The 19th edition of the SIMULTAN Festival took place between 3-6 October 2024, in Timișoara, continuing its exploration of the relationship between art, technology and society, through different artistic methods and practices.
In a world where simulations often replace reality, the line between useful and useless becomes blurred. Uselessness reveals the constructed nature of perceptions, prompting us to reconsider what we consider real or valuable.
Under the central theme, Desire for the Useless, 40 video and moving image works by artists from around the world commented, through visual narratives, on measurement of existence in the digital age. Fractured realities, the sound and language of data, the echo of machines in the future, the impact of global technological infrastructure on life, among others, are the subjects of these works.
The selection committee, consisting of Florin Făra, Marina Oprea, Luiza Alecsandru, Huba Antal, and Sergiu Sas, has selected 40 video and moving image works for the festival screening program from a total of 415 works received trough the open call.
The 3 works, which through conceptual narrative and visual representation imposed themselves in defining the meaning of uselessness in these fast-forward global contexts, are the following:
NATURA 2040 (11:05), 2024, by Hantao Li, Shuting Cui (China)
Inspired by Edward Wilson’s Half-Earth theory advocating for half the planet to be reserved as nature reserves to combat ecological degradation and species extinction. It imagines an organization, Natura 2040, which compresses farmland into two 100 meter walls in Flevopolder, Netherlands, separating city from nature. This allows half the polder to rewild, aligning with the Oostvaardersplassen Nature Reserve. The project explores blending human-made structures with natural ecosystems, questioning the essence of nature on artificial land and the impacts of such ecological experiments.
Winterteller (12:15), 2024, by Paulius Sliaupa (Lithuania)
As snow blankets the world, a new hyperreal space emerges, blurring the lines between the physical and digital realms of Lithuania and Iceland. Simulations frozen in time converge with uncertain futures, exploring the perforated textures of scanned environments and lived experiences. This contemplation of existence transcends boundaries as ideas, emotions, and experiences intersect virtual spaces and tangible realities, shaping our understanding of being.
A Hard Currency of Memories (10:08), 2024, by Albert Sten (Sweden)
An experimental essay film that navigates the intricate relationship between memory and data. Through individual interviews detailing experiences of data loss, along with field site visits and interviews at a data recovery lab, the film sets out to investigate the infrastructure underlying this modern phenomenon. Enriched with archival material, it offers a deep dive into the complexities of memory preservation in the digital age.
Find out the complete list of the participating artists of the screening program.