2018 marks the 16th edition of Kraków festival Unsound and organisers have announced that this year’s theme will centre around ‘Presence’.
The team behind the festival explains that this year’s theme is a continuation of last year’s, ‘Flower Power’. Amongst other questions, the theme hopes to look further into the festival’s policy of banning phones and video technology, which was first established in 2013. The festival says that, in 2018, these ideas seem somewhat quaint as "increasingly, technology is reshaping reality itself".
Also amongst the questions that this year’s theme will shine a light on are: "What does it mean to be present in a world of media saturation, where reality can be virtual or augmented, intelligence made artificial? How should we exist in an age of self display, anxiety, cryptocurrencies, robotic technologies, data harvesting, discriminative algorithms, disinformation, social media bots and conspiracy theories? How does one understand nature, when it exists as a place to be visited rather than lived in? How are communities formed and broken via social media?"
The festival has put out an open call for music, film and art works that "engage with the self and its relation to simulacra, technology, protest, 21st century ideas of nature and beyond". The line-up of music, screenings, panels and more is due to follow in the coming months.
This year’s festival takes place from October 7-14. Full location details are yet to be announced, but you can head here for more information.
