Almissa

2019

Where are we going?

Glor­ija Lizde, from “F20.5” series, 2018

Choosing the Future

The very title of the per­form­ance fest­iv­al in Omiš, Almissa, is derived from the name of the ancient city. Top­onyms, people’s names and fest­iv­al titles often sug­gest what the event is about, so we could assume that Almissa fest­iv­al is estab­lish­ing a sort of con­nec­tion with the city’s his­tory. When I was first invited to cur­ate this edi­tion of Almissa, at the first moment I thought how import­ant it was — aside from the omni­present and museu­m­ized past of the Medi­ter­ranean cit­ies, includ­ing Omiš – to think about the future, and to use the fest­iv­al to spec­u­late about the idea how the world and people would look in near and dis­tant future.

By giv­ing con­tem­por­ary artists the oppor­tun­ity to mark, map the city and include new mod­els of reflec­tion through their tem­por­ary, eph­em­er­al inter­ven­tions look­ing from one side back­wards (estab­lish­ing new links with the past, age, and such) and, on the other hand, into the future, con­sid­er­ing mod­els that are cur­rently map­ping our real­ity, which take the role of defin­ing the human future. What kind of schools, what tech­no­lo­gies of the self, what atti­tude towards arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, algorithms etc. are developed today? How much are the past and the future inter­twined, and how exactly do con­tem­por­ary artists relate to know­ledge that has been rooted in gen­er­a­tions, how do they relate to innov­at­ive tech­no­lo­gic­al achieve­ments, and what are the ways to con­nect these two dif­fer­ent principles?

The fest­iv­al pro­gram offers vari­ous forms of exhib­it­ing, from per­form­ance, inter­ven­tion, pro­jec­tions, present­a­tion to dis­course, read­ings, lec­ture-per­form­ances and exhibitions.

Sandra Sterle, curator

Pro­gramme