From 2024 onwards, the Civa media art festival will be jointly organized and developed by Belvedere 21 and sound:frame. Building on the thematic focuses of the past three festivals, Civa 2024 explores how media art is situated in our society and the impact of current technologies on our lives. Through an exhibition and a hybrid program of talks, film screenings, and live performances, Civa brings together diverse international artistic and intellectual voices. The festival aims to draw together energies untethered by physical boundaries and create an open space for exchange and mutual learning.

Understanding intelligence not only as a solely human trait or technology but also extending it to knowing entities and organisms allows for the exploration of a field within which power constructions and technologies can be decoded and disrupted. How can organisms glitch militarized spheres and thereby breach violent technologies? What survival strategies, tactics, and codes do we need to effectively resist the imposition of binary coding and appropriations? What kinds of symbiotic relationships can we envision and program?

By breaking down the barriers between digital and physical spaces, between embodied knowledge and reason, between online and offline, and by challenging the hierarchical structuring of forms of existence, a variety of positions will raise questions about collective approaches to knowledge and organisms and their applicability to the discourse on (artificial) intelligence. This gives rise to sensuous choreographies, unexpected patterns of movement, and new symbiotic constellations in hybrid spaces.

(Curators: Exhibition: Eva Fischer, Djamila Grandits, Assistant Curators: Theresa Dann-Freyenschlag, Anna Ewa Dyrko)