THE POINT OF OVERSIGHT – STIFF’s exhibition program in a new context

As part of Rijeka 2020 – the European Capital of Culture closing program, this Friday we are opening an exhibition that recontextualizes the selection of artwork displayed at the accompanying program of the Student International Film Festival in the last two years and also presents some new works.

Curator Elena Apostolovski and video artist Damjan Šporčić will display a selection of works that speak about our relationship with technology from various intriguing perspectives:

Algorithms shape our places of comfort – safe spaces where we play with our own reflection and create a refuge from the growing complexity of global relationships. The other side of this bargain is ubiquitous surveillance amplifying the discomfort we are trying to escape.

Technology can be used as a tool for torture, a medium of self-discipline; it can cause a sudden panic attack but also be a means of resistance or a utopian space. How do we negotiate with it, how do we evade it or embrace it; how much of technology is just a passive extension of our infantile wishes and how much is it a means for emancipation and change – intimately as well as socially?

To oversight is to oversee and to overlook at the same time, it is a technological panopticon but also a blind spot of the self-reproducing system where error can be seen as resistance. Whose rules are we ready to accept? Is our agency fueled with fear or desire? How often do we step outside our spaces of comfort and what does it say about us?

Multimedia exhibition The Point of Oversight gathers the works of international authors questioning the society we live in, in relation to the omnipresence of technology and algorithms shaping our everyday lives, opening up new perspectives of the well known by pulling away from the comfort zones and pointing to the fact that every private experience is also political and communal.

Exhibiting artists:

Josipa Baljak (HR) / Anastasiia Belousova / Frederik Hochheimer (DE) / Jacob Bissell (US) / Gabriel Hensche (DE) / Lech Kalita (PL) / Gordan Kreković / Antonio Pošćić (HR) / Aaron R. Moreno (CU) / Petra Mrša (HR) / Nicole Mullan (IR) / Sidney Mullis (US) / Chris Revelle (US) / Rajat Sharma (DE) / Jake Williams (GB)

The exhibition is financed by Rijeka 2020 – the European Capital of Culture program.

*STIFF is Croatia’s first International Film Festival dedicated entirely to student films, established by the SKC Rijeka (Student Cultural Center) and Filmaktiv association. With the emphasis on contemporary art practices, STIFF’s exhibition program gathers artists from all over the globe, dealing with relevant social, political, as well as intimate aspects of everyday life.