BIO
Eastern Bloc is an exhibition and arts production centre - located in Montreal,Québec - dedicated to New Media and interdisciplinary art. The vision at Eastern Bloc is to explore and push the creative boundaries in digital and electronic arts, audio/video installation, multimedia performance and other emerging practices.

The organization’s mandate is to support the work of emerging artists by providing them with an exchange platform with more established artists, allowing them to gain access to a larger body of spectators and to a network of established art organizations and professionals in the milieu.

Founded in 2007 by Eliane Ellbogen and Sandor Poloskei, the organization’s Artisitc Director and past Technical Director, Eastern Bloc fills a void in the professional art milieu in Montreal, as there are currently no other artist-run centres or art spaces that cater specifically to young artists or post-graduates in the first five years of their professional career working in New Media and related disciplines.
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EVENT

Sight & Sound 2013


Dates:
Wed May 08, 2013 12:00 - Wed May 29, 2013

Location:
Montreal, Canada

SIGHT & SOUND – 5th EDITION

INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL – ART & TECHNOLOGY

MAY 8 – 29 2013

For its 5th edition, the art and technology based festival, Sight & Sound, presents more than 30 local and international artists, 11 performances, 8 installations, 7 workshops, and 2 conferences at New Media Production & Exhibition Centre, Eastern Bloc. This edition of the festival is all the more unique because it is an occasion to celebrate Eastern Bloc’s fifth anniversary, five years in which more than 500 artists’ work have been presented at the centre.

Sight & Sound offers its audience the opportunity to live an intimate and unprecedented experience through a process-driven approach, critical of the fields of art and technology. This year, the festival proposes as its theme the “black market,” with a unique program of performances and installations, most of which are produced specially for the festival or presented as a North American or world premiere.

Artists and collectives featured in this year’s festival:

Jean-Baptiste Bayle (FR/PT), Steve Bates (CA), Jackson 2Bears (CA), Area C (US), Jennifer Chan (CA/US), Vincent Chevalier (CA), Paolo Cirio (IT/US), Melissa F. Clarke (US), Mario de Vega (DE/MX), Heather Dewey-Hagborg (US), Thomas Dexter (US), Bill Doran (IE/CA), Constant Dullaart (NL), Future Archaeology (US), Émilie Gervais (CA/FR), Arthur Heist (DK), Garnet Hertz (CA/US), Ted Hiebert (CA), Brendan Howell (US/DE), Ellie Irons (US), Doug Jarvis (CA), Ryan Jordan (UK), Michelle Lacombe (CA), R. Lyon (US), Nicolas Maigret (FR), Victor Mazón Gardoqui (ES/DE), Joseph Moore (US), Noxious Sector Arts Collective (CA), Dan Phiffer (US), Matthew Radune (US), Tasman Richardson (CA), Nat Roe (US), Erin Sexton (CA)

For the full schedule: http://sightandsoundfestival.ca/

Videos from last year's edition:

http://vimeo.com/57302619

http://vimeo.com/57302618

Theme: Black Market

Under the heading “Black Market,” this edition of Sight & Sound seeks to explore the rhizomatic and permeating structures of society’s concealed systems. We ask ourselves how we can demystify the black market and its perceived impenetrability. Whether we can actually succeed in unpacking the mechanisms embedded within global – and localized – clandestine networks. In today’s connected world, does the black market retain its (seemingly) dark aura?

We aim to shed light on these concerns through a carefully curated program of performances, installations, conferences, workshops, as well as on and offline interventions. In doing so, we have chosen to adopt a deconstructive process and applied it to the digital domain, exposing the mechanisms, both visible and invisible, which co-exist and are maintained by dominant economic and political power structures.

The festival:

Sight & Sound is an annual festival that brings together Canadian and international New Media artists. It displays the work of sound and video artists alongside other contemporary methods of digital production, with a focus on audiovisual performance, audiovisual installations and interactive practices. The thirty participating artists and theorists are representative of a new generation of practitioners in digital art.

This fifth edition of Sight & Sound promises to deliver our most exciting and extensive program of work that is not only stunning and engaging on an aesthetic level, but also critical of contemporary digital culture and decisive of our technological future.

Eastern Bloc is 5 years old!

