KIBLIX 2024: Prudence and Courage

KIBLIX 2024: Prudence and Courage
International Festival of Arts, Technology and Science
21 November 2024–1 February 2025
MMC KIBLA/KiBela and artKIT

As we change and the world in and around us changes, the Earth, the Sun system, the Galaxy, the Outer Space, the Multiverse, the Universe … after 22 years of existence and in our 23rd edition, the format of the International Festival of Arts, Technology and Science KIBLIX 2024 has also changed. We have decided to play with the usual format of festivals and spread out our usual event-packed program from a few days or weeks to two months in order to stretch our diverse program of events that usually make up the KIBLIX festival, so that the audience has a little more time to breathe between events and can go about their daily duties and commitments. The Universe has become a Multiverse.

Change is a constant feature of our program and we also see art as an experiment: this time in terms of format and itinerary, while maintaining the baseline we set with KIBLIX 2022, when the festival was titled Love and Peace, and with KIBLIX 2023, when the festival was called Hypocrisy and Pride. Because that was the direction in which our understanding of the post-plandemic frenzy has evolved, into a sinister military conflict dictated by the official ideology and the dominant narrative of the so-called mainstream political and media complex, which in the period since 2020 has unscrupulously always chosen the same side – the manipulation of people, its own citizens and consumers of mainstream media content, and warmongering.

For some a frightening realization, for others a clear illustration of the state we find ourselves in, surrounded by technologies and neoconservative and neoliberal political forces that have usurped the media or to which the media have simply willingly given in. Since in 2022 there was still the possibility of deviating from the path that leads to catastrophe, to World War III, we decided to combine love and peace in the title of the festival and program the events through the connection between the digital and the analog, technology and nature, and the virtual and the real. The previous festival, KIBLIX 2020–2021, was entitled Virtual Worlds Now and was the largest international exhibition of its kind. It captured the ubiquitous, global, and elemental “movement” of society and connected numerous artists who create digital worlds at the KIBLA PORTAL exhibition venue, while taking place in hybrid form, i.e. physical and online, and evolving over the two years.

In 2023, the masks finally came off. Also in Slovenia. Thus, we have woven hypocrisy and pride into the title of KIBLIX 2023, the first as a universal feature of public mouthpieces and the second as the worst cardinal sin that still creeps through the rooms and halls of political decision-makers and their minds today in order to manipulate public opinion. While this festival was thematically framed by the cardinal sins and envisioned a certain catharsis that never materialized, we call KIBLIX 2024 Prudence and Courage. Standing opposite the seven cardinal sins are the seven Christian virtues, including the four cardinal virtues (prudence, justice, courage, temperance). We have chosen two of them for our title in the hope that you will understand the gesture. The analog and the digital hand in hand. People in nature with nature.

Program

21 November 2024, at 6 p.m.; MMC KIBLA
Panel discussion: Metaverse Realities | Art, Semiocapitalism, and the New Lords

22 November 2024–11 January 2025; artKIT
Igor Štromajer: 3¦×Fń–Qé3=Miá+
Exhibition opening: Friday, 22 November 2024, at 6 p.m.

27 November 2024, at 8 p.m.; MMC KIBLA
MIGAV Music Cycle: Cadlag

4 December 2024, at 8 p.m.; MMC KIBLA
MIGAV Music Cycle: Tadej Droljc

6 December 2024, at 7 p.m.; MMC KIBLA
Exhibition and project presentations
Branimir Štivić: Land, 2024
Vlado Repnik – GVRbabaLAN: Grace, an Attempt at Touching
Jaka Waldhütter, Monika Pocrnjić + workshop participants: The Digital Wilds: Reflections in the Virtual World, 2024

6 December 2024, at 8 p.m.; MMC KIBLA
Music Cycle TOMORROW: bambus • endless conversations

12 December 2024, at 8 p.m.; MMC KIBLA
Music Cycle TOMORROW: Samo Kutin

20 December 2024–1 February 2025; MMC KIBLA/KiBela
Kärt Ojavee
Exhibition opening: Friday, 20 December 2024, at 7 p.m.

< Tanja Vujinović: RoboSense3, audio-visual work, 4x5 4K, 9:59 min, 2024, still image