December 6, 2022 – January 3, 2023
The National Arts Club
15 Gramercy Park South,
New York, NY 10003
Mon–Sun: 10 AM – 5 PM
Since its inception in 2007, CYFEST’s main concerns have been to examine the dialogue between various visual languages and technology cultures, and thus to explore a way of commoning with both art professionals and scientific communities. CYFEST unites artists, curators, educators, engineers, programmers and media activists all over the world, and creates an inclusive platform for mapping, mediation, and documentation of new media art on different regional and international levels. CYFEST is one of the world’s few nomadic cultural events: in 2022, an interdisciplinary program of exhibitions, performances, events and education workshops took place in Yerevan, Armenia; Dartington, UK; and Mesa, Arizona, USA. Over the year, the festival had partnerships with HayArt Cultural Center, Armenian Center for Contemporary Experimental Art NPAK, Dartington Trust, Arizona State University, Media and Immersive eXperience (MIX) Center, Kolodzei Art Foundation, and Leonardo ISAST.Titled Ferment, the 14th edition of CYFEST features an interdisciplinary group of artists and collectives whose works reflect the biological process of fermentation as an entry point in seeking new approaches to rediscover ways of perceiving and relating to the world. The works in the program demonstrate a wide range of cultural, scientific, ethical and aesthetic concepts of fermentation as a process of change for the living and the dead, human and non-human, color and smell, sounds and impressions.
Ferment: Metamorphoses and Reflections at the National Art Club in New York is the latest in a series of thematic exhibitions organized as part of the CYFEST 14 International Media Art Festival. It features artists working in the fields of painting, drawing, printmaking, installation, film and video, photography and new media, with a selection of nonconformist and contemporary works. The exhibition offers a vision of fermentation as a metaphor for the transformative potential of vulnerable social and cultural environments and historical contexts. Through an experimental and transdisciplinary methodology, participating artists create hybrid forms that interweave multiple fields of study and philosophies of aesthetics. Understanding fermentation as an imaginary concept in which scientific precision and artistic imagination intersect and inform one another, this exhibition creates new myths capable of motivating better forms of transdisciplinary solidarity.
The list of artists includes Alexandra Dementieva, Carla Gannis, Anna Frants, Ivan Govorkov, Elena Gubanova, Masbedo (Nicolò Massazza, Iacopo Bedogni), Anne Spalter, The Josh Craig, Katran, Natalya Nesterova, Joan Snyder, Valeriy Gerlovin, Ilya Kabakov, Valentina Povarova, Alexey Titarenko, Erik Bulatov, Arsen Savadov, Petr Belenok, Chakaia Booker, David Datuna, Dasha Skorubsky-Kandinsky, Lydia Masterkova, Natalia Sitnikova, Katherine Liberovskaya, Ranjit Bhatnagar, Phill Niblock, William Hooker, Ernst Neizvestny, Dimitry Gerrman, Oleg Bourov, Mihail Chemiakin, Julia Winter, Yakov Vinkovetsky, Vasilii Bakanov, Andrew Strokov and Ivan Karpov.
Leonardo Journal, published in partnership with MIT Press, will dedicate its December 2022 special issue to the theme of fermentation, in conjunction with CYFEST 14 international media art festival.
CYFEST 14 is curated by Anna Frants and Elena Gubanova. Selected parts of the CYFEST program are also co-curated by Victoria Ilyushkina, Sergey Komarov, Lydia Griaznova, Natalia Kolodzei and Valentino Catricala.