This year, Eastern Bloc celebrates its fifth anniversary during Sight & Sound. Since its establishment, the organisation has presented the work of over 500 emerging and established artists. The centre has encouraged our Quebec-based audience to discover the work of internationally recognized digital artists and has offered innumerable local emerging artists fantastic opportunities to advance their artistic careers. Eastern Bloc is also a unique space that has an important history to contribute to Montreal’s cultural landscape and its industrial heritage. The centre’s building was built in the early 20th century for textile manufacturing, an industry which has now almost disappeared from our local milieu. Over the course of its 5 and half year history, Eastern Bloc has given itself the mandate to re-invest this industrial space with an entirely new life and purpose, all the while conserving its architectural value. Eastern Bloc has therefore been contributing for the past five years to local development as well as to the preservation of Montreal’s industrial heritage and post-industrial future through its innovative cultural and artistic programming.

Since 2007, Eastern Bloc has been at the forefront of New Media and interdisciplinary arts promotion and dissemination in Quebec. The vision at Eastern Bloc is to explore and push the creative boundaries in digital and electronic art, audio/video installation, multimedia performance and other emerging practices.

Photo: Nicolas Maigret, System Introspection


EVENT

SIGHT & SOUND 2012


Dates:
Wed May 23, 2012 12:00 - Sun May 27, 2012

Location:
Montréal, Canada

For its fourth edition, Sight & Sound Festival returns in full force with original and experimental programming, as unique as always within Montreal’s digital art scene. Sight & Sound proposes an overall aesthetic of experience-based, intimate and unconventional work, via a unique line-up of sitespecific performances and installations.
This year, the festival takes place from May 23rd to the 27th, 2012, and explores the theme of “Systems of Symmetry.” A dozen installations and AV performances, by local and international artists, will be presented, many of which for the first time ever, alongside a series of conferences and workshops, all at Eastern Bloc, production and exhibition centre for New Media art.

“I am exceptionally proud of this year's programming for Sight & Sound.
We've put together our most daring program of local and international artists yet. As always, the festival embodies the ethos of Eastern Bloc, a space for experimentation, a springboard for new and innovative ideas, and a place where cutting edge art is presented in a dynamic, engaging, intimate, sensual way. Our team, now more than ever, is dedicated to pushing the boundaries of New Media art, alongside our artists, members and collaborators.”
Eliane Ellbogen, Artistic Director



New work premiering at Sight & Sound
Following his first Montreal performance in 2010 at the 2nd edition of Sight & Sound and in 2011 at Elektra with his performance Nobody, French artist Bruno Ribeiro, aka Nohista, active member of V-Atak, returns to Eastern Bloc with the world premiere of his latest performance work Layers, produced with the help of PRIM.

Local favourite of the Quebec art scene, sound and installation artist Thomas Bégin has prepared, specially for the festival, two new projects exploring audio creation through material manipulation and the exploitation of a spatial environment.

First time in Montreal
After a stint at the Venice Biennale and the Giant Robot Scion Space in Los Angeles, Zach Gage, enfant terrible of the New York art scene and creator of Halcyon, Bit Pilot, Unify and SynthPond, all having gone viral, comes to Montreal for the first time ever. Zach will present several works, which question the place of the spectator in the exhibition space as well as our relationship to technology and its current uses.

Artkillart Label featured at Sight & Sound
Founded in 2007, the Franco-German label Artkillart, based in Paris and Berlin, will be featured during this edition of the festival. Artkillart promotes audio and AV art, specifically in relation to the physical limitations of their material supports – the CD, DVD, USB key, vinyl record – in the context of digital creation. The label invites artists to conceive and create works with this problematic in mind. Artkillart organises the Mal au Pixel festival in Paris, member of the Pixelache network comprising seven international electronic arts festivals. To mark the label’s noteworthy contribution to the international digital art community, several of the label’s artists will perform at various occasions during the festival, and a conference on the label’s exploration of asymmetrical production systems will be given.

Since 2007, Eastern Bloc has been at the forefront of New Media and interdisciplinary arts promotion and dissemination in Quebec. The vision at Eastern Bloc is to exploreand push the creative boundaries in digital and electronic art, audio/video installation, multimedia performance and other emerging practices.

The complete festival programming will be revealed to the public on 25th of April.

Until then, follow the festival’s latest news at www.easternbloc.ca