August 16, 10 am Pacific Standard Time
As part of the Second Annual Small File Media Festival, Julieta Aranda, conceptual artist (Berlin/NY), Bermet Borubaeva (curator, Bishkek), Mriganka Madhukaillya (media artist, Assam), Jelena Micić (visual artist, Knjaževac/Vienna), and Cristina Moraru (curator, Iaşi) connect small-file movies, as appropriate technologies, to local practices and technologies, and examine the cosmic capacities of infinitesimal movies. Hosted by Radek Przedpełski. We dedicate this panel to Anna Banana, beloved Vancouver-based pioneer of low-carbon-footprint neo-avant-garde practices.
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/7996748048
Find your local number: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/kS0CyYLV
Guest Speakers
Bermet Borubaeva (Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan)
Bermet Borubaeva is a researcher, curator, and artist from Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, co-curator of Bishkek School of Contemporary Art // www.bishci.com.
In her multi-faceted practice, she engages with the politico-economic issues of food production and conservation, labour, migration, urban environment, and gender emancipation. Borubaeva holds a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the Kyrgyz-Russian Slavic University, Bishkek, and a Master of Arts in Political Analysis and Public Policy from the Higher School of Economics, Moscow. She graduated from the ArtEast School of Contemporary Art in 2009 and studied at the First Moscow Curatorial Summer School, “Doing Exhibitions Politically”, initiated by Viktor Misiano and the V-A-C-Foundation. She has participated in curatorial research residencies What Could/Should Curating Do?, Serbia, ReDirecting East, the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw, and the Curatorial Program for Research, Mexico.
Recent artistic projects include the café Still Life (2019) at Kunstraum Dreiviertel, Bern, and I.Food (2019), with Polina Nikitina, at the Vadim Sidur Museum, Moscow. She was curator and participant for various local and international projects, including the education program for the Bishkek presentation of exhibition Lingua Franca/ Франк тили, the Central Asian Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale, with Oxana Kapishnikova and Diana Ukhina; VKL.VIKL. (ON/OFF), the First Youth Central Asian exhibition of Contemporary Art; PAS DE DEUX – KG. CH exhibition at Center of Contemporary Art Yverdon-Les-Bains, Switzerland; TET A TET and TET A TET #2, exchange and exhibition projects between Kyrgyz and Swiss artists initiated by Focus-Art Association; and the performance Café Non-seller, in conjunction with the ECOCUP Green Documentary Film Festival, Moscow. She has contributed to several publications in the fields of art, political science, and urban environment.
Jelena Micić
Jelena Micić (*1986, Knjaževac) graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (2020) from the Textual sculpture class (Mentor Heimo Zobernig). MA in Philosophy (2012) and Graduated philologist of Scandinavian languages (2010) University of Belgrade. Awarded the DImitrije Bašičević Mangelos Art Award (2021), Würdigungspreis der Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien for Excellent Artistic Theses (2020), Ö1 Talentestipendium Bildende Kunst (2018) and kültür gemma! Fellowship (2018). Her works are in the Artothek des Bundes (Austria), collection of the city of Vienna and Homeland Museum (Serbia). Founder of the informal group UMETNIK*.
Lives and works in Vienna as an artist and curator.
Special artistic interest of Jelena Micić lies in the investigation of different cultural and socio-political aspects of color and color systems. Most of Jelena’s artistic practice includes field work and research-based collecting of visual information. Appropriating the everyday, her work often presupposes chosen patterns of human behavior and acts accompanying their presence.
Cristina Moraru
Cristina Moraru is an art theoretician, curator and editor living in Iaşi, Romania, but travelling mostly in the deep non-spherical space of the internet. She has a PhD in Philosophy and Social-Political Sciences at “Al. I. Cuza” University, Iaşi, Romania and she is working as an assistant professor at “George Enescu” National University of the Arts (UNAGE) Iaşi. She is the editor of the volumes published by the Research Center of UNAGE and (co)editor of the academic journal Studies in Visual Arts and Communication.
She is a founding member of The Centre for Contemporary Photography (C_F_C) Iaşi, and she participated in international conferences, workshops and studies programs at at NEC Institute for Advanced Studies, Bucharest, at NCCR University of Basel, at CRC “Affective Societies” Freie Universität Berlin, at Aarhus University, at University of Vienna, at Valand Academy for Art and Design, University of Gothenburg, at University of Copenhagen, at Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, at Leuphana University Lüneburg, at Universität Hamburg, at Loughborough University, at Birmingham City University, at Pedagogical University of Krakow, at European University At St Petersburg, at Danube University Krems, at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, at Salzburg International SAFA, at MTFA Academy Chișinau, at EEPAP Lublin, at LCCA Latvia, at CCA Prishtina, at The Cvito Fiskovic Centre in Split, at Institute of Contemporary Art, Zagreb, at Fondazione Arthur Cravan Milan and other independent institutions.
Mriganka Madhukaillya
Mriganka Madhukaillya is an assistant professor of New Media Technology and Cinema, as well as the founder of the Media Lab, within the Department of Design at the Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati. His background is in quantum mechanics and communication design.
He has conducted research and taught at many universities worldwide. He was a DAAD visiting professor at Merz Akademie, Stuttgart in 2019, and a visiting professor at the China Academy of Arts in Hangzhou in 2016-17.
He was a member of several advisory boards, including acting as juror in Visual Arts for Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart.
He is a co-founder of the art collective Desire Machine Collective, with which he was part of numerous solo and group exhibitions, festivals and conferences worldwide, and was nominated for the LUMA Award in 2011. His public platform Periferry, active on the river Brahmaputra between 2007-2013, was nominated for Tate Liverpool’s Visible Award in 2015.
At present he is developing the research and design studio Forest Cybernetics, incubated in IIT Guwahati.
Julieta Aranda
In her artistic practice, Julieta Aranda (Mexico City, Mexico) composes sensorial encounters with the nature of time and speculative literature. She observes the altering human-earth relationship through the lens of technology, artificial intelligence, space travel and scientific hypothesis. Working with installation, sculpture, video and print media, she is invested in exploring the potential of science-fiction, alternative economies and the ‘poetics of circulation’. Her projects challenge the boundaries between subject and object while embracing chance encounters, auto-destruction and social processes.
Julieta Aranda‘s solo exhibitions have been held at Galería OMR, Mexico City, Portikus, Frankfurt, Francesco Pantaleone Arte Contemporanea, Palermo, New Museum, NY, Guggenheim Museum, NY, Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Villa Croce, and the Kunstverein Arnsberg amongst others. She has participated in numerous international group exhibitions including Fridericianum Museum, Kassel, Bildmuseet, Umeå, Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin, Public Art Munich, Witte de With, Rotterdam and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit. Julieta Aranda was part of Sonsbeek 20-24, documenta 13 in Kassel, and of the 10th Momentum Biennale, 12th Istanbul Biennale, VII Havana Biennale, 8th Berlin Biennale; the 56th Venice Biennale, the 2nd Moscow Biennale, the Liverpool Biennial and the 9th Lyon Biennale amongst others; and her work was exhibited in the Latin American pavilion at the 54. Venice Biennale.
As an editor of e-flux journal, and co-director of the online platform e-flux together with Anton Vidokle, Julieta Aranda has developed the projects Global Contemporary Travel, Time/Bank, Pawnshop, Supercommunity, and e-flux video rental, most of which started in the e-flux storefront in New York, and have travelled to many venues worldwide.
Small File Media Festival 