MED Festival is open to different ways of music creation and intended to inspire a deeper interaction between various production media. In terms of genre, the selected program is based on a most stressless and limitless perception of electronic/electro-acoustic music; and wishes to offer a most unique and distinctive aesthetic experience. The festival continues on its mission to satisfy the audience, characterized by a particular affection for the neuralgic points of musical happening, fresh concepts and the exploring nature of production. As a novelty, this year's edition will be held on two successive Fridays in February. It will include an interactive art project entitled ‘Eternal dance floors or The stuffed afterlife party’, crossing the lines between life and death by combining music, dance, and new technologies. The opening is scheduled for 8pm on the first day, with interactive activity throughout the entire week. While the opening night of the festival introduces one of the hottest names of the global electronic scene, the following evening offers a different treat with exclusively Slovene artists, each of whom unquestionably holds an important position in their respective areas of expertise.
Production: ACE KIBLA President: Aleksandra Kostič Head of program: Pina Gabrijan Executive producer: Dejan Pestotnik Head of technics: Simon Sedmak Organization: Lidija Pačnik Awais Festival partner: MIMOZA institute
KIBLA PORTAL Valvasorjeva ulica 40 Maribor, Slovenia More Info...
MED Lineup 2013
15 February 2013, 8pm Opening of an interactive art project ‘Eternal dance floors or The stuffed afterlife party’. We will be moving to the sounds of DJ Ijon Tihi (Mimoza).
15 February 2013, 11pm Nitz (Ljubljana) Andy Stott (Manchester) 33 10 3402 (Belgrade)
This esteemed Manchester producer is protégé of the local Modern Love record label - an increasingly important institution that is being detected progressively on the musical radar by each release they publish. For the past eight years, Stott has regularly delighted us with new creations, he drew attention to himself especially with Passed Me By and We Stay Together releases from 2011. A few months ago his new LP Luxury Problems was released, which not only evoked positive reviews in a number of significant world music media, but also swung him to the top of their “best of 2012” charts. When the dark side of dub-techno turns to its brighter side…
Will Hermes (Rolling Stone): »Manchester's Andy Stott – whose EP doubleheader Passed Me By/We Stay Together was perhaps last year's most hallucinatory armchair EDM set – hooks up with his ex-piano teacher (Alison Skidmore), who sings her way into his machines. It's dark, hypnotic, abstract and remarkably sexy.« Več: www.rollingstone.com/music/albumreviews/luxury-problems-20121106 Mark Richardson (Pitchfork): »…Luxury Problems is more internally focused, an evocative and immersive soundtrack for a sustained look within. It's the headphones album of the year from a producer with a long history who has come into his own.« Več: pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/17205-luxury-problems/ Will Lynch (Resident Advisor): »Though he's had plenty of strong releases in the past, this one has the inspired feeling of an artist truly finding his footing - a breaktrough, in other words.« Več: www.residentadvisor.net/feature.aspx
Tine Vrabič – Nitz (Synaptic) - Live
A member of the Synaptic crew, which is as well home to the Synaptic Pathways record label, Nitz is also a name that appears regularly on Chilli Space compilations. This February we are expecting to hear another in the line of his works, a remix for the Canadian artist Bleupulp from the web label Bleepsequence. As part of the MED Festival, Nitz will be presenting his past year production, best described as a mixture of micro-dub and a slow experimental techno.
33 10 3402 (Kunstkopf)
Hiding behind the enigmatic name of 33 10 3402 is Nenad Marković – DJ, producer, and an agile student of sound design, otherwise known as a resident at the notorious Belgrade club 20/44 and their audience’s favorite, but also as a member of a DJ&VJ team called Parrish Monsters. Last year saw his debut release with the German “only 100” record label Kunstkopf, soon followed by performances in Düsseldorf, Berlin, and Hamburg.
22. 2. 2013 at 11 pm
Kleemar (GBTM) - Live
Matej Končan from Murska Sobota, also known as Kleemar, has appeared regularly on stages nation-wide in the past, and there is no doubt that he brought to the Slovenian scene a fresh breeze of an untamable musical expression. From underneath his fingers we have seen a significant number of remixes of local bands’ pieces (Psycho-path, Manul, Sphericube), but he has also warmed up audiences before great names such as Notwist or Dan Deacon. Recently he is once again, though sporadically, rekindling his live performances, without his former support team. Thus, after a lengthier creative coma, he will delight us with a fair share of fresh material as well. The only thing we’re waiting for now, is that long-ago promised album…
Kikiriki (Dubomb) - Live
One of the few females in the DIY sphere on our soil, as member of the Dubomb team she is also known as Madamdub. In the course of the past years, she has joined a number of groups, most recently appearing as one half of the Kiuriki duo, which published their Morning After album two years ago. On stage, her voice is accompanied by keyboards, micro-theremin, bass guitar etc.
