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Alex Verhaest studied in Brussels at Luca School of arts, where she is a guest professor since 2015. She was part of the new media arts collective &#8216;Platform for urban investigations&#8217; with whom she participated in group-shows at the Museo de la Ciudad de Mexico, the Van Abbe Museum in Eindhoven and the Museo de Arte Moderna in Salvador da Bahia. In 2009 she decided to focus more on her own practice and to leave the collective. Her work has since been exhibited at numerous institutions amongst which ZKM in karlruhe, HKW in Berlin, and Bozar Brussels. Her installations have been collected by MMCA Busan and are part of the Akzo Nobel collection. She won the New Face Award at the Japan Media arts Festival and her work has been awarded with the prestigious 2015 Ars Electronica Golden Nica. In 2019 she graduated valedictorian from Le Fresnoy, studio national.
Verhaest’s work operates on the juxtaposition of animation, videogame and cinema expanded. With each new film, Verhaest dives into what it means to make films in a multi-screen post-Nintendo society.

Alex Verhaest

In March 2020, the world came to a screeching halt. We were forced to pause, look around us and reconsider: where exactly were we heading? What were we looking for?
A flurry of articles appeared about aspirational new world views. And depending on the type of Facebook friends you had, the alternatives presented were either dire or hopeful. Some wanted to go back to the Arcadian cliché of the suburbia of the fifties, while others pined for the now closed hedonist hub of the city. “Like” or &#8220;don’t like&#8221;, there was only one certainty; Change was coming, for better or worse. 
How to think about Utopia? How to think about Dystopia? Where do our ideas about this come from? How had people thought about Utopia before this apparent apocalypse? Are we ever right? 
In Eutopia Unbound, Sofie Verraest describes how the idea of “a good place” and the description of it within famous, infamous or even less read books, ensures that stereotypical patterns of the imagination are activated. Those patterns circulate in a culture and are perpetuated through movies and art and plays and music that move us and annoy us and thus those patterns sneakily nestle themselves deeply into our collective subconscious. The things we keep and collect in a culture are the means by which we shape our past, future and present, for better or for worse. These artefacts shape the framework by which we define our likes and dislikes around a more complex reality. They shape the lens through which we see the state of the world. The talk will investigate how Sofie Verraest’s Doctoral thesis Eutopia Unbound formed the basis for my video game ad hominem.
Thanks to the support of the European funds FEDER, this conference is exceptionally proposed to you free of charge by making the request at the reception of the festival, located at the entrance of the Marquee.

Thinking like strangers 

Theater - TRAKK Room

Anastasia Pistofidou is the co-founder of Fab Textiles, a research lab (2013) that combines artisanal techniques with new technologies, cross pollinating the disciplines of soft fabrication, textiles and materials. She initiated the establishment of Textile and Material Labs in the Fab Lab Network and in 2016 she co-founded Fabricademy, Textile and Technology, a distributed educational program that offers training at the intersection of textiles, digital fabrication and biology.
She is also collaborating with the project Fabship for the development of energy sufficient fablabs in rural areas. 
She is a team member of IAAC Fab Lab Barcelona since 2011, as a digital fabrication tutor, advanced manufacturing office manager, coordinator and co-founder of the material &amp; textiles research area. She combines artistic creativity and technology through the leadership of creative europe projects such as made@eu, eastn.eu, she promotes circular design with material driven approaches in the projects tcbl.eu, siscodeproject.eu, Remix el Barrio and bridges the gender gap in innovation through inclusive textile and fashion education in projects such as shemakes.eu and transitions.

Anastasia Pistofidou

Through the interdisciplinary practice at the crossroads of digital fabrication, textiles and biology 
we will navigate through projects that activate citizen co-creation and explore different pathways 
for circular design by promoting local circular material ecosystems and global open source recipes. The conference will trace the evolution of a network of Textile and materials labs that 
endeavor new innovation ecosystems for the textile industry and beyond.
Thanks to the support of the European funds FEDER, this conference is exceptionally proposed to you free of charge by making the request at the reception of the festival, located at the entrance of the Marquee.

From FabLabs to Textile and Material Labs

Guided by an emotional approach, Berlin based studio onformative constantly searches for new forms of creative expression. Through an experimental practice they create meaningful digital art works to question the relationship between humans and technology. Their outcomes and interpretations take on varying forms across media through self-initiated and commissioned works that range from interactive media installations, generative corporate designs and dynamic visuals to data-driven narratives. Works by onformative have been exhibited across Europe as well as in North America, Australia and China.

Cedric Kiefer

When talking about the creation of digital art, we believe that technology is both a tool and parameter. It is enabling and adding new dimensions to what is possible. At the same time, technology sets limitations – which can serve as an inspiration as well. What we find in our practice is that it&#8217;s all about co-creation. Cedric will reflect on the role of the designer and how it evolves when computers end up taking over even more design tasks. Regarding data as an inspiration and A.I. as a muse, we can create an interesting interplay to integrate into our work.

Anastasia Pistofidou

AboutAnastasia Pistofidou

ConferencesFrom FabLabs to Textile and Material Labs

Keep explOrinG

Onformative

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Alex Verhaest