Reality Research Festival feat. PLACCC

A Reality Research Festival will be organised by two Budapest-based organisations between 21 and 27 October 2016. The main aim of the event series launched by Kitchen Budapest and PLACCC Festival is to shed light on the relationship between people, technology and the city.

Our programme intends to present different aspects of our everyday perception of reality, interwoven with new technologies or – on the contrary – escaping from them, and also aims to question our old viewpoints and to propose new perspectives.

By creating our joint project we also hope to find ways that a consortium-like collaboration could provide an alternative way of organising and financing the activities of smaller organisations working outside of the “official” structure of state funded art programmes.

Since its founding in 2008 Placcc has been supporting artistic endeavours outside of traditional art spaces, showcasing these efforts as a part of its annual festival. Besides their artistic goals, our projects also aim to address broader issues, like what kind of an effect can site-specific and public space art have on the city, on our way of thinking about the city, on the use of urban spaces, while also trying to find out what role art can play in urban planning or rehabilitation efforts.

Projects that use new technologies have also been a part of our festival programmes since our first year. On one hand we have seen that artists abandoning traditional art spaces are more open to experimenting with new mediums, to „mix” art forms, to test new methods and technologies (and vice versa). On the other hand we often invite projects which aim to explore the now commonplace idea that today’s new public spaces are the internet and the virtual space.

This is why we have been regularly supporting artists who use art to reflect on phenomenon like AR, the connection between reality and VR, the effect digital technologies have on our perception of reality and its now inherent plurality, while using digital technologies as a method of discourse about the city and the public space. As digital methods become more prevalent in art, an exciting problem is posed by non-digital, „analog” art: can it still have an effect on our perception of reality, of the city itself?

The event series of the Reality Research Festival will feature examples of both approaches: from Belgium, Crew will organize virtual walks in the real-time urban space, while the young artists of the Hungarian Vektor Normal group will help participants experience our continuously changing perception of the city space in a radically physical manner. Centre of Possibilities will combine elements of digital technology and the urban game genre to realize the possibilities hidden in both. This, our third event will be a joint project by the Reality Research Centre from Finland and the Invisible Playground group from Germany.

PLACCC will organize other, smaller site-specific projects as well (Tamara Vadas – Ábris Gryllus: Krund ni Ovel, Dávid Somló: Mandala), and will also invite experts and artists to give thematic lectures, organised as a part of the Festival.