October 24–31, 2021
Applications to join the one-week-long multidisciplinary experience UNFINISHED are closing on October 20, 2021 at midnight. Midnight, that is, wherever you are.
This year, UNFINISHED Festival is launching a permanent experience platform that combines new ways of connecting with art, music, happenings, and conversations around the theme of Midnight. It gathers 60+ speakers, artists and musicians from all over the world to explore the many emergencies we are facing, the minutes we no longer have, as well as the poetry and transformation such a moment demands.
Attendance to the festival is based on UNFINISHED’s unique pay-with-your-time model. Apply here to join the community from anywhere in the world.
UNFINISHED’s program is uniquely crafted to enhance its community’s daily life over eight days. Starting on Sunday, October 24, the festival is designed to accompany participants until Sunday October 31, interweaving their routine with a carefully curated mix of on-demand content, live events, and connected experiences.
Every UNFINISHED morning starts with wellness, ranging from yoga and qi-gong to meditation, in partnership with Wanderlust TV. Meal times are shared with the grande dame of eating design, Marije Vogelzang, through a seven-part series of Edible Philosophy. Participants can also meet for lunch, dinner, or coffee, sitting together at virtual tables in the café. Afternoons feature a brief conversation to break the workday, and a series of daily soundwalks created by DJ and music curator Lexis (Alexis Charpentier), all accessible according to participants’ timezones.
Evenings at UNFINISHED gather the entire community around content to be experienced live, starting with a weeklong program of musical conversations opened by the Beirut-based Wanton Bishops, continuing with Brazilian bands, musicians and collectives Avuá, BABY, MACUL, and Francisco El Hombre, Helsinki-based multidisciplinary cellist Sergio Castrillon, British singer-songwriter Tatiana DeMaria, and Romanian cobza player and musician Bogdan Simion.
The festival’s talks and conversations line up international speakers from writers Tim Urban, Douglas Ruhskoff and Virgine Raisson, experience designers Ida Benedetto and Jason Eppink, community organizer Jessica Hartzell, cultural entrepreneurs Tracey Ryans and Lionel Bensemoun, philosopher Marie Robert, filmmakers Eugene Jarecki and Boris Hars-Tschachoti, psychoanalyst Maria Homem, cyborg artists Neil Harbisson and Pol Lombarte, data scientists Dionna McPhatter and Chris Wiggins, Conservation Carpathia founders Barbara and Christoph Prombergerer, artists Sebastian Errazurriz and Christoph Niemann, mathematician Lê Nguyên Huang, mixologist Néli Pereira, wine expert Marinela Ardelean, people-centred researcher Tamika Abaka-Wood, monk and counselor Brother Fulfillment, computer scientist Deborah Raji, and the team behind Low-Tech Lab, amongst others.
Every day of the week, journalists—and more!—join the community for an exclusive livestream of their news-reading habits and artist Alfredo Jaar analyzes key images of the press. A Midnight Moment, finally, closes each day by featuring Modern Love stories, read by actress Ana Ularu, in partnership with The New York Times.
In light of UNFINISHED’s goal to enrich content with context, trust and mind-mapping expert Jerry Michalski is launching a StoryThreading initiative, in collaboration with artist Emma Schmidt. Seven illustrators are also joining the UNFINISHED movement to contribute to a collective hourly comic project to document their experience of the festival, including Tuan Nini, Luiz Stockler, Irina Șelaru, Ionuț Radulescu, Simina Popescu, Ing Lee, and Jeremy Nguyen.
The UNFINISHED platform, created in collaboration with [ Flow ] OS and hosted on Sessions, is uniquely crafted to simultaneously adapt to each participant’s timezone while also gathering the community around key live moments across the world.
UNFINISHED, the first multidisciplinary festival in Romania, was created in 2016 by the EIDOS Foundation as a constantly evolving learning experience. It is excited to launch its sister projects, UNFINISHED Future and UNFINISHED ThinkTank, on the occasion of #UNFINISHED21 this year.
For any press requests or further information, please contact Horațiu Stan at hstan@eidosfoundation.org.
