AN OVERVIEW ON THE SIMULTAN FESTIVAL VIDEOART ARCHIVE

In 2016 we are experiencing the beginnings of total convergence; the Internet does not only gather the majority of relevant information, but it also infiltrates into the majority of functional systems; the art and technology of digital communication become hard to distinguish and the means of exploring these boundaries are themselves live artistic acts, regarded as open experiences unifying the media of video, sound and informatics.

Initiated in 2005 by a group of artists from Timişoara (Levente Kozma, Antal Huba, Alin Rotariu, Sorin Vreme, Szilárd Szőke), the SIMULTAN project was born out of the desire to bring together artists from distinct domains who use technology as a means of artistic expression. Starting as an event of video art and sound art, fostering artistic experiment, in the course of the years SIMULTAN has become a platform for interdisciplinary projects, forming a bridge between diverse media – video, sound, live performance, electronic music, interactive or digital art.

The SIMULTAN festival is centred on a new issue every year (Talking to Strangers 2015, Terms and Conditions 2014, Popular Unknown 2013, The Beginning of the End 2012, Imaginary 2011, Past Continuous. Future Perfect. 2010 – to mention but a few of the latest editions), following the process of stylistic evolution of the language of expression through new esthetics present in contemporary artistic practices.

“Ever since the first edition in 2005, the topic of the festival has remained the same, evolving in its details in parallel with the gradual changes of the digital sphere, but preserving a non-commercial, non-academic and non-obscurantist angle in every edition, which is a unique and atypical initiative on the map of the oscillating offer of Romanian events, an initiative born out of Levente Kozma’s passion for new media and his perseverence in a field not directly lucrative, but which always sets the tune for what we will call mainstream within a decade.” G. D.

www.simultan.org
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