17th 404 International Festival of Art & Technology / MediaDemic 2020

“404 Festival”, the Argentinean project that has been held in 11 countries, presented its 17th edition under the theme of “Mediademic”, proposing a new way of getting close to Art and Technology. Time is broken and space too, therefore 404 wanted to carry out a confused media action, that was broadcasted live during three days.

More than 40 selected artists from 22 countries were taking part in this edition. Artists from Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Czech Republic, England, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Norway, the Netherlands, Russia, Serbia, Slovenia, Taiwan and the United States of America.

Backed by the National University of Rosario, the live broadcast started on Thursday November 19th at 14.04 hr (GMT-3), and continued until Saturday morning, November 21th, 2020. Access to the festival was free and through YouTube, from the official 404 Festival webpage www.404festival.com.

Manifesto MediaDemic 

Revolutions are born out of imbalance, out of the system that tries to simulate order. But every system triumphs until it depends only on itself:

And they destroyed the trees from where they got the firewood used to burn books. And they imprisoned courage until they were alone with fear. And they replicated their obsession with power
on those that they left with nothing. When they sleep, our world has nightmares.

No one dies in the comfort towards which every for-profit organization leads us. If we galvanize ourselves, our world gets galvanized. If we let ourselves be defeated, our world loses. Letting die is the decision of those who fear death the most, of those that collect everything they have invented in their favor. Without power, there are no more executioners. Without its artists, we live with ourselves. Battles are lost here and now, in the accumulation of all heavens and hells, visible and invisible, imaginary and concrete; in the precise crumbling point, where only its opposite can appear. It is not construction, it is not resistance. It is neither the fragility of grace nor the persistence of knowledge. Syllables are at war. Opinions look for their author. The world has been left with no place for strangers,
the only enigmas why dawn broke. Now we are all fugitive perspectives. Now we are all, at the same time, no one. Where worry and image are the same, the image is the worry of the self that is unseen. Who has seen hope in a mirror when it breaks, knows that reflections eventually get tired. Being human is a language in a constant state of fiction and we are its literary monsters. But Art is the being of doing: the act of escape that returns.

Manifesto 17^h “404 International Festival of Art & Technology
by Lic. Gina Valenti
2020