For the third year, the Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation (CIFO) — Ars Electronica Awards celebrates and advances the practices of emerging and mid-career Latin American artists working with technology in the field of new media and digital art. Recipients are supported with up to to 30,000 USD to develop a new project. The works are premiered in the annual Ars Electronica Festival and in addition, the resulting works join the Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation (CIFO)’s renowned permanent collection of modern and contemporary art, with a special focus on Latin American art.
“This third edition of the CIFO x Ars Electronica Awards marks a moment of maturity for the prize, evidenced by the quality of the projects presented, as well as their geographical, racial, gender representation, and the critical use of various technologies. The decision was challenging, and that is precisely what we aspire to. The two awarded projects stand out for their concern for current universal issues, although they take as their starting point local circumstances, such as the premature and unconscious waste of technology – for which Federico Gloriani proposes an organic community initiative for its systematic reuse – and the evident ecological and human damage caused by mining neo-extractivism in the so-called ‘Global South’ – denounced by Guely Morató Loredo with her alarming yet sublime multimedia project.”
Ella Fontanals-Cisneros, Founder and Honorary President of CIFO
Winners 2024
Mutualidad de Fantasmática Electrónica / Federico Gloriani (AR)
30,000 US dollar prize money
Mutualidad de Fantasmática Electrónica is a performative and relational project by a group of artists in Rosario City/Argentina. The setting is the industrial city’s dumpsters, where they are looking for discarded electronic devices whose individual components are still usable. The collected materials are reused as valuable assets for the art and tech community.
This act of collecting and recycling results in an installation: an optical device for displaying the silhouettes of a small selection of gleaned device components, creating a phantom image of them. The aim is to engage with levels of time; with the past and alternative futures. Federico Gloriani draws on the legacy of the Mutualidad Popular de Estudiantes y Artistas Plásticos, a community of artists in Rosario City that in the 1930s applied the labour movement principles in the art field as a pedagogic methodology.
Federico Gloriani (AR) lives in Rosario City, Argentina and is an artist and teacher, graduated in Fine Arts at the Universidad Nacional de Rosario. For some years he has been interested in the obsolete media. He made pirate radio and television transmissions over the air; he modified landline telephones to be able to send images through them; he connected a telegraph between two museums five hundred kilometers apart, among others projects. In 2018 he received the first prize in the Art and Technology Award organized by the Fondo Nacional de las Artes of Argentina. He participated in the Tsonami (2022) and Toda la Teoría del Universo (2021) festivals. In 2023, through the training program Presente Contínuo he held workshops and masterclasses with Maurice Benayub, Guto Nobrega and Rafael Lozano Hemmer. He is currently a professor at the Universidad de Entre Ríos (UADER) and a collaborator at Espacio Lab, a program focused on art, science, and technology in Rosario City.
www.fedegloriani.com.ar
Triangle of Sacrifice / Guely Morató Loredo (BO)
15,000 US dollar prize money
Guely Morató Loredo’s work sheds light on the effects of large-scale lithium mining in the “lithium triangle” between Argentina, Bolivia and Chile. The artist deals with the profound transformation of the region, which is being accelerated by the imminent energy transition and increasing electromobility.
The process of lithium extraction – by drying out salt lakes – plays an important role in Loredo’s central sculpture. It is transformed by the effects of saline substances falling on it, the immersive sound piece will also be corrupted. Both will be transformed by the lithium extraction data monitored in real time. The title goes back to the name “Sacrifice Zone”, which was given to the region due to the overexploitation of resources. The work is intended to express the changes in the area and their impact on the lives of its inhabitants, addresses “neo-extractivism” in Latin America and questions greenwashing.
Guely Morató Loredo (BO) is curator, artist and researcher. Winner of the Cultural & Artistic Responses to Environmental Change-2023 award by the Prince Claus Fund and the Goethe-Institut. Curator of The Listening Biennial (2023). Head researcher of the ALTER residency, a mountain laboratory specializing in solutions for the period of cultural, climate and energy transition held in the Swiss Alps (2022). During 2021 she was the head researcher of the Bolivian team participating in The Witness_Openlab, annual research laboratory focusing on the anthropocene and the human footprint on the planet. She led the Gender, Science and Technology Observatory (2019-2022). She led the Medialab at the Cultural Center of Spain in La Paz (2019). She is currently curator of Wak’a, a project that involves several communities and creators who reflect on extractivism, sacredness and deep listening in the Lithium Triangle. Since 2014 she founds and directs Sonandes: Platform for Experimentation and Research, which organizes the only biennial specialized in sound art in Latin America, Puertos: Residency Program, laboratories, exhibitions and projects specialized in sound art and listening.
sonandes.org
About the Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation (CIFO)
Ella Fontanals-Cisneros established the non-profit Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation (CIFO) in 2002. The foundation’s mission is to support and foster cultural understanding and educational dialogue among Latin American artists and global audiences. CIFO serves as a platform for emerging, mid-career and established Latin American artists through the Grants & Commissions Program, including the new CIFO-Ars Electronica Award; the CIFO Collection; and other related art and cultural projects in the United States of America and internationally.