[spectre] Kevin Hamilton: Report from MULTIPLACE 4 in Bratislava, SK

[Andreas Broeckmann]

Date: Sun, 24 Apr 2005 08:37:21 -0700
From: "Kevin Hamilton" <kham at uiuc.edu>
Subject: RHIZOME_RARE: Report from MULTIPLACE 4 in Bratislava, SK


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REVIEW/REPORT: MULTIPLACE 4 in Bratislava, SK

http://www.multiplace.sk
http://www.burundi.sk
http://www.atrakt-art.sk/
http://34.sk/
http://www.a4.sk/

I just returned from visiting Bratislava for the first time, on the occasion
of the fourth annual MULTIPLACE New Media Culture Festival, a growing and
exciting event that has me buzzing. I want to share a few words with you
here in the interest of making sure that everyone knows what's happening.

I've been collaborating with some of the organizers of the festival for a
couple years, namely the members of BURUNDI (formerly known as BURYZONE),
and so I was real happy to finally get over there and be part of things.
What I found was an enlivening, broad, critical, political and social
conversation that jumped from lecture to street to concert to workshop to
pub to flat.

True to its name, MULTIPLACE is spread out across several cities, but the
bulk of the events are held at A4, the central headquarters for BURUNDI and
ATRAKT ART, the organizations responsible for MULTIPLACE. Though BURUNDI and
ATRAKT ART have some overlap in membership, BURUNDI is primarily identified
as the New Media unit, while  ATRAKT ART tends to focus more on music, and
the publication of 3/4, a beautiful and smart-as-hell magazine that features
articles on wayfinding, Slovakian bus shelters, book and disc reviews, or
profiles of designers and artists.

This year's MULTIPLACE events got started with a concert by Dalek a couple
of weeks ago. This week saw things get really rolling with a whole series of
concerts, lectures, openings, and screenings. Kevin Blechdom, aMute, Guy van
Belle and Alva Noto all performed - we also saw presentations by cultural
organizers such as Zeljko Blace of egoboobits in Zagreb, or Annemie Maes of
Belgium's 0kn0. Gallery exhibitions and screenings are spread out all across
the calendar and the map. I gave a talk on my work, and conducted a
psychogeographical workshop/project in connection with my other
collaborations with BURUNDI.

Though the programming is great, what makes Multiplace special is the people
and the space. The core team is experienced, dedicated, hospitable,
informed, and challenging. It's a regular superfriends lineup of talents and
fields, with expertise in open-source software, library and information
science, art history, video, sound, networking, urban planning, design for
web and print all represented. Most outstanding is that all of this
expertise is couched within diligent and responsible attention to both the
immediate social and broader public faces of events.

During the course of my short stay there, A4 was transformed into a
media-lounge for hooking in on your own, having a drink, tinkering with
home-made scrap boxes running open source platforms and networking software,
or viewing the continuous stream of projected material from BURUNDI's
library. Represented there were videos from Edmar and the gang at
Select/lumpen in Chicago, ambient.tv, the Video as Urban Condition project,
VJ material, ARS electronica stuff, tactical media, and numerous documents
of projects in the Czech and Slovak Republics, Holland, Russia.

The days added up to a feast of shared information and resources, with
swapping of stories about projects seen or made, tech problems solved or
created, organizational and political strategies.

With sponsorships from the Goethe Insitute and the British Council, and new
partnerships with organizations as far Providence and Bangalore, these folks
are clearly seeking a global context for their very vibrant local actions. I
heard of "business trips" to Transmediale, as well as separate jaunts to
London, Sheffield, Brussels, or even Dakar to conduct and attend workshops.

In short, you should keep an eye on these efforts, and send stuff their way.
There are some promising models at work there - if you're anywhere near
Bratislava on your travels, a visit to A4 will be well worth your time. And
check in on their smartly designed sites periodically to see what's cooking.

Kevin Hamilton
Urbana, IL
http://www.synchronaut.net


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