13. 11. 2025 - 23.11.2023
co-conceived by: Benjamin Gruner, Francesco Scarel, Katarina Podobnik in pETER Purg
Resonating Realities in the Fourth Space
PREMISE
A world stricken by multiple ecological, social, and economic crises and permeated by war. Never before has mankind had the data and the technology to understand and manage the world better. Societies and individuals, minds and bodies are crumbling. Mental health and public space are disintegrating. People feel isolated, lonely and lost. Despite all of its promises, the omnipresent technology deepens the divides. Fragmented realities are building a world where collective meaning and shared understanding are missing, especially when global challenges like climate change, migrations, and shifting power dynamics remain unresolved. Various violences and inequalities are on the rise.
In such polycrisis the “third space” that was supposed to be emerging among Art, Science, and Society (as conceptualized by Oldenburg and later Bennet) seems to fail in offering a safe place after work and outside family. Thus Pixxelpoint 2025 opens up a Fourth Space. A different yet familiar dimension for different kinds of people to feel the vibration of their surroundings and relationships, their sensoriums and common sense-making. An antidote to a dystopian privatized sphere, where collective experiences are reduced to solipsistic, isolated ponderings in vicious digital circles that feed techno-capitalist platforms.Thus the festival explores the idea of "resonances" focusing on the connection between individuals and their surroundings – whether human or non-human, familiar or strange. A deep resonance aiming to build relationships that foster transformation towards such premodern if not primordial things as belonging, emotional connection, a raised collective awareness, and mutual responsibility.Pixxelpoint 2025 offers a diversity of visual and performing artistic practices to challenge conventional contemporary lines of thought and self-fulfilling traditions of toxic traditions based on Eurocentric, efficiency-driven solutionism with a white middle-aged male voice. By bringing together art, science, and society on new terms, the artworks, community practices, learnings, and discussions at the festival should encourage participants to explore new pathways for collective understanding and societal transformation.
In Borderless Gestures, Gildo Bavčević explores identity, boundaries, and shared experience through two parts. 2+3=5 is a photographic self-portrait that intertwines national symbols and heritage through hand gestures and a number on a T-shirt, raising questions of belonging, division, and memory. In the performance and multimedia installation Extreme Left Hedonism/Nomadic Host, he becomes a nomadic host who connects the audience over sardines and čevapčiči. Cooking and sharing create a space for improvisation, interaction, and reflection on the fragile possibilities of community.
