San Francisco Festival
A three-week long festival in four locations in the Netherlands with seven US artists from the Bay Area.
San Francisco Festival: poster
This festival took place from 9 to 30 May in Den Bosch and Eindhoven. Seven artists from San Francisco presented their work; many others' work was shown in a video compilation that showed recent developments in performance art and the work of artists dealing with technology and art.
The festival was a cooperation between several art organizations from the province of Brabant: V2_ in Den Bosch, De Fabriek and 2B in Eindhoven. De Effenaar, a cultural organization in Eindhoven, also participated by showing a San Francisco-based artist in their program.
Focus of the festival was on installation and performance art - predominantly shown in Eindhoven - and on installation and (inter)media art - shown in Den Bosch at V2_. This choice ran parallel with the separate participating institution's own characteristics.
Therefore, the artists' works varied from installations and performances to media artworks with user interaction and experiments with robotics.
During the previous years, the participating organizations have established many fruitful contacts with San Francisco-based artists. These contacts have led to the San Francisco Festival, which gave a good overview of recent artistic developments in the Bay Area. For example, there was an obvious relation between the technological innovation in the region (Silicon Valley) and developments in the field of technology and art. Not coincidentally, several science fiction movies (such as Terminator II) were developed in the Bay Area, which is also the origin of technology gurus like Timothy Leary.
Nederlands / Dutch text
V2_organiseerde hiervóór enkele presentaties waar kunstenaars uit San Francisco betrokken waren. Uit deze contacten bleek dat er een grote groep kunstenaars in San Francisco is die zich met technologie bezighoudt. Wat V2_ vooral interesseerde was de totaal andere omgang die deze kunstenaars hebben met technologie in relatie tot kunst. Het schijnbare gemak om kunst met technologische middelen te combineren laat verrassend werken. De voorzichtigheid en de angst om technologie in te zetten in de kunst levert in Nederland vaak werken op die nogal formeel zijn. De Amerikaanse kunstenaars die we presenteerden hadden geen enkel schroom om de techniek zelf deel te laten zijn van het werk en vooral om dit niet te verdoezelen...Het festival werd georganiseerd i.s.m. De Fabriek in Eindhoven, waarbij het accent meer op performance ligt dan bij V2_.
