Pixxelpoint 2025

conceived by Benjamin Gruner, Francesco Scarel, Katarina Podobnik, and pETER Purg

Resonating Realities in the Fourth Space

A world stricken by multiple ecological, social, and economic crises and permeated by war. Never before has mankind had the data and the technology to understand and manage the world better. Societies and individuals, minds and bodies are crumbling. Mental health and public space are disintegrating. People feel isolated, lonely and lost. Despite all of its promises, the omnipresent technology deepens the divides. Fragmented realities are building a world where collective meaning and shared understanding are missing, especially when global challenges like climate change, migrations, and shifting power dynamics remain unresolved. Various violences and inequalities are on the rise. 

In such polycrisis the “third space” that was supposed to be emerging among Art, Science, and Society (as conceptualized by Oldenburg and later Bennet) seems to fail in offering a safe place after work and outside family. Thus Pixxelpoint 2025 opens up a Fourth Space. A different yet familiar dimension for different kinds of people to feel the vibration of their surroundings and relationships, their sensoriums and common sense-making. An antidote to a dystopian privatized sphere, where collective experiences are reduced to solipsistic, isolated ponderings in vicious digital circles that feed techno-capitalist platforms. 

Thus the festival explores the idea of "resonances" focusing on the connection between individuals and their surroundings – whether human or non-human, familiar or strange. A deep resonance aiming to build relationships that foster transformation towards such premodern if not primordial things as belonging, emotional connection, a raised collective awareness, and mutual responsibility. 

Pixxelpoint 2025 offers a diversity of visual and performing artistic practices to challenge conventional contemporary lines of thought and self-fulfilling traditions of toxic traditions based on Eurocentric, efficiency-driven solutionism with a white middle-aged male voice. By bringing together art, science, and society on new terms, the artworks, community practices, learnings, and discussions at the festival should encourage participants to explore new pathways for collective understanding and societal transformation. 

Artistic thinking rooted in a (re)constructive creative practice crafts better speculative futures and offers a wider imagination realm, a Fourth Space that neither refuses nor abuses science and technology, but applies them for responsible worldbuilding. Thus, this year’s Pixxelpoint artworks, interventions, gestures, questions, and proposals seek to restore the potential for deep resonance in a world that seems increasingly disoriented and out of joint.

PROBLEMS

Scientific and technological innovations form the foundation for the further development of our present. A better understanding of this development and the resulting global competitionrequires more interdisciplinary exchange and one that centrally includes contemporary art practice, along with its critical, mischievous, poetic, and sometimes denying attitudes, as well as carnivalesque practices, such as the three days of prePixx “anteprima” events in June 2025 exploring the potentiality of manifold artistic discourses and community interactions in a provisional Fourth Space between riverside, stage and gallery, conjured to speculate and conspire toward the November full on festival events. 

An “information society” has kept growing progressively after WWII, constantly informed and economically shaped by the progress in scientific research. As the market-shaping technology and science increasingly integrate into daily life, they often appear distant, enigmatic, and overcomplex – but we still see them as forces that may either destroy or save our world. 

This distance has been maintained (consciously or not) by an intrinsic critical rationalism, reinforcing the scientists' inclination to rely only on the scientific method as a model for other forms of research. Paul Feyerabend criticized this as "epistemological anarchism” and “opportunistic bricolages of approaches, while Thomas Kuhn sees it as a hindrance to revolutions in scientific thought. As C.P. Snow argued in his famous speech on “The Two Cultures”, a lack of communication between the sciences, the arts, and the humanities weakens society's ability to deal with Anthropocene challenges and environmental crises, especially in today’s hyperconnected, digitally driven world. 

Technology has evolved beyond being just a tool, becoming not merely an extension of reality, but a whole new reality in itself. This shift is not only exemplified by the rise of the metaverse, offering a parallel reality where individuals can interact, create and exist in ways that blur the lines between what we used to call “real” and “virtual”, and – next to increasing profit and political leverage for the platform capitalist – ultimately redefining how we perceive and engage with the world surrounding us.Driven by a biased algorithm, even outside this digital and so-called “meta” world, there emerges a brave new language, creating bubbles of comfort in which we can easily settle and detach. Our digital lives blur the lines between the organic and synthetic, creating a world where machines "speak" in a language of their own and the algorithm determines how we interact with each other inside hybrid spheres. As shown by Joy Buolamwini, it is tempting yet dangerous to rely more and more on a biased intangible technology (such as artificial intelligence) to sidestep the hard work of organizing society, avoiding the responsibility of solving problems like poverty, discrimination, and climate change. (While AI is increasingly organizing our thoughts and communications.) 

