KIKKFestival-InvisibleNarratives
Art that kicks and truly takes our breath away... - you can definitely find that at the KIKK Festival in Namur, Belgium. We were there and brought back some cool inspirations for you and us. From the location to the exhibition to the conference - the festival thrilled and captivated us. A small BUT, however, in advance: Belgian beer was as delicious as ever, BUT we were a bit disappointed with the food experience...
KIKK - Experiencing art where it belongs?!
Does art belong in a museum or theater? That is certainly a matter of definition, but the creators of the KIKK Festival certainly know how and where to best stage art, which is why the festival takes place annually in the beautiful theater of the Belgian city of Namur. And this location is not only a real experience from the outside - entering the Grande Salle feels like traveling through time. Chandeliers, ceiling frescoes, and velvet-covered chairs give visitors the feeling of being quite royal from now on...
Hello Monday
Born in a small Danish town, Andreas Anderskou moved to New York in 2007 and founded "Hello Monday" there. He has grown "Hello Monday" from a small business in Denmark to an internationally recognized agency for digital creation. Like us, he is always looking for projects that do good and emphasize sustainability - we were very impressed by that.
Credits: KIKK Festival Website
Sara Hendren
Sara Hendren is an artist, design researcher, and professor in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She works with material art and design, writes, and lectures on adaptive and assistive technologies, prosthetics, inclusive design, accessible architecture, and related ideas. For example, she has created a new, much more dynamic icon for people in wheelchairs. A great woman, we think.
Credits: KIKK Festival Website
Régine Debatty
Régine Debatty is an author, curator, critic, and founder of we-make-money-not-art.com, a blog that has received several awards - including an honorary mention at the STARTS Prize, a competition that honors innovative projects at the intersection of science, technology, and art. Régine writes and lectures internationally about how artists, hackers, and designers use technology as a medium for critical discussions. For example, she has analyzed face-tracking tools regarding their racist approach. Very innovative!
Matthieu Lorrain
Matthieu Lorrain is a New York-based Digital Creative specializing in product innovation and creative technology. Over the past ten years, he has combined design and technology to deliver interactive and context-dependent stories. His work explores the relationship between physical and digital universes with the intent to use the real world as a creative canvas. Matthieu currently leads creative innovations at ZOO, Google's creative think tank for brands and agencies.
Jifei Ou
Jifei Ou is a designer, researcher, and PhD candidate at the MIT Media Lab, where he focuses on the development and manufacturing of transformable materials across scales. Physical materials are usually considered static, passive, and permanent. Jifei wants to find ways to redesign physical materials with the properties of digital information. These materials can be used to create a responsive living environment, accelerate the process of design and manufacturing, and improve our existing interaction with products.
Mr Bingo
Mr Bingo was born in 1979. In 1980, he started drawing. There wasn't much to do in Kent. Mr Bingo is called Mr. Bingo because when he was 19, he won £141 at Gala Bingo. He has been making it rain ever since. In 2011, he started the Hate Mail project on Twitter, where strangers paid him to send a hand-drawn offensive postcard to a name and address of their choice. Like many of his works, the project began as a "drunken idea" but eventually was exhibited in galleries and gained fame in the global press.
Credits: KIKK Festival Website
Little KIKK
And for those who wanted to play around a bit after so much input, Little KIKK was just right! Actually intended for kids aged 6 to 12, (haha) it delighted us just as much. Because playing, tinkering, and experimenting - that's what we do every day anyway!
Installations & Exhibitions
Between poetry and technology, artists reveal the invisible, telling us stories that awaken our senses and show possible worlds. The artworks disrupt our reason and play with the imaginary, a visual, acoustic, luminous, geometric, tangible, abstract, or hypnotic journey in the world of invisible narratives. We were thrilled
Lawrence Malstaff - Shrink
Now take a deep breath, please: Two large transparent plastic sheets and a device that gradually removes the air allow the body to be vacuum-packed and hung vertically. The transparent tube inserted between the two surfaces allows the person inside the installation to regulate the airflow.
Dmitry Gelfand & Evelina Domnitch - Implosion Chamber
The Implosion Chamber is a new exploration of the multifaceted phenomenon of acoustic cavitation, which the duo has been pursuing since the creation of Camera Lucida: Sonochemical Observatory for more than a decade.
And that's it... Our Conclusion
We were able to gather a lot of inspiration in Namur and met and listened to great people and artists. But not only the festival, but also the beautiful Belgian city is worth seeing.
We had a great day there and were able to feed our creativity with new ideas. Especially the installations impressed us greatly. (and the beer - haha)
