The Digital Media Environment
Webinar with Sara Bezovšek

Tuesday, 19 January, at 6 p.m. @ZOOM

As part of this seminar, we will get acquainted with the artistic practice of Sara Bezovšek. Through the artistic practice of appropriation, she is an artist who explores the influences of Internet culture and online social media on contemporary visual art. The discussion will be based on the digital theorist Douglas Rushkoff's text The Digital Media Environment, published in his book Team Human. We will discuss the digital environment and its impact on the assumption of reality. As the author says: „The more we accept the screen as a window on reality, the more likely we are to accept the choices it offers. But what about the choices that it doesn't offer? Do they actually not exist?”

Sara Bezovšek is a visual artist, active in the fields of graphic design, new media, and experimental film. In her work, she collects, stores, and collages the visual references she encounters while browsing online and watching movies and TV series. Through appropriation, she creates new narratives, interested in what people watch and share on social media, how visual material is broadcast on the internet, and how it changes and affects users. In the context of the post-internet paradigm, she thus creates a space where online content and internet references are a consistent and indispensable part of the world we live in.

Snow Crash
Webinar with Tea Stražičić

Tuesday, 26 January, at 6 p. m. @ZOOM

As part of this seminar, we will get acquainted with the artistic practice of Tea Stražičić, an artist who expresses herself through digital art and traditional media. The talk will be based on a chapter from Neal Stephenson’s book Snow Crash. This sci-fi cyberpunk story popularizes the term avatar and has also been an inspiration to the video game industry. In it, the author states: „He is not seeing real people, of course. It is all a part of the moving illustration drawn by his computer according to specifications coming down the fiber-optic cable. The people are pieces of software called avatars. They are the audiovisual bodies that people use to communicate with each other in the Metaverse.”

Tea Stražičić (alias @flufflord) finished BA and MA in the 'Animation and new media’ department at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, Croatia. She has earned the Animation Sans Frontières - European Animation Development Lab diploma. After that, she attended an animation residency at Open Workshop in Viborg, Denmark. In Zagreb, she worked with Adriatic Animation directing TED ED films, for Animafest as a program selector and festival visual designer, and with Format C, House of Flamingo, and Živa Muzika - underground music and art organizations supporting queer events. She founded the SwS collective with her sister Marta, focusing mainly on international electronic music artists and festivals. In 2017, Flufflord partnered with musician Nick Zhu (@baojiaxiang) as an AV duo, starting in Los Angeles, CA, then later in Berlin, where they currently reside. They played on festivals: Sonic Acts, Creepy Teepee, Supynes, Ekstravagantna Tijela. In Berlin, she works at STUDIO @Trauma Bar und Kino and collaborates with Creamcake & Good Intentions. Her work was published by Heavy Metal (US), TEDed, FeltZine, VICE, ArtSlant, FuckingYoung, Adult Swim, Tzvetnik, Art Viewer, Ello, AQNB, oFluxo, The Wire.

Art, Technology, and Humanism
Webinar with Tereza Teklić (KONTEJNER/CONTAINER)

Tuesday, 2 February, at 6 p.m. @ZOOM

As part of this seminar, we will get acquainted with the curatorial practice of the Zagreb collective Kontejner. Their work is based on progressive contemporary art, which explores the role and importance of science, technology, and the body in our society, emphasizing provocative, fascinating, and intriguing subjects that society perceives as taboo. The discussion will be based on the text of media theorist Boris Groys Art, Technology, and Humanism. It states: „The artistic practices and discourses of the classical avant-garde were in a certain way prefigurations of the conditions under which our second,  self-produced, artificial bodies exist in the contemporary media world. The elements of these bodies - artworks, books, films, photos - circulate globally in a dispersed form.”

Tereza Teklić is a curator and project manager. She graduated in Art History and German language and literature at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb. Since 2008, she works as a project assistant, coordinator, project manager, and curator at the non-governmental organization KONTEJNER. Since 2011 she is a part of the curatorial team at Mochvara Gallery, where the artistic program is organized in collaboration with Culture Development Association "CDA" and Mochvara Club. She is also one of the initiators of the interdisciplinary project Light in Places organized by the NGO IN PLACES.

KONTEJNER | bureau of contemporary art praxis is a non-profit NGO from Zagreb founded in 2002. They are engaged in curatorial work, the organization of art festivals and other public events, education, and social theory. Their main field of interest is progressive contemporary art, which investigates the role and meaning of science, technology, and the body in our society, focusing on the relevant and current phenomena, especially within provocative, fascinating, and intriguing subjects and topics, as well as those perceived as taboos by the society. These include pleasure, time and energy, mental health, human and artificial intelligence manipulation, and dark matter.

https://www.kontejner.org/

Reality Business. The Prediction Imperative
Webinar with BridA / Tom Kerševan, Sendi Mango, Jurij Pavlica

Tuesday, 9 February, at 6 p.m. @ZOOM
Link: https://zoom.us/j/97392882354

As part of this seminar, we will get acquainted with the artistic practice of the BridA collective. Their work is based on thinking about processes and roles in contemporary art, on the principle of artistic connection, and group work exploring the effects of internet culture and online social media on contemporary visual art. The discussion will be based on a text by philosopher Shoshanae Zuboff published in her book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, in the chapter entitled The Reality Business. The Prediction Imperative author explains the connection between anticipation and supervisory capitalism. She says: „ Surveillance capitalists, therefore, must ask this: What forms of surplus enable the fabrication of prediction products that most reliably foretell the future? This question marks a critical turning point in the trial-and-error elaboration of surveillance capitalism. It crystallizes the second economic imperative - the prediction imperative – and reveals the intense pressure that it exerts on surveillance capitalist revenues.”

BridA /Tom Kerševan, Sendi Mango, Jurij Pavlica was founded in 1996 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice, where members completed their studies. Their work is based on thinking about processes and roles in a framework of contemporary art, on the principle of artistic connection and group action, on research and projects involving collaboration with various other artists, professionals, creators. They are characterized by engaged work in their place, numerous connections with research institutes and universities, successful performances abroad, and their own artist in residence program.