The 2014 Ars Electronica Festiva
DURATION: 2014-09-04 ~ 2014-09-08
OPENING: 2014-09-04 16:15-PM
VENUE: Linzer Mariendom
The 2014 Ars Electronica Festival is set for September 4-8.This year’s theme is “C … what it takes to change,” an inquiry into the prerequisites and framework conditions necessary to enable social innovation and renewal to emerge and make an impact. The focus will be on art as catalyst. The in-depth elaborations, lively discussions and bold provocations will feature, as usual, artists, scholars and scientists from all over the world—renowned intellectuals confronted by young contrarians, top experts encountering interested laypersons, the pioneers of the Digital Revolution face to face with the shooting stars of today’s media art scene. From September 4th to 8th, Ars Electronica will once again be a setting for reciprocal exchange and networking, a one-of-a-kind forum in which perspectives and opinions are negotiated and presented in the form of speeches, artistic installations, performances and interventions. Chaos, Fascism or Paradise? Contemporary life is full of rapid changes, the virtual collides with reality, chaos is the ultimate master. In the current digital era, we are overloaded with information yet lack the wisdom to process it. We know everything, yet are still lost. As Buddha sought the Pure Land in the chaotic human world, inhabitants of the urban jungle crave escape to a beach paradise. But when the paradise collapsesLampedusa is no springboard to freedom, the Fukushima disaster robs us of hope the coastline becomes more than an international marker of territory; it is the critical meeting point between heaven and hell. Buddha or tea planter, each stands alone on this borderline: the beach. Passion, frustration and anger fuel contemporary society’s confusion. Stuck in a traffic jam of contradictory ideas, we barely creep forward. Today`s world is painful, constructed through rapid revisions, calculated strategies, political games, and simplified indifference. Fascism creeps in when democracy is no longer meaningful, free thinking and creation are suppressed and eventually destroyed. But this existence is also highly fertile: the possibilities are greater than ever. We live in a nightmare, but also in a moment of great opportunity. If, one day, Buddha appeared on the beach, could he provide an answer to the chaos of the world? Or would he need a beach holiday, a moment to breath? *Buddha on the Beach* comprises three large interactive installations, two live performances, and twelve works of visual and video art by contemporary Taiwanese artists. In tribute to Philip Glass and Robert Wilson’s 1976 opera *Einstein on the Beach*, the scenography is designed as a global space, aiming to provoke dialogue between the individual works while preserving the autonomy of each. It also adapts Buddhism’s “Six Realms of Karmic Rebirth”of Hell, Hungry Ghosts (great craving and eternal starvation), Beasts (stupidity and servitude), Asura (jealousy and constant war), Humans and Deva (heavenly pleasure) as metaphors for the complex changes and global crises. The exhibition offers a poetic glimpse of the current world and invites the viewer to reflect on our current crises and the need to invent new path for humanity.