CYFEST 16 International Media Art Festival Curatorial Concept Announced: Archive of Feelings. A Journey.

 

CYFEST is pleased to announce the curatorial concept for its 16th edition: Archive of Feelings. A Journey.

 

CYFEST 16: Archive of Feelings. A Journey is an expansive audit of relationships between the intimate realm of emotions and memories and technological advancement. How do new technologies shape, mediate, and «archive» emotions? In what ways does technology influence our emotional experience and the way it is expressed and remembered? Can we work with technologies within larger artistic, social, and cultural frameworks? And how can contemporary art and culture contribute to a more diverse future and environments that are neither technocratically mastered nor reductionistic? Through the contribution of internationally renowned artists, curators, and theorists, CYFEST 16 will address these questions from various angles while transforming them into installations, multimedia objects, performances, video, concerts, educational events, and a new, intriguing visitors’ experience.

 

Archive of Feelings. A Journey

Concept of the International Media Art Festival CYFEST 16

 

Though we live in a world where products of technocratic progress are ubiquitous and built into our daily needs, at our baseline, we are beings capable of complex feeling and valuing. Let's observe our "archive" of emotions and the meaning these complexities bring to our lives.

Art and culture are fundamental to understanding who we are and what we will become. The exhibition Archive of Feelings. A Journey invites us on a voyage through our interior world to reconnect with our innermost feelings and emotions.

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Acknowledging that the latest programs and gadgets utilize data sets (archives) of human knowledge, feelings, and emotions is essential. However, what is most important to each of us is both the collective experience of humankind and our own individual histories. Preserving and comprehending this will help us avoid misusing what we hold dear while not depersonalizing our subjective emotional upheaval.

 

A journey, which we could imagine today through this exhibition, is a movement towards the future, but, at the same time, it has to do with the life we have lived. The exhibition explores contradictions and connections between the intimate field of recollection and technologies; studying the space where we recognize our responsibility before human nature and where art and culture will help us model our future, while preserving the most important component: our emotions and feelings. — Elena Gubanova, curator