Pixxelpoint 2022

PROGRAMME

november 10

17.30 Opening of the exhibition (first pre-opening)
Agorè Gallery

19.00 Opening of the exhibition (second pre-opening)
Tir Gallery

20.00 Opening of the main exhibition TRUST & RISK and official opening ceremony of the Festival
Cirkulacija 2: World Improvement Machine, Common Wealth, performance
Ladies of the press: Green Screen Photobooth, participatory performance
Nova Gorica City Gallery

21:00 Pixxel digestive - ROLI & JOONDROID, AfterOpening Gettogether
KC Mostovna

NOVEMBER 11

13.00–16.00 Ladies of the press: Green Screen Photobooth, participatory performance
Nova Gorica City Gallery

17.00 A walk through the festival venues with the curator Nina Jeza, guided tour
Nova Gorica City Gallery, Tir Gallery, Agorè Gallery

NOVEMBER 12

10.00–12.00 and 16.00-18.00 Do You Trust Your Senses and the Record of Light?, light drawing workshops
The risk of the creative recording of light is performed in a public space during poor daylight. Passers-by are invited to carry out the recording. Their activity turns a selected light source into an instrument of art. A record of light in space and time is created using an analog camera obscura and the forgotten chemical process called Polaroid.
Led by: Matjaž Paternoster
Mandatory applications by November 10 at pixxelpoint@kulturnidom-ng.si.
Nova Gorica City Gallery

10.00–15.00 Drones Are Among Us, Let’s Get to Know Them Better, open workshop on flying drones
The participants will learn how to buy drones, safely handle them, and write programmes for them. The workshop involves the hands-on operation of drones, a unique experience for participants.
Led by: Ptuj Secondary School of Electrical and Computer Engineering; mentor: Franc Vrbanič; student assistants: Anastazija Nograšek, Jaka Antolič, Žan Emeršič, and Alex Kavčevič
Xcenter

16.30 Betina Habjanič: Animal Enterprise Transparency Project
Lecture on activism (video montage)
Nova Gorica Arts Centre

18.00 Thanasis Kaproulias: IIC – International Internal Catastrophes, AV perfomance
Nova Gorica Arts Centre

NOVEMBER 17

16.00–20.00 Parasite, Workshop for students aged 18+
The participants will create a light installation among trees growing in the park. They will find a host to merge with a parasite.
Led by: Katja Paternoster
Mandatory applications by November 15 at pixxelpoint@kulturnidom-ng.si.
The park adjacent to Nova Gorica Arts Centre

NOVEMBER 19

9.30–12.00 Lego Robotics for Kids, Open workshop for children aged 6 to 14
Mandatory applications by November 17 at pixxelpoint@kulturnidom-ng.si.
France Bevk Public Library

10.00–15.00 Drones Are Among Us, Let’s Get to Know Them Better, open workshop on flying drones
Led by: Ptuj Secondary School of Electrical and Computer Engineering; mentor: Franc Vrbanič; student assistants: Anastazija Nograšek, Jaka Antolič, Žan Emeršič, and Alex Kavčevič
Xcenter

15.00 A walk through the festival venues with the curator Nina Jeza, guided tour
Nova Gorica City Gallery, Tir Gallery, Agorè Gallery

NOVEMBER 26

9.30–12.00 Lego Robotics for Kids, Open workshop for children aged 6 to 14
Mandatory applications by November 24 at pixxelpoint@kulturnidom-ng.si.
France Bevk Public Library

Workshops for organised groups

NOVEMBER 15

Fantastic Biotope
Workshop for children aged 8 to 14
The workshop is for youngsters aged 8 to 14. Participants will explore the origin of the light shining from tree canopies and shrubs at night and the plants and animals that wake up as darkness sets in. By recycling Kinder eggs, straws, and Christmas lights, they will recreate a world that captivates children’s imagination.
Led by: Katja Paternoster
Nova Gorica City Gallery

NOVEMBER 17, 18, 24 and 25

Lego Robotics for Kids
Workshop for children aged 6 to 14
Children will get to know the basics of robotics and programming with the help of the ever-popular LEGO bricks. Participants will use computers and the LEGO WeDo 1.0 educational package. The workshops are for kids without prior knowledge of robotics and programming as well as those who have participated in our workshops in the past and wish to build on their knowledge.
Led by: Mali ustvarjalci
France Bevk Public Library

Nina Jeza

Nina Jeza is an art historian and curator who works in visual and intermedia art. She studied art history at the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, where she graduated under the mentorship of Dr Lev Menaše, having written her thesis Censorship in Contemporary Polish Art at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland, under the mentorship of Dr Pawel Leskowicz. She gained diverse work experience during her student years.

Since 2012 she has been a freelance cultural worker, curator, and teacher. For two years (2013/2014) she was the in-house curator at the Media Nox Gallery, which is a part of the Maribor Youth Cultural Centre, where she conceived the web gallery project WEB NOX. She was the artistic director of the International Festival of Computer Arts (MFRU) for three years, between 2013 and 2015, the year she also started actively collaborating with the KIBLA Multimedia Centre in Maribor, where she was the in-house curator and organiser of various exhibitions, projects, and events.

Nina Jeza has participated in international exchanges, projects, exhibitions, and art colonies, and authored many successfully realised events and publications in electronic and print media, including on television and radio. She is the originator and organiser of the art fair art-MUS 2015-2022 (https://art-mus.si).