Algorithms alienate of people from each other and their environments, creating new class divisions leading to a need for reconnection – not just between humans but also with the non-human world. Such reconnection is achievable through informed dialogues, in participative spaces, and with interdisciplinary interactions. Pixxelpoint 2025 seeks to spark flashes of a society equipped with cultural tools that allow citizens to understand and critically engage with scientific and technological progress, and with each other. An enlightened and sovereign society crafting laws and policies that positively shape evolution by balancing ethical concerns and societal benefits.

TOPICS

In an effort to confront these states of multilayered alienation, contemporary art takes center stage at Pixxelpoint 2025, constituting a dynamic platform for exploring the otherwise intangible, unfathomable yet pervasive intersections of post-identity and post-digital realities. 

The Fourth Space opens up to shift the audience out of their comfort zones. Even if it emerges at the intersections of emotional, sensual, and intellectual connections, it makes You resonate in different forms - from immersive hideouts where individuals reconnect with their own and the other’s sensorium, their immediate environment, and with one other; to public debates taking shape through different forms of artistic communication and research, emanating in experimental multimedia formats within transdisciplinary collaborations, site-specific and environmental installations, hybrid performances, lectures, panels and workshops. 

By creating dialogues between disparate realities and fostering empathy across divides, Pixxelpoint 2025 presents gestures, questions, and proposals that may restore the potential for deep resonance in a world of superficiality and disarray. Through its diverse artistic expressions, art is positioned as a critical cultural tool for addressing and responding to the following dimensions of resonance: 

‍1. Virtuality & Digitality Nobody knows how consciousness works and yet we are developing virtual and augmented reality. I find it interesting that we’re doing all this without really even knowing how our own reality works, observes Rebecca Allen (2023), highlighting the paradox of our ability to create virtual worlds while remaining unaware of the fundamental nature of our consciousness. Thus it is necessary to delve into the relationships among physical materiality, virtuality as a tool of visual intervention, and pictoriality as a figurative, non-verbal text. Derrida proposes that what is virtual is not merely an alternative to what is referred to as “real”, but rather a state of potentiality, always waiting to be materialized. Such an exploration of relationships positions contemporary art as a key field of resonance, blurring the boundaries between the real, the digital, and the virtual. This resonance dimension is posed to simultaneously redefine the very nature of interactions in a post-digital condition, where one admits to being comfortable in the in-between. Increasingly permeated with both activist fervor and scientific investigation zeal, several artworks at PIxxelpoint 2025 resonate within virtual domains. Digitality becomes both a form of transmission and a mode of existence, evoking the alternative, off-grid reality and challenging our hyperconnected, yet deeply alienated communication systems. Embracing the ambiguity of virtuality, contemporary art may best confront the unresolved nature of consciousness: by using digital tools and non-verbal forms to question the boundaries between reality and simulation, presence and absence, Pixxelpoint 2025 creates spaces where viewers are invited not only to reflect on their own place but also to actively participate in the construction of its possible meanings. 

‍2. Global Urgencies & PosthumanismWe’re reaching an eschatological tipping point, says Srećko Horvat in After the Apocalypse (2021) which takes ecological and economic systems to new configurations with unpredictable consequences. Ranging from utopian to dystopian in their positions, several art projects at Pixxelpoint 2025 resonate with collective consciousness, amplifying urgent issues such as climate change, migration, and the volatility of social, political, and economic systems. Drawing also on Rosi Braidotti's posthumanist thought, the festival encourages a shift beyond the human subject, thereby redefining and bringing into focus the will of non-human agents, since clearly, the resonance dimension is not merely human — it extends to the environment, to other species and to ecosystems, offering a counter-perspective to pessimist alienation. In a world grappling with ecological crises and shifting power relations, the resonance between humans and non-human entities, including man-made technologies, becomes urgent. It offers a model of co-existence and mutual care in a new, multipolar world where economies, migration, and societal value systems are in constant flux. By highlighting the agency of non-human entities, the translation of these critical issues into artistic practice manifests through a variety of media and community-based initiatives that incorporate elements of ecocriticism, exploring the interdependence between human, natural, mechanistic and technological realms. 

