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Glitch Festival 2016

RUA RED South Dublin Arts Centre

28th May – 11th June 2016

Curated in 2016 by Ciara Scanlan + Matthew Nevin.

Elaine Leader, Margaret O’Brien, Helen McMahon, Janna Kemperman and Kevin Freeney of Algorithm in collaboration with CLU, Sinead Mc Donald and Aileen Drohan, Seoidín O’Sullivan, Dr. Katherine Nolan, Valerie Connor, Leah Hilliard, Dr. Kylie Jarret and Dr. Paula Quigley.

This year RUA RED has joined forces with MART to present the 5th iteration of /Glitch, an interactive digital festival that brings together artists utilising media and technology.

/Glitch Festival 2016: Risk Assessment will be hosted primarily in RUA RED Gallery Tallaght with an accompanying exhibition in The Mart Gallery, Rathmines. Festival curators Ciara Scanlan and Matthew Nevin have devised a risk based curatorial outline for an exhibition format with parameters, which the participating artists may work within or destroy. The festival will focus on live durational events and collaboration between digital and live processes.

The curators have chosen predominantly all female participants, performers and visual artists to make work exploring the notion of danger and risk within art making and society. The participants will produce live experiential artworks. The curators will create a stage for the artists to react to: a gallery ‘under construction’. Objects associated with building industry shall occupy the space ready for alteration, interaction and modifying their mechanics, aesthetics and behaviours.

The artworks will react and interplay with this spectacle to create interactive ‘dangerous & reactionary’ artworks, utilising engineering and programming to enhance the user experience and interaction with the audience. The echoes of the collapse of the construction industry in Ireland has created a society in fear of a repeat bubble already forming in the city. A hesitation to taking risks has meant many suburban and rural towns lay dormant, producing a culture of a ‘people in waiting’. 

For 2016 the curators want to challenge this fear and become cultural risk activators, inviting artists who work under this umbrella to push the ‘safety’ of the gallery into a challenging experience for artists, curators and audience.