LABoral hosts the kick-off work meeting of the European Network for Contemporary Audiovisual Creation
The European Network for Contemporary Audiovisual Creation (ENCAC) is a project of support, fostering, dissemination of visual arts, sound creation and digital culture
Representatives of the ENCAC's partners with the Asturian Counselor of Culture at LABoral
LABoral will host from today until next Friday the kick-off work meeting of the European Network for Contemporary Audiovisual Creation (ENCAC), a transnational cooperation project of support, fostering, dissemination and interaction between citizens, artists and researchers interested in visual arts, sound creation and digital culture.
The European Network for Contemporary Audiovisual Creation is one of the 64 projects selected -five of them in Spain- by the European Commission out of 476 applications submitted to the last call of the programme Creative Europe, a EU initiative for the period 2014-2020 aimed at boost the cultural and creative industries, with a total budget of 1.460 million Euros. Moreover, LABoral will be the only Spanish art centre that will receive EU funding for this new phase of EU aids.
The project will be carried out between next May and August 2017 and will receive 200.000 Euros in community funds (representing half the cost of the activities planned by the Network) for developing a wide programme of research, production, education and dissemination of the new audiovisual practices. The total of activities planned includes 20 residencies, 12 professional workshops, two developer meetings and 24 presentations, installations, performances, seminars and round tables.
PARTICIPANTS IN THE MEETING
Ars Electronica, Linz, Austria: Veronika Liebl, Head of Organization and Finance at the Ars Electronica Festival.
hTh - CDN de Montpellier, Francia: Carole Willemot, co-founder of alter machine, artistic projects production office, responsible of European projects and funding at hTh-CDN Montpellier; and Daniel Romero, Director of the Département Numerique at hTh-CDN Montepellier, France.
Le Lieue Unique, France: Patrick Gyger, Director, and Anaïs Rolez, PhD in History of Contemporary Art, she currently teaches History of Media Art and Performance at the Nantes School of Art.
Resonate, Serbia: Eduard Prats Molner, co-founder and curator at Resonate.
DISK, Germany: Jan Rohlf, founder and one of the artistic directors of the annual CTM - Festival for Adventurous Music and Arts, Berlin
LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial, Gijón, España: Lucía García, Managing Director.
L.E.V. Festival: Cristina de Silva y Nacho de la Vega (Fium), DATATRON 03XF.
Mapping Festival, Switzerland. Videoconference: Justine Beaujouan, Director and Curator of the Mapping Festival, Genève.
Avatar, Québec, Canada. Videoconference: Mériol Lehmann, Executive Director.
Elektra, Montreal, Canada. Videoconference: Alain Thibault, Artistic Director.
Mutek, Mexico. Videoconference: Damián Romero, General and Artistic Director.
THE PARTNERS OF THE NETWORK
Under the leadership of LABoral, together with L.E.V. Festival (Laboratorio de Electrónica Visual) -taking part as strategic partner-, this new Network is integrated by six European partners from five countries (Spain, France, Serbia, Germany and Austria) and for non-European collaborating partners based in Switzerland, Canada and Mexico.
Ars Electronica, Linz, Austria
Director: Gerfried Stocker
Ars, technology, science and society – experienced tags which accompany Ars Electronica since the emergence in 1979. Ars Electronica (AT) has sought out interlinkages and congruities, causes and effects between these realms. The ideas circulating here are innovative, radical, eccentric in the best sense of that term.
The Festival as proving ground, the Prix as competition honoring excellence, the Center as a year-‘round setting for presentation & interaction, and the Futurelab as in-house R&D facility extend their feelers throughout the realms of science and research, art and technology. Ars Electronica’s four divisions inspire one another and put futuristic visions to the test in a unique, creative feedback loop. It’s an integrated organism continuously reinventing itself.
www.aec.at
hTh - CDN de Montpellier, France
Director: Rodrigo García
Led since 2014 by the author and theatre director Rodrigo García, human TROP human (hTh) - CDN Montpellier is a prestigious institution devoted to contemporary creation in Languedoc-Rousillon. In the intersection of various disciplines, the team put together by Rodrigo García is highly and strongly committed to creation socially and ethically. The project revolve around three main aspects: 1) a permanent collaboration group of Spanish and French creators that participate of the conceptualization and production of performances, workshops, ateliers, festivals, etc. 2) a research lab on performing arts and spectacles directed by Laurent Berger, and 3) a Digital arts laboratory which aims to conform an experimental structure for new technologies, sound and video, directed by Daniel Romero.
www.humaintrophumain.fr
Le Lieue Unique, Nantes, France
Director: Gyger Patrick
January 1st 2000, Le Lieu Unique is inaugurated. Since it has become a utopian living space where conviviality meets the most contemporary forms of creativity, a space of artistic exploration, of cultural effervescence that mixes genres, cultures and people. Le lieu unique works in many different domains of art: visual art, theatre, dance, circus, music, but also literature, philosophy, architecture, new media.
