The international festival platform MFRU-KIBLIX returns this year blazed with inspiring 21st century energy in the light of the slogan Lift me up! with the intent of establishing an exemplary connection of art, science and technology into an intermedia up-to-date whole, an upgrade of the past successful years of the MFRU and KIBLIX festival events in Maribor.
Lift ME up! (and never let me down again) therefore stands as a practical transcendence of the mere-theory of the material way out of darkness for the Europeans: the tunnel that we found ourselves in, is not really level, but horizontal. Thus, the way out is not possible down the tracks, but only by means of abandoning gravity, a lift-up, or, in the words of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra: “I have learned to fly: ever since, I do not want to be pushed before moving along. Now I am light, now I fly, now I see myself beneath myself …” In the European Year of Light and Light- based Technologies, which artfully announces the general break out of the darkness of modernity, these issues are treated by the festival MFRU-KIBLIX 2015 – to the light, to the fresh air, to art. Up and only up. Lift me up and elevate yourself!
Each installation, therefore, is an essentially interactive work of art that provides us with visual and/or sonic experiences; a transformation of reality. The everyday routine, with all its banalities, values, pleasure and leisure, is growing into a unique virtual “ecosystem”. The festival concept MFRU-KIBLIX wants to thematize the relations between society, system and technology: if this world brings suffering as well, this is only because it is free in its essence – the liberation really means responsibility, while “individual freedom” is just a cover for the social system, which enslaves the individual using the mantra of freedom. And suffering is an inevitable consequence of the free play of parts of the same system: consider the sciences, for example, that forcefully advocate the idea of improving human genetic traits by promoting “excellency”, only to be able to suppress this excellency to the level of bestial madness – the individual is only as free as much as he believes he is allowed to be.
Thematizing social developments with technological surpluses, and reminding of the indecency of contemporary modernity, which has deliberately disposed of the compass of humanism is the mission of the MFRU-KIBLIX festival platform. It is a consideration on the invasion of technological surrogates for what was once exclusively human activity; a satire on the drab and stultifying routines faced by the contemporary “working” class, caught in the sphere of democratic work; the illusion of free choice, and the need for physical activity without pragmatic or production-related reasons. The artistic installation thus (among other) include the progress of natural electronic synthesizers, offering a re-consideration of the theory of lithosphere travelled by sound waves. Even more. They join man and technology: if the fantasy Terminator is a symbol of the mellow yet twisted cyborgization of mankind, the real-like Assimo is but a mere humanoid. A surrogate. Once the artist leaves, the robot is still there. Or perhaps they interpret animal anatomies, concepts of mutation and evolution, into a contemporary crossbred image of the human and the animalistic. Remember The Fly?
This year we present and explore electro-acoustics, live electronica, improvisations, noise, and even chamber music and field recordings in close connection to the visual source of actively processed images. These enable visual and audio forms in real space, an immersion into direct experience, i.e. an interaction between the authors and the audience. It is about the exploration and creation of abstract visual worlds by experimenting with various analog approaches, drawing inspiration from chemical experiments, interactive artworks, experimental film and 3D animations.
Presenting contemporary visual art, artists and authors through transdisciplinary connections refers to the deepening of knowledge and acquiring additional skills as professionals, the linking of practical knowledge with scientific and technological research work, and last but not least, it refers to the improvement of quality in creative works.
MFRU-KIBLIX thus enables a presentation and evolution of open-source systems, which is really the whole point of freeing the modern-day nonhumanoid.
Uplink. Reset. Re-connect.
So Lift ME UP!
— Nina Jeza, Artists&Poor’s