‍3. Hybrid Identities & Cultural Fluidity With Post-this, post-that, but why never post-the other? Bhabha poses a relevant question, addressing the evergreen philosophical problem of the self. Many metaphysical theories continue to test the proposition that what matters in survival is personal identity. As an Indian scholar and theorist whose concept of hybrid identities and the “Third Space” as a point of translation between cultures had a profound impact on perspectives of national identity, Bhabha emphasizes the fluidity of the so-called cultural traditions. Pixxelpoint 2025 brings progressive post-identity and post-migrant perspectives to resonate with the need for post-the-other resonances, attempting to explore possible borderless spaces where genuses and geniuses, cultures, and histories intersect. In the Fourth Space resonance is not simply about recognition, but about the creation of new possibilities, where individuals and communities can find shared meaning despite – or perhaps exactly because of – their differences. The proposed artistic positions, mediated narratives, and cultural mappings of the festival explore how identities, once confined to rigid categories, are being redefined as fluid and hybrid, giving rise to evolving forms that defy conventional classification. Such artistic attempts will serve as platforms for imagining borderless, hybrid - Fourth Spaces, where histories, as well as personal and cultural identities, intersect and facilitate transformative dialogue.

ACTIONS

Pixxelpoint 2025 pursues a series of principles congested in an ongoing, process-oriented approach aimed at anchoring the festival in the existing regional or global communities and promoting resilient identification and situated worldbuilding. The aim is to assemble sustainable relations through innovative art presentation, knowledge exchange, and the creation of collaborative networks. The Fourth Space is understood as more than just anexhibition space – it should become a lively place of dialogue and transformation that creates and enters into networks with other creative centers in Europe, establishing new connections between art, science, technology, and society. 

‍1. Art Mediation 
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‍Promoting discourse through art 
‍The aim is not only to exhibit works of art but also to stimulate “critical thinking” about discourse on contemporary artistic practices. Through a variety of media – from installations and performances to digital art forms – PIxxelpoint 2025 invites the public to reflect on the themes of the exhibition in a dedicated and carefully designed place of being and thinking. The forms of participation are stimulated at various engagement levels via artistic collaborations and interactive formats that actively involve the audience, not least within the Pixxelpoint 2025 Symposium 

‍Interventions in public space 
‍As part of the festival, public space is appropriated and innovatively negotiated through art. In collaboration with local communities and international partners, the social, classical reading and interpretation of space - whether and how it serves a community - is renegotiated. Through performances, interventions, and sound walks and foraging tours, in which the urban+natural space is experienced through the eyes of “others”, Pixxelpoint 2025 creates new perspectives and insights into the (sub+non)urban structures and social dynamics of the cross-border region. 

‍2. Knowledge Exchange 
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‍Structured knowledge as a sustainable legacy 
‍Knowledge creates autonomy and access to unknown social milieus. This is developed and exchanged through professional contributions -- both within the artistic community and in wider society. In this context, the aim is to promote continuous knowledge development and capacity building in the artistic communities of Nova Gorica/Gorizia and partner sites as a sustainable legacy of the festival. This will be implemented through workshops, roundtable discussions (within the Symposium), and festival’s connections to educational programs that bring together artists, experts, and the general public. 

‍Mediation program 
‍The festival will rely on an art scout program to communicate the content of the festival from non-experts to non-experts. A dedicated group of students and volunteers act as mediators in the exhibitions and during events, encouraging exchange with guests about the artworks. 

‍Two-day symposium 
‍One of the festival highlights is a two-day symposium that combines discourse and performance formats, spanning from practical to theoretical interventions in and around thefestival theme. It offers a semi-structured interaction space for artists, scientists, students, and experts to rethink the resonant spaces between art, science, and technology. This interdisciplinary exchange is intended to deeply explore the festival topics, process and document findings, and publish them for an international specialist audience. 

‍3. Collaboration Models for Sustainability 

‍Building resilient networks 
‍Sustainable structures are created through collaborations between international and local partners. The methodology focuses on strengthening the exchange between artists and the local community to promote the cross-border if not “borderless”) cultural identity and resilience, aiming to ultimately enrich the artistic process while stabilizing local as well as cross-border social structures. Integration of vulnerable groups PIxxelpoint 2025 pays particular attention to the integration of vulnerable groups, such as LGBTQI+ communities, migrants, and marginalized or disabled groups in general. These are to be actively involved in the creative process, be it through participatory art projects, workshops or joint events, as well as supported or ushered in by the festival team. The aim is not only to offer these groups an accessible festival platform, but also to bring their perspectives into the social discourse in the long term and thus contribute to cultural inclusion. 

