Alex Czetwertynski Artwork, Curation, Creative DirectionCurrently : Brussels | Belgium
ContactWriting, AboutNetwork:
Electric Castle got shut down in 2020 like everything else. When it came back in 2021, it was branded "Special" and moved from Bontida Castle to various spots across Cluj-Napoca. The New Media program went with it, spread through the city in whatever indoor and outdoor spaces worked. This wasn't just adaptation but a complete rethinking—a festival without its defining location, finding its identity in the spaces between venues instead. Cluj-Napoca, sitting there in Transylvania, temporarily housed these displaced cultural elements that had once made sense in a single contained space.
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Playmodes presented two installations, and indoor one (Espills) and an outdoor one (Beyond)
Robert Henke presented Phosphor, an installation that uses phosphorescent pigment, upon which a laser endlessly draws topographic patterns, algorithmically driven, newer twice the same.
Tundra presented Row, a holographic fan installation where the row of fans creates synchronized animation on the z-axis.
Vincent Houze
set up a version of Fluid Structure in a room inside an old communist hotel. The installation created blob-like forms that responded to visitors' bodies, turning people into obstacles in a digital current.
The Bucharest based collective Radar presented a new piece based on the John Conway’s Game of Life
Italian artist collective Quiet Ensemble presented Unshaped, a large piece of semi-transparent material elevated in the air through motion sensor driven fans.
The city gave us the public library facade as our canvas. We opted for lighting and sound instead of projection, then handed the setup to three local groups—Clar Obscura, Hybrid Labs and Pal. Each developed their own sonic and light-driven narrative, some performed live. The building's stone and concrete became the medium for their temporary interventions, drawing crowds to a familiar structure suddenly made unfamiliar after dark.