STRP Festival, the place where art, science, and technology collaborate to develop alternative visions for the future, has as a theme All of Us. In a time where the individual is dwarfed by the complexity of the world, we need new forms of connection – what could they be? And what role can art, technology, and nature play in bringing them about?
Program manager Nadine and director Ton will tell you what is going to happen at STRP Festival and how everything is connected.
We live in a divided world. Social media networks, created with the promise of connection and collaboration, have instead created political bubbles and a feeling of isolation. Hyperindividualist consumerism based on algorithms gives us the feeling that the world can be entirely designed around us according to our personal desires, with no need for negotiation with others. And the covid crisis takes away the chance to even see each other face-to-face, reducing human contact to Zoom and Teams meetings. At the same time, in the past few years, we see a rebirth of the collective. Particularly new emancipatory movements, like the Occupy movement, #metoo, Black Lives Matter, and climate change groups reveal the need for a vision on what unites us, rather than focusing solely on what makes each of us unique. A renewed focus on our connection with the natural world makes it possible to rethink human perspective altogether: by no longer making man the center of everything, but just a part of a larger ecosystem of equals, we can include the rest of the natural world in our conception of ‘the collective’.
STRP Festival 2021
In its 2021 edition, STRP Festival asks the question: how can we better serve the collective as individuals? What can we learn from the collectivity of organisms, bird flocks, and cells? And how can technology be used to unite us instead of dividing us? STRP 2021 will bring together artists, designers, developers, and philosophers to make sense of these matters (and also raise even more questions). In an artistic context, the question about individuality and collectivism takes on new forms. More and more artists are trying to find new ways of connecting with their audience, which might take on interactive or even co-collaborative aspects. The selection of STRP 2021 will focus on works that rethink the audience as a collective, their connections to one another, non-humans, the planet, the artist, and the artwork itself. Art on screens is not necessarily a fortunate and self-evident match: what works fine in a physical space might not work at all in a digital space. Art for screens acknowledges and uses the specific space in which the work will be communicating with the viewer. The digital-savvy artist understands how to play with interactivity, colors, movement, shape, and position in a flat world. As always, we are very interested in artworks that activate the visitor, either in a physical or mental way, that makes them re-evaluate their position in the world, as well as their potential as an agent for change. This year’s festival is a combination of interactive lectures, workshops, and education in which the audience can join the dialogue, and a collection of digital artworks on screen, some with a participative element. You’ll find 3D worlds, video animation, alternate realities, art created with bots, and the use of algorithms and project videos.
Curatorial team
To fully embrace the potential of different cultural perspectives on individuality and collectivism, STRP works with an international curatorial team that complements our core artistic team (Ton van Gool and Nadine Roestenburg). This year, we welcome the contributions of curator/producer Sarah Bilson from Montreal, Iranian-born VR artist Ali Eslami, content curator Antonia Folguera from Barcelona, and Seoul-based curator Anca Verona Milhuet.