‍Involvement of local youth and communities 
‍The involvement of the local youth and non-artistic communities forms the basis for promoting a discussion and possible identification with the artistic positions and the themes of the festival. Already at the prePixx festival events in June, in collaboration with artists, participatory works of art are presented that take up local conditions and themes. A range of local and European partners are involved in the co-production of events in order to promote the exchange of knowledge, perspectives and experiences. The accompanying program of PIXXELmusic should further foster the integration of local youths and art-peripheral communities. 

‍4. Co-production with Local Institutions 

‍Collaboration with non-art institutions 
‍A host of local cross-border institutions shall be involved that do not work with art on a daily basis. This collaboration will open up a new dimension in the reception and dissemination of art and culture in the region and offer new perspectives for both the art and the institutions involved. These transdisciplinary connections are intended to promote creative processes and integrate art into unexpected contexts. 

‍The Fourth Space as a new socio-cultural practice 
‍Pixxelpoint will explore the Fourth Space as a new diffuse socio-cultural practice. It is intended to be a space where people come together across geographical, cultural, physicalor mental boundaries. By combining art, science, and technology as central elements of future innovation, the festival program will create new connections between disciplines, ecosystems, and identities. 

‍5. Art as an Expanded Vision of the Future 

‍Art as a driving force of the future 
‍While scientific research is often reduced to practical scenarios within industrial models, art can expand these visions by exploring new possibilities and stimulating ethical discussions about the relationship between humans and technology. Art expands the horizon of potential futures by looking beyond the boundaries of the possible, challenging us to question the desirable. With this creative perspective, art can make a decisive contribution to shaping an ethically responsible future. Overall, Pixxelpoint 2025 strives for a process-oriented, collaborative, and interdisciplinary way of working that brings both art and society into a fruitful dialogue in order to jointly create resonances that have an impact far beyond the exhibition space, and beyond the festival duration.

HOPES

As a festival that has been shaping society/community/reality for a quarter of a century now, Pixxelpoint 2025 aims to anchor new accents in the presentation and reception of (media) art in the cross-border region, and beyond. It thus creates space-times that allow people to linger and exchange, perhaps critically reflect on themselves, and reconnect in meaningful ways. 

Resonance in this context is not merely human, nor is it primarily a techno-architectural challenge. Rather it extends to the environment, to other species, to possible and even improbable ecosystems. The proposition of the Fourth Space requires a new, holistic, and post-human integration of the eco-cum-techno-spheres, recognizing the interconnectedness between language, identity, and technology, transcending the limitations of privileged West-, male-, white- or in deed human-centric perspectives and their manifold colonialising effects. 

Ultimately, this resonant space seeks to be more than a materialization of aesthetic principles or a palette of artistic positions — it lends itself as a form of a process-oriented resilience strategy. Artistic ways of doing and thinking deepen human relationships with the world, and so Pixxelpoint 2025 entangles You in a rhizome of pathways through the battlefields and playgrounds of a fractured age.

SOURCES

- Bennett, J., et al. (2020). Emergent knowledge in the third space of art-science. Leonardo, 53(3), 321–326.
- Braidotti, R. (2013). The posthuman. Polity. 
- Buolamwini, J. (n.d.). Researcher at MIT Media Lab, Algorithmic Justice League. Retrieved from https://www.ajl.org/
- Drichel, S. (2008). The time of hybridity. Philosophy & Social Criticism, 34(6), 587–615. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/249625914
_The_time_of_hybridity
- Horvat, S. (2021). After the apocalypse. Polity. https://www.perlego.com/book/2173964/after-the-apocalypse-pdf 
- Martin, R., & Baressi, J. (2003). Personal identity. Blackwell Publishing Ltd. - Oldenburg, R. (2001). Celebrating the third place: Inspiring stories about the great good places at the heart of our communities. 
- Reckwitz, A. (2019). Die Gesellschaft der Singularitäten: Zum Strukturwandel der Moderne. 
- Rosa, H. (2019). Resonanz: Eine Soziologie der Weltbeziehung. - Snow, J. P. (1959). The two cultures: The Rede Lecture. Cambridge University Press. - Voros, J. (2003). A generic foresight process framework. Foresight, 5, 10–21. - Right Click Save. (2023). Rebecca Allen and the birth of virtual reality [Interview]. Retrieved from https://www.rightclicksave.com/article/rebecca-allen-and-the-birth-of-virtual-reality-interview