Ūmėdė*
x⬳disciplinary festival for emerging art & related matters What happened after the meteorite of the anthropocene has hit contemporary art, and bioactivists together with AI and XR* have exploded the discourse formerly known as media art?
Performances, installations, conceptual coffee breaks, open artists studios, smell of grass and trees, book presentations, hybrid discussions, chilling in the garden, VR trips, concerts, imaginary presence and unexpected meetings.
*ūmėdė [uːmeədeə]
is a Lithuanian word for mushroom species (Russula). It phonetically resonates with the word “media”. This mushroom is ectomycorrhizal which means a form of symbiotic relationship that occurs between a fungal symbiont, or mycobiont, and the roots of various plant species. Therefore metaphorically speaking we suppose that participants of the symposium will form a symbiotic relationship with media, art, research, the actual venue and themselves.
ARTISTS’ LIST: (TBA)
CURATORS: Vytautas Michelkevičius, Gailė Griciūtė, Ignas Pavliukevičius
BACKGROUND
The new Ūmėdė biennial festival is investigating the discourse of “emerging art forms” and invites artists, thinkers and practitioners to overcome their disciplinary borders and perform, share, exhibit, expose, present, talk, dine and walk together for 3 nights and days in the heart of Vilnius city. We believe that it does not matter which medium you use, or which discipline you refer to, as long as you are concerned with urgent issues of emerging art (formerly known as (new) media art, art & science, digital art, interactive art, etc.) Ūmėdė starts as a platform for emerging art forms, to accommodate and question them. Moreover, it intends to explore the limits of art and its relations to other forms of human and non-human (post-human) activities. The biennial has ambitions to grasp what is upcoming or upcycle what was lost in the history of art & science & research.
HISTORY
The first attempt of the pre-festival was Ars Electronica Garden Vilnius event which happened in September 2020 in a hybrid form: in Vilnius and online. It was curated and organised by the same team. Vytautas Michelkevičius has also initiated and co-curated a series of 9 Inter-formats symposiums which happened at Nida Art Colony of Vilnius Academy of Arts from 2011 until 2019.
1st ūmėdė festival edition happened in June 2021 – documentation and archive here;
2nd ūmėdė edition was self-organised as a cosy camp in geomorphological nature preserve in 2024.
3rd edition happens as a full scale festival in October 16-19th, 2025
4th edition might happen in 2027 or 2028 (depending on funding and energy of curators).
TEAM
Artistic director, founder and co-curator: Vytautas Michelkevičius
Programme Curators and co-founders: Gailė Griciūtė, Ignas Pavliukevičius
Contributing curators: Nazaré Soares, Johanna Zanon, Anna Mikkola and others
Design: diy
Producer and facilitator: Emilija Zakarauskaitė
Communication: Vytautas Michelkevičius
Volunteers:
Contact fest@umede.lt
BIOGRAMS
Gailė is interested in sound, its behaviour in space and time, interrelations, manipulations, multiplicity of layers and existences. In a sonic dialogue between the ‘natural’ and ‘human made’, creating sensory space for thought processes and new perceptions, questioning how can artistic actions take a conscious part in the environmental processes.
Vytautas is restless (keen) in finding what happened after media art has evaporated into the atmosphere and what is going to replace it by 2030. He is curating, writing and researching post-media art and its leftovers. To sum up art has never been an autonomous field and recently it got another chance to hook up with technologies, research and society. Moreover, he hopes that (artistic) practice generates new theories and will help us better understand the future.
Ignas fancies for digital forms of representation that can create new versions of reality. A reality for dissolving boundaries between self and the other, occupying other bodies and species. Asking how digital entities are forming relationships with our physical bodies, and in turn what our bodies offer them? The momentous question is how digitalisation shapes the meaning of what it takes for someone to be a human?
PARTNERS: Photography, Animation and Media Art Department of Vilnius Academy of Arts, MPLab (Liepaja) at Riga Technical University
Organised by ngo MENE in partnership with LTMKS & SODAS 2123
Partly supported by Lithuanian Council for Culture, Vilnius City , all the participants
SPECIAL THANKS TO