SONICA – Festival of Transitory Art 2011: Transitions
9-16 October 2011, Ljubljana
The 2011 Sonica edition began in Ljubljana in Kino Šiška with the audio-visual performance Dust from an extraordinary Canadian artist Herman Kolgen. On the same night, we opened an exhibition of audio-visual and interactive works.
The main part of the festival took place in MoTA Point (the temporary info point of the Museum of Transitory Art), a new art space in the old part of Ljubljana on Mestni trg 15 (in front of Gallery Fotografija). Workshops, lectures and video projections took place there. Before the festival, MoTA Point functioned as a studio for resident artists who created new artworks within the framework of SONICA.
Instead of being only a standard exhibition, the festival tries to find ways to explore how can become a laboratory where residential artists create new works and activities during the festival. In 2011 we had the opportunity to see a new interactive production, Dark Star. Media artist Carolien Teunisse kept the area in the MoTA Point full of life with the help of architectural video mapping, while André Gonçalves and the duo Macular developed a new artwork based on the dynamics of the Ljubljana sites. The festival also featured a strong presence of Dutch young generation artists as well, for which we gratefully thank the Mondrian Foundation for their kind support.
Since SONICA’s visual image seemed depersonalized in these years, the work of Wolfgang Bittner was chosen for this year’s festival identity. His work – Saccades – are portraits drawn by our own eyes. A similar artwork of the artist – Lines – will be installed at the MoTA-Point. It is a modified photo booth, in which the visitor is invited to interact and intervene in the process of photographic portraiture. In that way, every visitor will be able to create his own portrait and thus become a part of the festival too.
Sonica 2011 officially started in Berlin with pre-event as part of the Berlin Music Week in the frame of ICAS SUITE. This experimental night at West Germany on September 8 showcased transitory artists, based in Berlin and Ljubljana, that combine sound with lasers, microwaves and various other types of media.
The festival opened in Ljubljana by Herman Kolgen with his audio-visual performance Dust.
MoTA –
Museum of Transitory Art
MoTA is a multidisciplinary platform dedicated to advancing the research, production and presentation of transitory, experimental, and live art forms.
MoTA is a museum without a permanent collection or a fixed space. Instead, its programs are realised in different locations and contexts in temporary physical and virtual spaces.
MoTA organizes and supports transitory art in the form of continuous events, exhibitions and educational programs both locally and internationally. As its name indicates, MoTA examines what a museum can be today and in the future.
MoTA is in constant search for the new, the uncertain, and the undefined.
MoTA works on several continuous programmes & projects. We run MoTA Point – a Space for Art & Ideas, we curate and produce the annual SONICA Festival, in addition to regular music programmes such as SONICA Series and SONICA Classics.
Within the years of running our residency programme, we’ve established T.R.I.B.E. – a network of residency spaces in the Balkans & Eastern Europe.
We’ve also initiated the research and archive platforms ArtistTalk.eu and Mediateque MoTA & Tomaž Brate. Our educational programmes serve a broader audience with ongoing workshops, talks, symposia, and internships.
