The
purpose of the multimedia festival Break (previously known
as Break 2.2 and Break 21), which is realized for the 8th
time this year, is to explore new artistic expressions and
contemporary topics and to emphasize emerging poetics whose
artistic discourse has not yet been deep-rooted within firmly
established standards, criteria and cultural values. By successfully
supporting innovative and intellectually stimulative new art,
festival Break has become one of the significant global events
within contemporary art and broader cultural framework.
Nowadays, the forms of artistic production are transforming
from closed-in, self-sufficient form to dynamic processes
that frequently include active involvement of the observer/user.
The artworks are not presented as the ultimate truth but rather
as experiments searching for new possibilities and suggesting
different, innovative points of view.
This year's theme of the festival Break 2.3, New Species,
has been designed to stimulate original poetics dealing explicitly
with invention, fabrication, innovation, experimentation and
the pursuit of untrodden paths.
If some practices originate from previously existing conditions
and can be predicted on such basis, then the interest of Break
2.3 festival was focused on those practices that present new
species, and are not directly predictable from already familiar
laws and forms. A special emphasis was placed on the creative
ambitions that do not look for the new within the framework
of the existing institution of art, but instead seek to find
new possibilities and offer new presentations of current cultural
issues. In such tendencies, artistic practices spontaneously
look out for other, non-artistic disciplines, in order to
connect with them, use them or even take an active part in
them. Art is currently witnessing new possibilities and the
institution of art is changing. A visitor of the Break 2.3
festival therefore most frequently meets artistic expressions
that cannot be easily automatically included in the established
conception of artistic work, and thus rather becomes a researcher.
Numerous creative approaches are connected with natural science
and social sciences, and often also with new technologies.
What does the intrusion of high technologies and sophisticated
sciences into our everyday life mean? The potentials of creative
artistic acts in establishing alternative life forms can be
considered as possibilities of transgressing modern anthropocentrism.
All living organisms, regardless of their size and morphology,
strive for communication and socialization. In a society of
highly developed communication systems and with the support
of computer technology, we tend to develop a kind of a universal
language that would provide mutual communication to people,
animals, machines and new species. The intrusion of high technologies
into our lives has allowed for the possibility to develop
new technological species? In the context of art, what does
the option of a computer generated life mean? Microbiological
and medical research into artificial life, bioengineering
and the findings of cognitive psychology, the potential of
improving intellectual capacity, sexual drive, mood, reproducibility
… Contemporary society and culture are characterized by biotechnologies
due to their presence in all areas of modern life (we consume
genetically modified products, take advantage of tissue engineering
in medicine, and deal with both animal cloning and the possibility
of human cloning). Thus, we are confronted with the changes
in our living environment of the future: in the possibilities
of artificially produced meat products, body organs or even
limbs, in possible body alteration, in the selective options
of reproducing our children, as well as in a total social
control of individuals. The prospects of telecommunications
combined with computer sciences which provide a greater flow
of information, create a new structure of space and the world,
different perspectives of the world, modify the organization
of life itself … These changes open numerous social issues.
Can art provide an insight into long-term consequences? In
the expended field art wishes to address and provoke each
single member of the contemporary society.
The visual, sonic, performative and multi- or new media projects,
presented within the scope of this year's festival, mainly
involve high technologies and are mostly interdisciplinary.
Numerous works have been developed in cooperation with scientific
corporations, quite few of them deal with organic or wet materials,
including living organisms. Frequently, the observers are
also expected to interact within projects.
The lecturers on theory and philosophy of art and new media,
humanities, sociology, art history, psychoanalysis, as also
microbiology and physics provide important analytical and
theoretical reflection on the theme of this year's festival.
In addition, visitors are also invited to actively participate
in some theoretical and practical workshops.
The call for submission for the Break 2.3 festival was published
in March 2005 and dispatched all over the world. We had received
329 project applications, out of which 38 were selected. The
festival takes place in November 2005 on four locations in
the city of Ljubljana. The central location of the festival
are the halls of an ex-intestinal factory on Poljanska street
95 where 14 installations are exhibited, 12 different performances
are performed (one of them is shown twice due to the limited
number of visitors), and a symposium with 19 lectures, 4 of
which include a workshop, are held during the first week of
the festival. At the Kodeljevo castle, the festival presents
an exhibition of 16 installations. Due to its specific character,
one of the artwork is realized at the Botanical garden in
Ljubljana, and another at the Kapelica Gallery, which is also
its producer. We present a total of 63 projects realized by
68 authors and some cooperators from the following countries:
Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bulgaria, Brasil, Canada, Croatia,
France, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Japan, Macedonia,
the Netherlands, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Serbia and
Montenegro, Slovenia, Switzerland, Ukraine and The United
States of America. Afterwards, we intend to publish a book
of collected theoretical contributions – those that are presented
at the festival and some additional ones.
Polona Tratnik, Art Director of the Break 2.3 Festival
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