Tribute to VALIE EXPORT
Crossing Europe, VALIE EXPORT Center

This year, CROSSING EUROPE will dedicate its Tribute section to one of the most important representatives of international media, film, and performance art: VALIE EXPORT. She was born in Linz in 1940, where she also grew up. On the occasion of her 80th birthday, and on the initiative of the VALIE EXPORT Centre Linz in cooperation with CROSSING EUROPE and sixpackfilm, a comprehensive program of VALIE EXPORT’s films and videos will be shown for the first time in her place of birth at this year’s edition of CROSSING EUROPE.

Magister Raffaello 2020 - Talk
Magister Art (IT), Jelena Jovanovic (IT)

Conceived to celebrate the 500th death anniversary of the renaissance artist Raphael, Magister Raffaello is a new cultural project by Magister Art, digital innovators in cultural heritage content creation, production and promotion. It combines the high scientific value with the constant experimentation of new languages and media, to create an ‘augmented narration’ and a ‘total’ cognitive experience. Magister Raffaello is shown in collaboration with the Italian Cultural Institute in Vienna.

Artist Talk: Hsin-Chien Huang (TW)

Artist Talk by Hsin-Chien Huang (TW) about his project 'Bodyless' which got the Honorary Mention in the Computer Animation category of the Prix Ars Electronica 2020

Electronic Theatre @ Online

Since 1987, the Electronic Theatre has compiled a large number of submissions from all over the world, providing an up-to-the-minute survey of animation art in the context of technology and society. It impressively illustrates the dynamic development of artistic computer animation over the past three decades as well as the expansive growth of various fringe areas. A glance at the works selected this year shows a broad range, from animation in the context of performance and installations to real-time animation and multifaceted, subject-based discussions.

Artist Talk: Toby Auberg (SE)

Artist Talk by Toby Auberg (SE) about his project 'Pile' which got the Honorary Mention in the Computer Animation category of the Prix Ars Electronica 2020.

Computer Animation
What is Animation? How do you Animate the work?

All animated images, however handcrafted, necessarily become digital at some stage of the production or distribution process, and thereby "computer animation." The question is therefore what kind of tool for communication they represent and which experiences they create for the viewer. The spectrum ranges here from abstract works, music videos, essay films, and character animations, to data visualizations and physical installations, all the way to virtual realities (VR, AR, and MR).

DARV_ Abandoned Land
Lee Jung In (KR/AT) Mihaela Kavdanska (BG/RO/AT) Violeta Ivanova (BG/AT) Florian Weinrich (AT)

DARV_ Abandoned Land is an intermedia dance performance which sprouts connections between analog and digital. The performers interact with large-scale objects and video projections, resembling the endless migration from one world to another in search for the better. The DARV team and eight dancers perform in various locations in Austria, South Korea and Bulgaria, guiding the audience through dystopian realities and abandoned sites. Drained-off utopias, failed social mechanisms and ideologies are embodied, explored and ultimately abandoned.

Virtual Anatomy – Preview of the JKU MedSPACE
Interactive multisensory environment, 2020

The Johannes Kepler University Linz (JKU) is currently constructing a modern, future-oriented multi-purpose learning space at the JKU Faculty of Medicine’s new medical education and research building. Scheduled to open in 2021, the space will not only be used as a virtual lecture hall for anatomy courses, but will also provide live surgery broadcasts from operating rooms to improve student education and post-graduate educational courses.

The City as a House – A speculative exploration of the possibilities of abolishing known forms of habitation
Rebecca Merlic (HR)

Vast amounts of pictures, sounds, videos and 3D scans are organized as environments in Rebecca Merlic’s The City as a House, in form of an interactive visual novel. A work about the experiment of a white European 30-year-old heterosexual human living in Tokyo without inhabiting a private apartment over a period of time. A speculative exploration of the possibilities of abolishing known forms of habitation.

