Alexandra Tzanidou will share her experience with the theatre group THEAMA, the ways that inclusion is developed in their artistic practices, and how this translates to equity in the perceived experience.

She will explore the current services for providing accessibility in theatre and the ways that they intersect and differ with and from inclusion. During this short engagement, she will present the journey for developing the first prototype for serving the post-covid needs of the group for preserving inclusion, and she will provide the opportunity to exchange thoughts on the ways that art could/should be involved in the design of the modern socio-technical systems, as they are moving from information exchange services to immersive experiences and awareness raisers.

How venues with limited resources could explore the integration of services for inclusion such as touch tours and immersive experiences while respecting personal boundaries, and what such services have to offer to broader society?

With the advent of sensor systems, a multitude of signals in our environment is translated into data and information, shaping our thoughts, behaviour, and social interactions. Often, pragmatic sense-making is overshadowed by technological wonder or even a form of technology mysticism.

This presentation covers my artistic practice over the past five years focusing on the phenomenon of ubiquitous data and how to leverage its underlying properties for art and design.

In my projects, I take a multifaceted approach at data, looking at what it can tell us and where we need to look beyond in our sense-making. This presentation also showcases the design and implementation of connected systems and creative technologies that can be an important driver of insight and engagement, and make complex art practice possible in different contexts.

The Buffer Fringe Performing Arts Festival, a festival in the in-between space of Cyprus, the buffer zone between the two parts of the island, has taken place since 2014.

It has captured the imagination and the creativity of artists, curators and peace-builders over the past 9 years, making it the only annual meet-up of artists from across the island.

In his presentation Tomislav Medak will discuss Pirate Care, a project that was convened by Valeria Graziano, Marcell Mars and himself.

Pirate Care is a transnational research project and a network of activists, scholars and practitioners who stand against the criminalisation of solidarity and for a common care infrastructure.

Galina Dimitrova-Dimova will talk about sharing care by means of art through two totally different perspectives: one from the young people in the capital and the other from the older people in small villages in the Northwest region of Bulgaria.

The first part of my talk will cover the international digital art festival DA Fest, which we have been organising in Sofia since 2009, as well as some other activities of the DA LAB Foundation to develop the local community of young digital artists.

The second one will present the residency program “Baba” (tr. Grandma), organised by the “Ideas Factory” association, in which she is involved as a curator since 2020, and which aims to support the elderly people in depopulated villages.

Mats Gustafsson will talk about the underlying semantics of composing music, how he uses symbolic meaning as an instigator and inspiration to the creative process and how he investigates/researches the connection between the improvised and the composed music, making the two meet in a collective process in an ensemble.

He will also show examples of his music and how he works with subtle activism and being part of the “society of the spectacle,” both in direction to the ensemble he works with, the audience, the score and to the community.

He will present a work method on how art and specifically music can contribute to social care, in general life and/or in connection with the fellow musicians and performers and the audience.

In our desire to care for others, where is the boundary between artist and care giver?

Vienne Chan will talk about the lessons they learnt in the collaborative project Institute of Care in Helsinki in which they used role playing games to discuss care against socio-economic realities and imaginations with elderly citizens.

She will also consider the possibility to strengthen care as a wider social topic through the connection with labour and pensions.

What do we want a toolkit of care to be? To Do? To avoid?

This guided discussion will consider questions such as: how might self-care and care for others both clash and complement each other? How can art collectives care for their members, but also the communities they work in? How should we navigate modalities of difference when considering standards of care?

Can art and ethics clash, and if so, how should such conflicts be resolved?