FIBER Festival is an international meeting place for makers and lovers of audiovisual art, digital culture and electronic music. The fourth edition takes place from 11 to 14 May and offers a dense programme of installations, talks and performances. Expect three days of alchemical thinking and making in art, design and music!

The FIBER team retrieved its inspiration for this years theme by fascinating over connections between todays experimental art/design practices and a renewed interest in the ancient field of alchemy. Through an extensive program of conference talks, a public exhibition, AV performances, and live electronic music, the festival explores the theme Prima Materia; alchemical thinking and making in art, design and music.

Prima Materia showcases artists and designers who question and reimagine the relationship between man, technology and matter. Technology has a profound effect on nature and we’re in great need to create a sustainable and more emotional relation with the earth. At the same time it is getting harder and harder to predict our future as a human race in the context of fast technological developments of things like artificial intelligence, big data and decentralised networks – developments that feel almost like organic, all-encompassing forces of nature. The human scale and the tools that we use to interpret the world are being radically transformed. We seem to be caught in the middle of invisible forces.

Programme - Friday 12/5

• 11:00 – 12:00 – ‘Vibrant Matter’ with Els Viaene (BE), Martin Howse (UK/DE) & Valery Vermeulen
  How can we relate to matter when we focus on our ears? A conversation with three artists working with sound.

Programme - Saturday 13/5

• 09:30 – 10:15 – Morning Show with FIBER
  A conversation with FIBER curators about the upcoming programme
• 11:00 – 11:30 – Modern Love with Füsun Türekten (TR) & Tamar Shafrir (ISR)
  How do we think about love in the age of online dating
• 11:30 – 12:00 – Parlor of Futures, an introduction with Denisa Kera (CZ) & Daniël Erasmus (RSA/NL)
  How can the age old divination techniques of tarot reading prepare us for the future?
• 14:30 – 15:00 – TBA
• 15:45 – 16:15 – Emerging talents on the cross-section of media- and fine arts – With: Peter van de Es [Unfair] (NL), Jarl Schulp [FIBER] (NL)
  What role do art fairs and festivals play in the development of emerging talent?