Lavka (Lost Tapes)
DJ and organizer of the Lost Tapes events, with a focus in the early days of dance electronics - characterized by an abundance of Roland TB-808 and TR-909 rhythm machines, and the legendary TB-303 bass line. We can expect a festival ending with new wave, disco, early Chicago house & acid orientation, and all the way to the more technoid domains.
Marko Plahuta & Pina Gabrijan: ETERNAL DANCE FLOORS OR THE STUFFED AFTERLIFE PARTY
'Eternal dance floors or The stuffed afterlife party' is an extensive, multi-level artistic project that uses the creation of posthumous stuffed dancing avatars, primarily to evoke the problem of the increasingly radical disappearing of intergenerational solidarity. The conceptual basis is the state of to-day, where the existing social mechanisms are less and less capable of adequately providing for the elderly, often referred to as the »non-functional« members of the society. As an answer to that we are establishing a situation, progressed to the point of absurd, with physical avatars, lacking any kind of an actual, justifiable purpose to their existence, that are present after a person's death. What is more, they also need to be taken out dancing regularly – i.e. they need to be maintained, because they function according to the logic of the “Tamagotchi principle” (in other words, they go utterly insane, if we do not take good care of them). We are talking about a process in which the dancing human body is first replaced by its digital moving image, and then, after death, this digital »embodiment« is once again replaced by an actual body (a stuffed body with a robotic mechanism). We thus invert the usual process of creating an avatar (whereby the actual body is abandoned, and our personality becomes the avatar's content) – as in the existing project this very “abandoned” dimension, i.e. the actual body, becomes an avatar. This is the realization of the first stage of the project, including an interactive installation used to record an individual’s dance moves by means of motion-capture technology, and followed by setting up a virtual web environment with dancing digital “embodiments”. The interaction begins with “a check-up at the institution for posthumous avatar conversion” where the visitor’s biometric characteristics are measured by means of the EEG and a heart pulse sensor, to establish whether the candidate meets the requirements (the answer naturally always being positive). The results of the testing are represented by electronic music, which the system regularly generates in a Pythagorean sound scale (lambdoma) according to the values from the biometric sensors, and which is being changed into a genetic algorithm, interactively controlled by the visitor’s own music taste. When the visitors are not present, the system will generate and mutate random melodies. As soon as the examination is over, the visitor is able to respond physically – i.e. dance to the recorded music, while the system captures his/her movements and simultaneously visualizes them in the form of a three-dimensional image on the computer screen. The final products are computer files containing biometric and spatial data, which will later be available to the visitors on the project web site, with a user name issued by the system right after the examination. The presentation platform is useful both for real time interaction, as well as for motion capture and an access without network connection, editing, rating and sharing with other users. The conclusion of the entire project means stuffing and mounting its authors. But this is just the beginning of the project… Marko Plahuta: First encounters with computer programming in the eighties – creating visuals with the help of a ZX Spectrum at club K4 in Ljubljana. Prior to that he worked as an active freelance translator for a number of publishers; his work includes translating and localizing Microsoft products. At the brink of the new millennium working as director-counsellor at the mobile operator Mobitel for the distribution of mobile and web platforms, and later as director of Agencija 41 – a new media development company. Since 2007 he works as a usability and search technology specialist. He dedicates his spare time to the programming of interactive systems and visualizations, working with Java, Processing, and Arduino. Pina Gabrijan: Completed her study of cultural studies at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana, with a paper entitled 'The epistemological anarchism of Paul Feyerabend'. A semi-active freelance journalist in the field of culture, particularly music. Works for the student radio station Radio Študent Ljubljana, the web portal Nova Muska (formerly Muska magazine), and further back for Spekter magazine and Fair, an art and aesthetics magazine from Berlin. She is co-founder and professional manager of Mimoza institute, dealing primarily with the organization of music events. Since 2010 she has worked as program manager of MED music festival at Maribor’s Kibla. Received Robert Bosch Foundation scholarship (2009) and the Goethe Institute scholarship (2012). Unemployed, living under her mother’s roof.
