A conversation with Davide Bevilacqua and Lara Mejač: Three decades of worrying about technology

Why curate MFRU now?

There is a lot of attention paid to important large events happening in fashionable capitals, so dedicating energy to a mid-sized festival like MFRU in a not super central yet active city like Maribor felt like something meaningful. MFRU has a long and rich history of exploring the intersection of new technologies and media art, so working on this year’s 30th edition seemed like an interesting challenge in rethinking the festival while looking back at the previous editions as well.

Current times are particularly challenging, with the spotlight and discussions on AI and corporate tech and so many events connected with the climate emergency. There is populism, wars, violence and social destruction – all of these are rooted in greed and capitalist economies. Curating the first post-Covid MFRU seemed like summarising the past years and tracing a roadmap for the future.

Computers globalise the world in the sense that the creator and the viewer can be anywhere anytime, and yet the essence of the International Computer Arts Festival is about physical bodies and physical objects. What does the space of Maribor at the centre of intermedia art seem to be?

It is definitely important to emphasise MFRU’s attention to the materiality of technology and the bodies and matter connected by it. We often forget the material layers that support and allow the existence of network-driven globalisation. The seamless ubiquity of computation and platform is possible only through very physical layers of energy, minerals, bodies and cables – and at the same time, many fields of human activities are increasingly becoming dependent on digital technologies to the point where it seems impossible not to rely on computers anymore. Needless to say, all of this is handled more and more by commercial values. Considering such global entanglement of bodies and machines, a reflection on the intersection of media spaces and practices is useful while unpacking all of this.

How do you approach exhibiting computer art in the festival spaces?

When we started the process of conceptualising the main exhibition and thinking about the artists we wanted to include, we both agreed on incorporating technology if it felt necessary to activate or document the process instead of just demonstrating or showing the capabilities of new technologies. Art and computers can do wonderful things together; however, we are no longer in the time where we need to show what machines can do. We rather need to discuss how we should use computers and for which goals, under which conditions and which stories we want to realise as a society – too much machine spectacle can distract from it.

What stance do you propose toward the notion of the computational when curating your edition of MFRU? Which virtual paradigm defines your approach?

In Off the Shelf, we look at computation as digital information processing and software layer influencing many fields of human activity – from logistics to manipulation and surveillance – but are also very interested in a certain refusal or rethinking of computational forms. Some of the works explore fringe computational aspects such as low-software image production or collective action of data gathering like ballots and group rituals. Some effects of the computational manifest in the folkloric realm, others in collective image making. Likewise, the virtual is hence closer to the imagination and the potential action, and in our case, it belongs to the realm of possibilities when thinking about potential futures.

What change or progress would compel you to redefine your questions posed at your edition of MFRU?

In the 2024 edition of MFRU, we decided to re-frame the questions of intermedia towards wider discussions on societal and individual wellbeing, questioning the role of commercialisation in society. Our thoughts were compelled by observing current high-tech trends such as the AI hype, but we generally mainly observed the wider role of network technologies in supporting consumption-oriented ideologies, much of which is generated and distributed over mainstream social networks. Since the pandemic, we have noticed an even stronger shift in that direction, as if there was no other alternative possible than using the internet as a commercial platform, as a giant shopping mall. We decided to address this lack of imagination from the growing discussion about post-consumerism and degrowth. The location that was initially chosen for the festival, which was the historic department store Modna hiša, well suited such topics, and we incorporated these ideas in the new location of Velika kavarna as well.

Have you noticed any differences in community-building around intermedia events over the years?  

After a decade of more accentuated enthusiasm towards the potential of digital tools, it seems that there is a certain generation change, a new wave of actors connected across Europe that carries a healthy scepticism towards novel technological inventions. In the digital and media art scene, we can notice an emerging intriguing intersection of groups and communities working on social justice and environmental protection with a critical approach towards maximalist network technologies and big tech corporations. This is not new in the scene, however the actors of critique are new, which are people starting new initiatives and engaging with older events, such as MFRU, that carry a longer history. It is pleasurable to observe how these different generations of artists critically dealing with digital tools encounter and enrich each other.

What do you think are the key insights gained from 30 years of documenting MFRU – examining its archives and observing the historical narratives of the festival? 

The festival archive is a fantastic document of hypes and worries about technologies of the past 30 years. From the expansion of the human body through digital networks and sensors to the politics of bodies through the cyberfeminist lens, questions about reality, fiction and narrative through media that have emerged since the late 90s and early 2000s, autonomous vehicles and glitches, virtual and 3D, the commentary on extranational political bodies, war, sex and much more. The early mashup of tech pioneering and activism in media art evolved into something much more formalised. Despite not having experienced them in the first place, there is still so much that we should study and learn from the rough radical 90s.

In the end, the dystopian, commercialised, eternally present world we live in today was already envisioned and criticised back then, so we should train our vision again and learn how to steer and shape the future towards directions that should be realised.

Theoretic, artist and a pioneer of the festival Marina Gržinić edited a publication accompanying the festival’s tenth anniversary, titled The Future of Computer Art and the History of the International Festival of Computer Arts, Maribor 1995–2004. What are your thoughts on the future of computer art? And what about the festival?

Computer art is a funny term because it is so out of time yet never too inadequate. Already in the curatorial text of MFRU in 2007 by Dunja Kukovec and Aleksandra Weltz computers were pervasive and ubiquitous, and all the art being made had encountered a computer sooner or later. Now it is the subject of computation which radically expanded with new fringes of total AI or subatomic social networking. As we are trying to do in this year’s MFRU, the future of computer art is one that questions not only the computation, digitality, intermediatic or whatever term we choose to use but the wider consequences of computing. That could mean thinking beyond computing as mere digital information processing or looking for alternatives to the environmental and social impact of extractive forms of digitisation.

All in all, MFRU feels like a festival ready to make the leap – its history secures a stable discursive grounding that offers a solid platform where to continue researching. It is, however, essential that MFRU and other longer-existing events learn how to change and give space to upcoming actors in the scene, involving newer generations and letting them act and experiment in formats, topics and conceptual frameworks.