Festival for digital arts and transformation

For some years now, the Free State of Saxony and the Smart-City Dresden have been recognised as important locations for the global semiconductor and software industry. In addition to large corporations such as Infineon or TSMC, numerous leading SMEs, renowned research institutes, e.g. in the field of robotics and AI, and the TU Dresden, one of the few German universities of excellence, can be found here.

HELLERAU, planned over 100 years ago as a creative and experimental place for an artistic avant-garde, is now using the international HYBRID Biennale festival to shed light on how these impressive and internationally significant scientific and technological competences, potentials and topics are reflected in innovative and artistic institutions and projects in the midst of extraordinarily critical phases of global and digital transformation. From October 12, the second edition of the HYBRID Biennale offers spectacular concerts with conducting robots (Dresdner Sinfoniker & CeTI), impressive installations of subwoofers (Stefanie Egedy) or light-space concepts (NONOTAK). A computer game in a lounge (KEIKEN), performances with exclusively virtual actors (Toshiki Okada) or a robot dog (Silke Grabinger) are also extraordinary.

At the heart of the festival is the two-day symposium BBWCXR—Black Box White Cube XR (October 25 and 26), curated by Maria Chatzichristodoulou and Bika Rebek and supported by the German Federal Cultural Foundation. BBWCXR deals with the question of how spatial concepts for music and the performing arts can be newly and further developed in the age of radical digital transformations and brings together numerous artists, researchers and architects who will examine the relationships between technology, space, human and non-human bodies as well as the opportunities and risks of ‘Extended Reality’ (XR) in panel discussions, workshops and lecture performances, also with regard to a new audience.

The symposium BBWCXR will open with the workshop Finding Digital Me by Harry Silverlock and Jona Wolf, which aims to discover the individual aesthetics and characteristics of objects, artefacts, creatures and people in our everyday environment and at the same time explore how these can be transformed into digital 3D sculptures or creatures. Before the concert project SHIRO by the Japanese-French duo NONOTAK in the Great Hall of the Festspielhaus, curator Marlies Wirth and artists Andric Spaeth, Andrea Khôras and Letta Shtohryn will critically discuss established perceptions of space, experience and the sublime in today’s digitally mediated world in the opening panel: how do world-building processes and the creation of hybrid environments change our understanding of lived experiences; what happens when analogue and digital spaces converge with physical bodies in hybrid realities?

The second day of BBWCXR offers installations and screenings by Andrea Khôra, Andric Spaeth, AE, Carrie Chen, Gabriel Massan and Letta Shtohryn as well as several workshops with Mark Coniglio, Teresa Pollo and Vali Lalioti. Lecture performances and discussions with artists and researchers such as Irini Mirena Papadimitriou, Mark Coniglio, Marlon Barrios Solano, Gabriel Massan, Carrie Chen, Esteban Lecoq, Vali Lalioti and Jona Wolf will take place in the Great Hall at Festspielhaus Hellerau in exciting talks and presentations as well as a concluding joint discussion. To round off the day, Silke Grabinger will present her reminiscence of the legendary performance I like America and America likes me by Joseph Beuys with SPOTSHOTBEUYS at the Festspielhaus Hellerau.

Maria Chatzichristodoulou (aka Maria X) is a curator of live and digital art, Professor of Performance and Digital Transformation and Dean of Research and Knowledge Transfer at the University of the Arts London. She leads the UK Research Council-funded project The Abundance and is editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media.

Bika Rebek is an architect, curator and founder of the Berlin-based architectural practice Some Place Studio. She has taught at Columbia University, Yale University and the Node Curatorial Platform and is co-founder of Hot Air Gallery in New York.