TRUST & RISK

Trust and risk are very interlaced concepts. Trust allows us to build interpersonal and intersocietal relations, to achieve a balance between what we believe in and what is alien to us, but most of all it allows us to enter into a civilizational discourse, which in fact connects both these concepts. Without risk, it is impossible to achieve a balance since interpersonal relations thrive only in a situation of unbiased and mutual compromise, a candour that we shape within the framework of societal, cultural, and other influences. We take risk when we trust, but we cannot trust if we do not take risk. The essence of trust is to dare: to dare to choose a compromise that overcomes risk or that turns risk into a certain relationship through which we maintain closeness or distance, be it to other persons, other objects, or other ways of thinking.

If the pandemic has taught us anything – and we believe that it has taught us something – it is that we have been taking interpersonal relations, and hence social relations, for granted. “What can they possibly do to us?” we thought as late as the beginning of 2020. We trusted science, we believed in an open social environment, we were glad to risk socialising, and we were thinking about progress. Yet while we trusted the general doctrine of human compassion and spoke loudly of solidarity at the start of the pandemic, we were quickly faced with the urgency of taking risks: should we risk isolation, immunity through infection, or vaccination? Left to our own devices, we quickly realised that we do not actually trust anyone: neither ourselves, our fellow human beings, nor the experts. We became trapped in a loop of distrust.

Trust and risk are thus the first definition of man’s relationship to something, be it an interpersonal relationship or a relationship between things and notions that have something in common from a certain standpoint. Art is undoubtedly the “means” that speaks neutrally to both the individual and society with its aesthetic value and its unbiased meaningfulness. Changing the human attitude to nature, art, or people means having a critical – favourable or unfavourable, positive or negative – relationship. And because every change takes time, we must face the question of how to neutralise the risk of trust, that is, how to think a “new world order” in which social relationships have changed so much due to the pandemic that they have become unrecognisable.

Art – and intermedia art in particular – carries great responsibility in modern times. If we are to restore a balance, be it social, conceptual, or at the level of the entire human civilisation, we will have to build trust on taking the kind of risk that has the greatest potential to cause hurt: the risk of slipping into the abyss of apathy and autoimmune hypocrisy that the pandemic is inexorably dragging us into and that has no end in sight yet. If we are to accept the hypothesis that it is possible to at least reopen interpersonal discourse and put it back on track, back into orbit, with the help of engaged and articulated art, now is the right moment to do so. Because it is difficult to fall any deeper than we have fallen. To trust in the meaningfulness of art, which has taken on the risk of remaining misunderstood yet still perseveres, is a subtle task. This is a way for art to return to its roots as regards facilitating an urgent foundation that can galvanise social responsibility; after all, every single one of us is carrying this responsibility on his or her shoulders. And what better than art to do this critically, with a measured distance and intimate insight? The decision to take a risk in artistic discourse is thus at the same time a decision to hope. To dare to trust again.

Nina Jeza

Exhibitions

The main exhibition at the Nova Gorica City Gallery (Trg Edvarda Kardelja 5, Nova Gorica) will be open for visitors every day from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., from 11 until 26 November 2022 except Sundays from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m.

Authors and works: Moritz Wehrmann: Alter Ego (Version 2); Cirkulacija 2: World Improvement Machine, Common Wealth; Andrej Štular & Janez Grošelj: City – Sketch; Brina Ivanetić: Kaleidoscope; Nika Oblak & Primož Novak: Infinity (digital) and Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?, Ladies of the Press: Green Screen Photobooth; Saša Bezjak, Jože Slaček, Jakob Vogrinec: Not Like Houdini

The installation at the Agorè Gallery (Corso Verdi 95, Gorizia, Italy) will be open for visitors between 4 p.m. and 8 p.m., from 11 to 26 November 2022.

Authors and works: Intermedia project by students of the Academy of Fine Arts and Design, University of Ljubljana - Mentored by Prof Sašo Sedlaček, and the School of Arts, University of Nova Gorica, mentored by Prof Rene Rusjan.

The installationa at Tir Gallery (KC Mostovna, Cesta IX. korpusa 99A, Solkan) will be open from 11 to 26 November 2022, Monday to Friday from 2 p.m. to 7 p.m., Saturday and Sunday from 12 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Authors and works: STRAN 22: Soap Opera and Da me stesso non vegno

Other festival venues

France Bevk Public Library (Trg Edvarda Kardelja 4, Nova Gorica) – workshops

Nova Gorica Arts Centre (Bevkov trg 4, Nova Gorica) – lecture, performance, workshop

Xcenter (Delpinova 20, Nova Gorica) – workshops

Pixxelpoint festival award

This year's Pixxelpoint festival of contemporary artistic practices features an award that will be conferred on the best intermedia work/artist for an innovative approach to contemporary forms of transdisciplinary artistic projects at the nexus of science, art and technology. The award will give the artist or group the chance to put on a solo exhibition at the Nova Gorica City Gallery, complete with an exhibition catalogue and exhibition fee. The idea behind the award is to promote intermedia production in Slovenia and facilitate the presentation of novel artistic directions outside conventional frameworks to the Slovenian public.

The exhibited works will be judged by a jury comprising Peter Tomaž Dobrila (KID Kibla, producer and intermedia artist), Dr Peter Purg (associate professor, acting dean at the Faculty of Humanities, University of Nova Gorica and intermedia artist) and Petja Janžekovič, MA (Artists&Poor's, philosopher and intermedia producer). The award will be announced during the festival.