Broek [NL / DK], Francesca Fini [IT], Shir Handelsman [IL], Sandra Crisp [UK], Hamza Kırbaş [TR], Fu LE [FR], Silvia De Gennaro [IT], Tina Jokitalo [FI], Leonhard Müllner & Robin Klengel [AT], Susanne Layla Petersen [DK], SleepeelS [USA / NL], DEMSAM [RU], Matei Băcanu [RO], Sandra Araújo [PT], Dalia Castel [DE], Agustín Telo [AR], Vilmos Koter [RO], Yeaeun Jang [KR / CZ] Josh Sender [USA], Marcin Jagnus [PL], Rossella Nisio [NL], Petr Hastik [CZ / ES / DE], Michael Lyons [ Scotland [JP], Guli Silberstein [UK], Francesca Leoni, Davide Mastrangelo [IT] are the artists who offer us an alternative, personal narratives, responding to the challenges and changes of the immediate, everyday reality.
The 14th edition of the SIMULTAN Festival brings with it four thematic conferences, meant to explore new artistic, sociological, and bio-political identities, discussing local characters in a broader context.
The conference program will open on Friday, at 14:00, at the House of Arts, with a presentation by Cedrik Fermont on Alternative Realities: Electronic and Experimental Music in Asia and Africa, followed by a presentation by Shintaro Miyazaki – Don’t forget to change the board from time to time – a theory of ravers that will take place on Saturday, from 17:00, at the Corneliu Mikloși Museum. The conference series will conclude on Sunday with a presentation by Balázs Kovács on Preparing for a Posthuman Audience: A Guide to Survival in the World of Digital Art, followed by Alessandro Massobrio on The All Sources Are Defective: Post-Digital Reading Strategies and Parallel Narratives.
Transcultures and European Pepinieres of Creation (an international network based in Belgium that promotes the mobility of contemporary artists) have proposed for this edition of the SIMULTAN 2019 festival a selection of 7 works imagined by hybrid creators which emphasizes the link between sound and visual dimension, equal footing, but also the relationship with contemporary urbanity (or its opposite, naturalism). The program is curated by Philippe Franck (director of Transcultures-Belgium and European Pepinières of Creation-France) and can be watched in the halls for screenings in the “Corneliu Mikloși” Museum throughout the festival.
On Saturday and Sunday, all those who dreamed of being part of a band, but were afraid of the Sisyphean tasks involved, are invited on Saturday, from 16:00 and on Sunday, from 11:00, to participate in Blind Tape Quartets workshop coordinated by artist Lukatoyboy. The participants of this workshop will have the chance to be part of an anonymous quartet whose songs will be recorded on audiotapes. The workshop will take place at the “Corneliu Mikloși” Museum.
The tenth event of the Emergency Entrance series will also take place on Saturday. The exhibition curated by Alex Boca will show the installation STAS, created by the artist Vlad Cadar. The exhibition raises the issue of identifying the boundaries between art and residue and what lies beyond this duality, trying to shape a question instead of an answer.
The evening of November 9 continues from 23:00 with Simultan NightWaves at Saccade, with Drummer in Cosmos and Alur Duvaal.
The 14th edition of SIMULTAN Festival is co-financed by AFCN – National Cultural Fund Administration and was made possible with the support of Timișoara City Hall, Timiș County Council, having as partners Timișoara 2021, Timișoara County Council, Transcultres, French Cultural Institute, Lapsus, Contrasens Cultural Association.
See the full program here.
Check out the Facebook event here.