The third festival ūmėdė 2025 welcomes us down to earth to question why we are so awkwardly placed here
After media and screen fatigueness and sensory overload we invite you down to earth, down to body, down to roots to exchange on what we have learned out there and was it worth the trip?
New media integration into art and society was done in a happy-go-lucky way, now we would like to rewind and freeze some of the best moments. Lets watch and listen to them in slow motion all together around the real bonfire.
Third edition of umede.lt festival will happen on October 16-18th at SODAS 2123 (Vilnius, LT) site and invites you to contribute to the symposium related to one of the four festival stages (strands): sodas (garden), krūsnis (heap of stones), laboratory and ether. Check below the description of stages and documentation of the previous festivals.
Submit your proposal until 14th of April, 2025, https://forms.gle/u34scEBCBZbs3upo7
The x⬳disciplinary symposium for emerging art & related matters is jointly organised by umede.lt and VDA FAMM (Photography, Animation and Media Art Department at Vilnius Academy of Arts). See below the list of scientific and artistic committee. Vilnius Academy of Arts in collaboration with SODAS 2123 has already organised three symposiums: Not Quite King, Not Quite Fish (2023), Walking is still honest*: about being and moving together (2023), X-disciplinary Congress on Artistic Research and Related Matters “To Research or Not To Research in the Post-disciplinary Academy?” (2021).
The curators are interested in how the concepts of roots, networks and filters, taken from nature, operate in a reality permeated by technology and how this affects people. Perhaps the principles of how technology works are not so far removed from human beings and other species of life, and a symbiosis between these realities is possible in interdisciplinary art forms? Alternative rationalities will be one of the festival’s recurring keywords, which will help to understand how artists can help to (re)live in the face of the current crises (ecological, political, cultural, etc.)
After fatigueness from media, screens and virtuality, we invite you to join us present in your bodies and by attending performative and discursive programme re-think and re-sense the world around us. Being off-grid means being able to disconnect from various flows and concentrate on what is physically and mentally here now and with whom.
Symposium in the festival ūmėdė explores knowledge sharing formats beyond academia. First of all it encourages performative (artistic) lectures, rituals, workshops, walkshops and other activities stretching beyond powerpoint and screen vs. audience presentation formats. While we fancy format, do not forget your content and the main message since not only the medium is the massage.
People used to gather in transmediales, ars electronicas, ISEAs and other globally entangled new media events but why not to fancy a cosy interested community gathering in Vilnius the capital of media archeologies since early middle ages of (digital) baroque.
What happened after the meteorite of the anthropocene has hit contemporary art, and bioactivists together with AI and XR* have exploded the discourse formerly known as media art?
Festival curators: Vytautas Michelkevičius, Gailė Griciūtė, Ignas Pavliukevičius
Contributing curators: Nazaré Soares, Johanna Zanon, Anna Mikkola, Katažyna Jankovska and others
Submit your proposal until 14th of April, 2025 Application form https://forms.gle/u34scEBCBZbs3upo7
Times and formats
Collective time is a shared valuable resource. Let’s be modest when choosing the required slot: 15, 30 or 45 min. Let’s think about the appropriate time of collective gathering (is it a day or evening time, maybe during a coffee break or in between performances or screenings).
Finally, let’s take out “p” out of presentation and contribute with “c” which could be both communication and conviviality.
To cut things short – we invite you to propose a performative talk or theory inspired mediation or media related happening or intervention into the festival.
Topics:
Should be related to your own artistic or scientific research and artistic practice:
Artistic and Social Histories of FKAMA*
Offgrid media art
Embodied and mediated art
Locally rooted post-media art
Education of old and new media art
Archeology of mediated art
Underlooked qualities of photography as art as media
Underlooked qualities of sound as art as media
Perforated and performed art after digital after AI
What do media artists do offline and off-grid?
Is human made art going to be another analogue media art?
your proposed issue
*FKAMA – Formerly Known As Media Art
Funding: participation as well as coffee breaks are for free, the selected participants will be issued a letter of acceptance which you could use for fundraising from Erasmus+, KUNO, or your own institutional and other funding sources.
We can also facilitate your presentation with technical support if it does not exceed our resources.
We can also provide a bed for three nights in a nearby hostel ‘Downtown forest’ or discount for a single or double room.
Four stages (strands):
SODAS / Garden:
The garden is the place where human beings are confronted with other forms of life. In the context of the festival, this space will combine the observation of nature, cognition and a critical look at human-made ecological problems. The Garden Stage in an artistic format will invite us to rethink the problems of human’s relationship with nature and will offer potential strategies for creating a different kind of relationship. From the communication of tree roots through the all-encompassing mycelium to the thousands of nerve endings in barefoot human feet.
Krūsnis* (krosnis ir pirtis (Stove and Sauna):
Krūsnis (LT) is a pyre of stones (cf. heap), in the ancient tradition of the inhabitants of North-eastern Europe, is a stacked pile of stones used either for cooking or to provide heat and steam for a bath. The stack will bring together theorists and storytellers who will spread knowledge and energy through the exchange of food and conversation. The open cooking stove and the sauna in the courtyard of SODAS 2123 will become important discursive and embodied scenes where the festival participants will interact and collaborate with each other and with the visiting audience. What could be more fun than a cosy fire and meaningful conversations on a cold autumn evening?
Laboratory:
The laboratory reflects the concept of work as “labour”, emphasising the importance of creative work, research and experimentation. It is an environment that encourages curiosity-based research as a method for the artistic process of creation. It considers art and science as a continuous continuum and presents the development of new art forms and artistic languages. The interdisciplinary focus of this laboratory crosses the existing fields of music, visual arts, media arts and other artistic disciplines, the humanities and the natural sciences.
Ether:
Ether is a stage dedicated to media art, where the space itself becomes a tool for digital communication. The concept of the ether used to refer to radio or television broadcasts, but now also includes the internet and other computer networks as mediums for digital communication. It thus becomes a platform where artists fill the ether with light, sound and image, creating immersive experiences. It hosts presentations of the latest digital art, interactive installations and virtual reality works, allowing the audience to experience how time and space are transformed.
It is no coincidence that the word chosen for this stage also refers to the uppermost transparent layer of air in Greek mythology, the abode of the gods. What are the possible fusions of technology and metaphysics in an artistic format? Could it be that, with the help of senses, imagination and art that have not yet been identified by science, we can push the boundaries of technology in unexpected trajectories and thus change the map of our reality?
Submit your proposal until 14th of April, 2025, https://forms.gle/u34scEBCBZbs3upo7
Scientific and artistic committee
Chair dr. Vytautas Michelkevičius
Dr. Ignas Pavliukevičius, Assoc. Prof. Gailė Griciūtė, Dr. Marquard Smith (UK), Dr. Lina Michelkevičė, Dr. Irina Gheorhe (RO/DE), Dr. Jurij Dobriakov, artist-organiser Andrew Gryf Paterson (FIN/SCO), Dr. Robertas Narkus, Dr. Akvilė Anglickaitė, Prof. Laura Gudaitė, Dr. Skaidra Trilupaitytė
Location: SODAS 2123, Vilnius Academy of Arts and various locations in the city
Organized by NGO MENE in collaboration with Vilnius Academy of Arts
Partners: Vilnius Academy of Arts, Lithuanian Interdisciplinary Artists’ Association (LTMKS), SODAS 2123
Support Lithuanian Council for Culture, Vilnius City Municipality, all participants and their supporters
contact: fest@umede.lt
