The “404 International Festival of Art and Technology” celebrates its 20th anniversary in Mexico and the United States, under the title “Hominis Circus.” This edition brings together over 40 artists from Argentina, Canada, Chile, Germany, Spain, the United States, France, Japan, Mexico, the United Kingdom, Russia, Slovenia, Taiwan.
In Mexico City, from October 11th to 15th, 2023, two major exhibitions will take place at the National Center for the Arts (CENART) and the Digital Culture Center (CCD). With free admission, interactive installations combining robotics, artificial intelligence, mixed realities, net.art, animations, performances, live music, panel discussions, and workshops will be presented.
OPENING AT CCD: October 11th at 6 PM.
OPENING AT CENART: October 12th at 5:00 PM.
After its stint in Mexico, the “404 Festival” will continue its journey across the Atlantic to land in New York City. From October 27th to 29th at the iconic venue The Players Club (Gramercy Park, Manhattan), theorists and artists from around the world will deliver talks, with the inaugural performance by Gina Valenti and her piano compositions. This event is organized by the Institute of General Semantics of NYC as part of the 71st Annual Conference in Memory of Alfred Korzybski. Free entrance, with previous registration. Click here to register.
Event | Time | Venue |
CCD Opening | 18:00 - 21:00 hrs | CCD |
• Study on the spiral: Mutation and permanence • Tania Reza • Performative action and audiovisual presentation |
18:00 hrs | CCD - Terrace |
• Error 404 • Vishanas • Electronic music |
18:30 hrs | CCD - Outer esplanade |
• Opening of Festival 404 exhibition in CCD • Artists selection |
19:00 hrs | CCD - Terrace, Multipurpose area, Memorial |
Event | Time | Venue |
CENART Opening | 19:00 - 21:00 hrs | CENART - Legorreta square |
• Cyber Solstice • Smomid Multisensory (Nick Demopoulos) • Audiovisual performance |
19:00 hrs | CENART - Legorreta square |
• Error 404 • Vishanas • Electronic music |
19:30 hrs | CENART - Legorreta square |
• Opening of Festival 404 exhibition in CENART • Artists selection |
20:00 hrs | CENART - Central gallery and Manuel Felguérez gallery, CMM |
Event | Time | Venue |
• Live acts and interdisciplinarity • Talk • Taria Reza, Raúl Villamil (Techno para dos), Nick Demopoulos (Smomid) and Roberto Gutiérrez Palma (Photonic) |
16:00 - 17:00 hrs | CCD - Cinema / forum |
Interconnected narratives • Talk • David Clark, Raisa Pimentel, Anni Garza Lau and Stefanie Wasserman |
17:00 - 18 hrs | CCD - Cinema / forum |
Festival 404 exhibition in CCD | 11:00 - 18:00 hrs | CCD - Terrace, Multipurpose area, Memorial |
Festival 404 exhibition in CENART | 11:00 - 18:00 hrs | CENART - Central gallery and Manuel Felguérez gallery, CMM |
• Data and geopolitics • Talk • Sergio Mora Díaz, Malitzin Cortés, Matt Kenyon |
17:00 - 18:30 hrs | CENART - Aula Magna José Vasconcelos |
• Espejismos • Photonic • Audiovisual presentation and laser |
19:00 hrs | CENART - Blas Galindo Theater |
Event | Time | Venue |
• Everyday objects • Talk • Primoz Novak, Jason J. Ferguson, Jean-Philippe Coté |
12:00 - 14:00 hrs | CENART - Aula Magna José Vasconcelos |
• Gesture and interface • Talk • Jeffu Warmouth, Diego Trujillo Pisanty, Steve Gibson and Sadam Fujioka |
16:30 - 18:30 hrs | CENART - Aula Magna José Vasconcelos |
• Virtual AV (Tactile Micro Interface) • Steve Gibson • Audiovisual presentation |
19:00 hrs | CENART - Blas Galindo theatre |
Festival 404 exhibition in CCD | 11:00 - 18:00 hrs | CCD - Terrace, Multipurpose area, Memorial |
Festival 404 exhibition in CENART | 11:00 - 18:00 hrs | CENART - Central gallery and Manuel Felguérez gallery, CMM |
Event | Time | Venue |
Festival 404 exhibition in CCD | 11:00 - 18:00 hrs | CCD - Terrace, Multipurpose area, Memorial |
Festival 404 exhibition in CENART | 11:00 - 18:00 hrs | CENART - Central gallery and Manuel Felguérez gallery, CMM |
Phi / Techno para dos y Mariana / Audiovisual presentation | 18:00 hrs | CENART - Blas Galindo theatre |
Closing of the festival |
Technology is everything that we create to survive our own species. To leave, from fear to fear, from a sunrise to an engine.
Today it’s been two decades since 404 could have happened for the last time. This living organism has made us beat around a world that moves forward through ashes, with the kind of hopelessness that makes a mission possible, for that strange homeland called humanity.
Technologies can’t rip their hearts out. Neither are they born to leap into the void. However, surprise always finds a reason to dodge our trust in the future.
What is reason if not a motive to abandon our state of alert?
What is alert if not an abrupt manner of merciless attention?
What is mercy if not a bas-relief to keep us away from the lives of others?
The others are impossible, because they constantly change without doing it, and change without transformation is succession.
Nothing predictive can do without what is observed until ideas hide from the cameras. The overabundance of tools hates free choices because it lives off the secondary effects. Every technology dies out screaming that our life is long rather than useful and fast. When the programmed obsolescence is ours, the technology of the dead returns home.
The freedom of time without its machines says that there are no certainties without absolute stories, but if we destroy the mystery of time, maybe the bells could be heard later. Will those who stopped breathing so soon return to earth? Is there truth if a fairer moment interrupts it? There are no conventions that can last forever, even if the disaster and the shelter live in the repetition. Only the precise dream transforms us.
We have created and annihilated time ever since we started to use it against us. Even in the most dignified foundation stones of our becoming, it is still locked between question marks. Let’s inhabit time as an action. Those who build with the collapse are the ones who can prevent the next one.
When it no longer matters to live late and to see dying early, everything will happen at the same time and without time. Everything will be technology.
Manifesto 20th “404 International Festival of Art & Technology”
by Gina Valenti
2023
Argentina
Translation by Belén Nimo