Every year, Le Lieu Unique offers over a hundred theatre, dance, and circus performances, as well as concerts, literary gatherings, philosophical debates, etc; over 200 days of exhibitions and residences for visual artists; and major events (festivals, cultural trails, great debates, etc.) as well as conferences.
www.lelieuunique.com
Resonate, Belgrado, Serbia
Director: Maria Jelesijevic
Operated by Magnetic Field B, Resonate is a platform for cultural networking, knowledge sharing and education. In cooperation project, it will gather creative entrepreneurs, cultural workers, artists, students and educators to participate in a forward-looking debate on the position of art and culture in new media and technology. Special accent will be put on organizing workshops in the fields of music, visual arts and digital culture. Guest artists, lecturers and other participants are students, but also cutting edge, contemporary creative people in the world.
www.resonate.io
DISK -INITIATIVE BILD UND TON EV, Germany
Director: Oliver Baurhenn
DISK is a non-profit organization that aims to support and promote the production and diffusion of experimental sound art, innovative music, and visual arts. Three major issues on the DISK agenda are: projects and research about the correlation of sound and other forms of art, fostering international exchange between artists, initiatives and organisations, and supporting independent, experimental musicmaking that is situated between avant pop music and the circles and traditions of academic music. In addition to producing the annual CTM Festival, DISK is a co-founder of Inn.to, a cooperatively run building in downtown Berlin that houses artist studios and offices for cultural projects, and also hosts General Public, a non-profit project space located on the building's ground floor. DISK was founded in fall 2006. DISK is a member of Initiative Neue Musik Berlin, and the Dach/Musik network, and is a founding member of the ICAS- network (International Cities of Advanced Sound).
www.diskberlin.de
Non-European partners
Mapping Festival, Switzerland
Curators 2015: Ana Ascencio, Justine Beaujouan, Boris Edelstein
The Mapping Festival, dedicated to audiovisual art and digital culture, is now a major event in the fields of the image generation, creation and technological exploration, attracting both professional and mainstream audience. Considered as a unique platform of production and diffusion in Switzerland, it also enjoys an international reputation thanks to the quality of its programming and diversity, which aims to encourage emerging artists of the field. Working with several venues and open spaces in the city, it alternates audio-visual performances, installations, clubbing, architectural mapping, as well as workshops and conferences. The Mapping Festival is also a meeting point, a creative and collaborative platform with innovative spirit. Over the course of nine editions the Mapping Festival has grown steadily and emerged as one the most important events of its kind in Europe.
http://2015.mappingfestival.com
Avatar, Québec, Canada
Executive Director: Mériol Lehman
Avatar is a self-run artist centre specialized in researching, creating, disseminating, publishing, and distributing audio and electronic art. The centre is a non-profit organization and, in its 20 years of existence, has initiated activities to promote production, discussion, and collaboration amongprofessional artists at every level through local, national, and international networks. Its facilities are located in Quebec City in the Coopérative Méduse building and include research and recording studios, a multi-purpose room, a computer laboratory, and an electronics lab containing cutting-edge audio and electronic equipment. Avatar’s primary mission is to promote the research, creation, and dissemination of audio and electronic art in all its current and future forms to continually revitalize artists and their discipline.
http://avatarquebec.org/en
ELEKTRA, Montreal, Canada
General and Artistic Director: Alain Thibault
ELEKTRA, a high-calibre Montreal-based cultural initiative, presents artists and works of art that align the latest electronic music and visual creation derived from new technologies (animation, installation and robotics). Elektra unites creative media like music, video, cinema, design, gaming and audio or interactive installation with the latest digital technologies. Artists from all disciplines –composition, performance, dance, visual arts, etc.– all with a common interest in artistic applications of new technologies, uniting visual and sound. Elektra not only welcomes artists from all over the world, the festival also features local talents, helping make Montreal the North American meeting place for digital arts.
http://elektramontreal.ca
Mutek, México
General and Artistic Director Mutek México: Damián Romero
MUTEK is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the dissemination and development of digital creativity in sound, music, and audio-visual art. Its mandate is to provide a platform for the most original and visionary artists currently working in their fields, with the intent of providing an outlet of initiation and discovery for the audiences we seek to develop. In terms of content, the festival’s range strives to be diverse, with interests in both the experimental and the playful sides of digital creativity. MUTEK’s programming intends to create a sonic space that can support innovation in new electronic music and digital art. This is a world of constant evolution and incessant refinement – the “MU” in MUTEK refers consciously to the notion of “mutation”. A MUTEK network exists today, with ramifications in North America, South America, and Europe.
http://mutek.mx/2014/
GOALS
The European Network for Contemporary Audiovisual Creation is aimed at boosting innovation by combining the knowledge, experience and resources of its members. The different nature of the members also brings in an interdisciplinary and complementary perspective. Its contribution to the process of the creators, in the different fields covered by the project – research, production, education and dissemination of new audiovisual practices – will foster a more effective advancement in the implementation of innovative solutions that can be exported, that are sustainable and that bring the new audiovisual culture closer to the public and the industry.
The structure of the Network will support European creators and foster intercultural exchange, transdisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity, professionalisation, international dissemination and the sharing of knowledge.
Moreover, the network will boost the interaction and collaborative work among European creators/developers in the different fields: Sound, visual arts, scenic arts and digital culture by fostering and boosting intermedia research. To this end, research on new technologies and languages will be essential to accomplish on of the main goals: Extending the scope of action of the audiovisual creation tools that the European Network for Contemporary Audiovisual Creation will put at the disposal of creators.
Likewise, training at different levels is considered a strategic pillar. On the one hand, with the purpose of boosting the capacities of creators, reinforcing their knowledge and skills so that they can contribute more to the various creative and cultural industries; and, on the other hand, with the clear purpose of expanding the critical mass and bringing these practices with a wider audience, based on collective participation and critical thinking through actions that make us re-think the environment that we inhabit.
PROGRAMME
Until August 2017 several actions will be conducted in the aforementioned areas of research, production, education and dissemination, through the following initiatives:
- Creation of a curatorial committee made up by representatives of the members of the network.
- Launching of open calls for selecting research and production projects by European artists in the fields of interest established by the curatorial committee.
- Programme of artistic residencies taking place in several venues and that can be shared-residencies.
- Presentations and travelling exhibits of the results following the creation of a specific section of the European Network for Contemporary Audiovisual Creation in the various member festivals.
- Meetings of European developers and artists in several venues integrated in the network.
- Expert training programme (workshops, talks, conferences, round table).
- Creation of repositories and launch of an experimental multimedia label
