New audiovisual performance by Slovak musician Matúš Kobolka (also known as Bolka) with the Netherlands’ artist Rosa Menkman creates virtual worlds using the newest technology and brings a very current and critical view on the power of softwares and algorithms. The performance was created especially for A4 and you will have a chance to experience it live for the first time this Saturday 1st of December as a part of the final days of the contemporary music festival NEXT.
The new work ordered by the A4 – space for contemporary culture and the Austrian festival Elevate came to life as a part of the project of international artistic cooperation Re-Imagine Europe supported by European Union in the program Creative Europe of which A4 is a part of with nine different partnering organizations and festivals for years now. The project is focused on the support of new experimental creation that uses new technologies in arts inventively and critically reflects on the contemporary social and technological development as well as the difficult global themes such as migration or climate change.
The performance of the duo Bolka and Rosa Menkman will be one of the surprises of this year’s edition of NEXT festival. The Netherland’s artists, theoretician and curator Rosa Menkman teaches new media at the Kunsthochschule Kassel. Her work deals with creating virtual worlds and analyzes algorithms that create our contemporary reality and searches for the results of coincidences in using digital visual media. She shares the love of the phenomena of glitch with the Slovak sound innovator Bolko, who is a graduate of the Institute of Sonology at the Royal Conservatory in Haag. In A4 they are going to collaborate for the first time. Matúš Kobolka makes electronic music and is a successful author of music for numerous theatre performances and also works on his solo project HRB/BOL.
The pair said a few words about their upcoming collaboration: “When working with data we are used to using software. The software however does not only cause the regulation of the data flow but also has the power to deform them into a shape of formatted, “informed” material. Software implements distortion into our perception and gives us the freedom to manipulate its optics and meanings. Therefor there should always be a discussion about the neutrality of the software. We shouldn’t ask whether something is real or fake but rather what is the point of view we are being offered by the software and how biased it is – and also what are our expectations?”
The new work will be premiered at the festival NEXT in Bratislava and also at the partnered festival Elevate in Graz, Austria in 2020. Festival NEXT takes place in A4 and other venues from 28.11. till 1.12. Detailed program full of concerts, audiovisual performances, lectures and workshops can be found on the website www.nextfestival.sk.