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Music

Resonate Festival Brings New Media Art To The Balkans

A new festival aims to catalyze the audiovisual scene in Serbia.

For as niche of an art form as new media art is, it certainly suffers from no shortage of festivals, at least not in Europe (the rest of the world has yet to catch up with their impressive pace). But for the nearby Balkan and Eastern European regions, it tends to be slim pickings, as funding for these types of projects tends to be harder to come by, despite the flourishing of a very active, if a little isolated, audiovisual culture. That’s why newcomer, Resonate Festival, scheduled to take place in Belgrade, Serbia on March 16-17, 2012 is such an important step towards building the kind of creative tech community that seems to be gaining visible traction in other parts of the world.

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With a who’s who line-up featuring some of the world’s best digital artists and thinkers (including beloved Creators United Visual Artists), Resonate aims to address some of this creative stagnation with a new platform that falls somewhere between festival and creative bootcamp. The goal is to catalyze the Belgrade new media art scene by creating an exchange between east and west, with a strong focus on educational programs.

“What Belgrade lacked in the past is tradition and continuation in development,” says festival curator Filip Visnjic, editor of CreativeApplications.net. “There are no cultural centres or organisations [here] and the art scene is very much indigenous, meaning there are a lot of artists working locally who do not have the capacity to translate these works into something larger and clearer. Mostly things are amorphous and there is no clear product. In addition, besides the obvious lack of influence and direct relationship with the rest of the world, and of course limits to available funds and resources, the Belgrade art scene has been very much ’L’art pour l’art’ (‘art for art’s sake’) and [has traditionally] been about compromises.”

If Visnjic’s previous workshops and curatorial endeavors are any indication, the Resonate program is going to be one of energetic information exchange and collaborative code-jamming. If you’re anywhere in the area or have been looking for a good excuse to visit Belgrade, you might want to get your early-bird ticket here.

Check the Resonate website for more information and a full list of participants.