Magister Raffaello 2020
Magister Art (IT)

Conceived to celebrate the 500th death anniversary of the renaissance artist Raphael, Magister Raffaello is a new cultural project by Magister Art, digital innovators in cultural heritage content creation, production and promotion. It combines the high scientific value with the constant experimentation of new languages and media, to create an ‘augmented narration’ and a ‘total’ cognitive experience. Magister Raffaello is shown in collaboration with the Italian Cultural Institute in Vienna.

Rio Verde
Cherish Marquez (US)

Rio Verde is a socially conscious video game by Cherish Marquez that explores the healing powers of the desert, as well as themes such as Latinx iconography and mental wellness.

Ars Electronica Animation Festival 2020
In collaboration with the University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria, Hagenberg Campus

Like so many other art and culture events, the 2020 Ars Electronica Animation Festival is faced with a great challenge due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As every year, the entries in the Computer Animation category of the Prix Ars Electronica serve as the foundation for the screening program.

Crosser & LaMigra
Rafael Fajardo (US)

Crosser & La Migra are two video games that represent opposite perspectives on the dynamics at the US-Mexico border, rendered as early arcade graphics and presented as a diptych. Artist and designer Rafael Fajardo is the founding director of SWEAT, a loose collaborative that makes socially conscious video games in order to explore the poetics of interactivity, critique and deploy electronic media, and comment on cultural realities.

Frontera!
John Jota Leaños

Leaños directed and produced the animated documentary, Frontera!, retelling the history of the 1680 Pueblo Revolt in New Mexico. The film has been supported by a 2012 Guggenheim Fellowship in Film and Video and a National Association for Latino Arts and Culture Grant, among others. Collaborators: Conroy Chino (Acoma Pueblo), Warren Montoya (Santa Ana Pueblo, Tamaya and Santa Clara Pueblo, Khapo Owinge’), Lee Moquino (Santa Clara Pueblo, Zia Pueblo, Apache/Yaqui), Aimee Villarreal, and Cristóbal Martinez (Alcalde).

Emilie Trice & LAST/RESORT present Garden del Rio Grande
LAST/RESORT (US)

Garden del Rio Grande pays homage to the geographic region around the Rio Grande River, which runs from central Colorado along the U.S./Mexico border to the Gulf of Mexico. Our garden contemplates how technology can reconnect us to the land and amplify indigenous voices, while questioning to what extent can art and design fortify sustainable ecologies. Through emerging technology we seek to reverse-engineer the past in order to reimagine the future.

CyberArts 2020 - Prix Ars Electronica Exhibition

The OK im OÖ Kulturquartier has been presenting the CyberArts exhibition since 1998. As a showcase for the Prix Ars Electronica winners, it is an excellent platform from which to observe current developments and trends in our digital age, with a special focus on their social and economic impact. The selected works exemplify the social dynamics and issues that are dominating today’s discourse.

Falling Up Exhibition
re.riddle, California, San Francisco (US)

Amidst riots and racial tensions, divisive political rhetoric and a global pandemic, the past half year has been a time of turbulent uncertainty. These acute ruptures and moments of pain, conflict and unknowingness have inadvertently led to a mode of seeing our former and current realities anew, which may more or less best be described as “surreal”.

Artist Talk: Yuge Zhou (CN)

Artist Talk by Yuge Zhou 周雨歌 (CN) about her project 'Underground Circuit' which got the Honorary Mention in the Computer Animation category of the Prix Ars Electronica 2020.

Artist Talk: Imge Özbilge (TR), Sine Özbilge (TR)

Artist Talk by Imge Özbilge(TR), Sine Özbilge(TR) about their project '#21xoxo' which got the Honorary Mention in the Computer Animation category of the Prix Ars Electronica 2020.

Artist Talk: Randa Maroufi (FR)

Artist Talk by Randa Maroufi (FR) about her project 'BAB SEBTA' which won the Award of Distinction in the Computer Animation category of the Prix Ars Electronica 2020.