Online-Festival
Some Universe : Internet Spaces in a Postdigital World
SIGHT + SOUND - International Digital Art Festival
From June 29 to August 31, 2021
Accessible online and for free via https://sightandsound.online
Please note:
Donations to support Eastern Bloc’s mandate of promoting emerging artists are being encouraged - with all proceeds going towards funding the artist fee’s of the next edition of SIGHT + SOUND Festival, in 2022.
The festival presents Net Art from 16 Canadian, German and international and artists:
At the forefront of the experimental digital art scene in Quebec since 2007, Eastern Bloc presents the 11th edition of the SIGHT + SOUND International Digital Art Festival this summer. Titled Some Universe : Internet Spaces in a Postdigital World, this year’s festival will be held completely online between June 29th and August 31st. Running for two months, the audience will have the opportunity to participate in Eastern Bloc’s main annual event and join the reflections of 16 artists from Canada and abroad.
The 2021 edition of SIGHT + SOUND Festival takes advantage of the immobility we have all been forced into to propose a reflection about the aesthetics and politics of space and representation. Curated by Erandy Vergara and Tina Sauerlaender, the artworks help us imagine and speculate on what “space” really means in a post-internet and post-pandemic world. The exhibition invites online users to delve into the worlds produced by contemporary artists, provoking us to think about what kind of spaces we want to inhabit in the years to come.
The curators selected net art, videos, and videogames exploring spaces beyond perspective and cartesian referentes. The artists move away from realism, or engage with it critically. They ask questions, not attempting to provide linear solutions. Most of all, they virtually hold the visitors’ hands during immersive, multidimensional experiences to reconfigure the “fourth wall” to which we are mostly submitted to during our day to day lives facing flat screens.
EVENTS
- June 28, 2021 at 6 PM: The curators will be joined by Eastern Bloc’s directors Alicia Turgeon and Cían Walsh for a live Instagram talk about this years’ theme, artists and artworks.
- June 29, 2021 at 7 PM: The festival officially kicks off, when Toronto-based artist Roonie Clarke will host a participative Zoom performance where everyone will be invited to explore their own spaces, offering prompts and calls-to-action which will be posted on Eastern Bloc’s social media platforms.
INTERNATIONAL AND LOCAL EMERGING ARTISTS
AAA Collective (AU; AR; РФ/; DE; US; FR); Banz & Bowinkel (DE); Ronnie Clarke (CA) Mara Eagle (US/CA) Anna Eyler – Nicolas Lapointe (CA); Philippe Pasquier and Miles Thorogood (CA) Jiwon Ham (KR/ US); JakyuNG Lee (KR/ US); Olia Lialina (РФ/DE); Frances Adair McKenzie and Alisha Piercy (CA); Fallon Simard – Amery Sandford (CA); Timothy ThomassonABOUT SIGHT + SOUND FESTIVAL
Since 2009, SIGHT + SOUND International Digital Art Festival seeks out the best, most provocative and outstanding works of digital art currently being made by international and local emerging artists. The festival has become a point of convergence for artists, activists, theorists, and technologists. It embraces the fringe of contemporary digital art and culture through installations, performances, workshops, interventions, and discussions. SIGHT + SOUND is seeing the unseen and hearing the unheard. It’s experiencing the indescribable. It is where contemporary digital art meets its political agenda. It’s a festival that invites the possibility of social change through art, music, and all-night dancing.
ABOUT EASTERN BLOC
Since 2007, Eastern Bloc has been at the forefront of digital art dissemination, promotion and production in Quebec. The vision at Eastern Bloc is to explore and push the creative boundaries situated at the intersection of art, technology, and science, as well as all other emerging digital practices. Hybrid processes and new modes of production are at the core of the centre’s mandate, as is to support the work of emerging artists by providing them with an exchange platform with more established artists, through initiatives of a local and international scale. Eastern Bloc promotes audience participation, technological democratization, and the utilization of urban space via public intervention projects. Innovative in its nature, Eastern Bloc, through emerging artistic and technological practices, continues to advance a critical stance with regards to these many evolutions.