SOUND OCCUPATIONS TAKE OVER RIJEKA
Sound Occupations – this year’s festival side program taking place November 26th – 29th, is dedicated to sound as a fundamental generator of everyday life and as an artistic impulse.
In order to further explore the role of sound in film, as well as its influence on contemporary society, we prepared a side program that will use innovative audio-visual content to alter the role of sound and equate it with, or even make it dominant towards the image.
Gathering over 30 foreign and local audio-visual and multimedia artists, the rich side program of 7th STIFF – Sound Occupations will stream through Rijeka during the four days of the festival.
By exploring the sounds of a city we can learn a lot about the social, political, and economic forces running it. With that in mind, the program will occupy Rijeka’s gallery, virtual, radio, and public spaces by sound.
Over the course of four days (November 26 – 29) citizens of Rijeka will be able to experience the art of sound on six city locations through four events: Everyday soundtrack– audio installations and performances in public space, visit a multimedia confessional SoundBox in a pop-up gallery at Korzo, listen to ChatterBox shows on Radio Roža, and visit Sound Occupations exhibition at SKC Gallery
Sound Occupations in Virtual and Public Spaces of Everyday
Who and what produces the sound during a lockdown? Who controls it? Which sounds dominate and which are missing? In what way does sound connect and separate individuals, groups, and images? What happens when sounds disappear? In an attempt to answer these questions, side program of STIFF offers content focused on the public space of the city, as well as the virtual space that many of us spend more and more time in.
On the first day of the festival, an opening of the international audio-visual exhibition Sound Occupations will be held at 8 p.m. in Gallery SKC. The exhibition gathers a large number of works whose artistic forms of expression require new ways of communication, created through websites, email correspondence, CVC cameras, and radio waves. An offshoot of the exhibition SoundBox will open at the same time in a temporary gallery at Korzo 26c. This “ listening box” will play intimate monologues and dialogues with a view of the outside world.
At 9 p.m., the physical journey from the last show at Art- Kino to the exhibition opening in Gallery SKC will be moderated by the dance performance Hodogram.
A particularly interesting part of the program Everyday Soundtrack will take place at Rijeka’s market on Saturday and Sunday morning starting at 9 a.m. Audio installations placed in the underpass near Rijeka’s main market and Theatre Park will create new soundscapes and challenge the passer-by to have a different outlook on the ordinary.
Festival’s middays will be marked by ChatterBox – shows on the internet community radio Radio Roža – public square transferred to radio waves offering an online audio catalog of Sound Occupations. Elena Apostolovski and Natalija Stefanović will talk to the participants of the program on Friday and Sunday at 12 p.m., and Saturday at 2 p.m.
The exhibition is set by students of the University of Rijeka, along with the curator Elena Apostolovski, Student Culture Centre SKC gallery manager:
“The current situation transformed the life of city streets and the ways we understand intimacy, making us question our everyday routine. As a result, it has influenced the form and content of Sound Occupations as well. Through selected works and the exhibition setup itself, we talk about loneliness, political reality, socio-economic processes, aggression in society, transience, freedom, imagination and community. Sound occupations use sound as a tool that connects us, bridges distances, virtually and physically. They remind us of the possibilities of contemporary art that takes us to new worlds and points to the world we live in, that we create.”
Sound Occupations and SoundBox will be open to visitors from 1 to 6 p.m. during the festival.
Sound Occupations are a part of the official cultural and artistic program of Rijeka 2020 – the European Capital of Culture.
Student International Film Festival (STIFF) was first organized in 2014 by Filmaktiv Association and Student Cultural Centre in Rijeka (SKC) with the goal of presenting the best of the recent world production of student and debutant film.
7th STIFF Film Festival/ Sound Occupations Catalogue