Guests — V-F-X Ljubljana

Tomaž Grom

Tomaž Grom (1972) is an experimental musician, double bassist, composer, performance artist, sound designer and producer. He composes music for theatre, dance, puppet shows, and films and has participated in many musical projects and ensembles of various genres. Grom is the artistic director of the Zavod Sploh, which is involved in music and performing arts production, publishing and education. He is the author and co-author of nine music albums. He made the short film I Can't Wait for You to Come (2021) and the experimental feature film Don't Think It'll Ever Pass: 25. 4.– 26. 1. (2023)

Total Refusal

The pseudo-Marxist media guerilla Total Refusal explores and practices strategies for artistic intervention in contemporary computer games. It works with tools of appropriation and rededication of game resources. Since its foundation in 2018, the collective has been awarded numerous prizes like the Diagonale Film Award for the Best Short Doc and the Vimeo Staff Pick Award. Total Refusal has been screened at more than 130 film and video festivals like Berlinale (2020), Doc Fortnight at MoMA New York and IDFA Amsterdam (2018), and they have been exhibited at various exhibition spaces like the Architecture Biennial Venice 2021, the HEK Basel (2020) and the Ars Electronica Linz (2019).

Călin Boto

Călin Boto is a film critic and curator based in Bucharest; he has an MA in film piracy (UNATC, Bucharest) and is a member of FIPRESCI. He writes for several publications, including Filmexplorer (Switzerland), FILM, and Films in Frame (Romania), and works as an associate curator for the Bucharest International Experimental Film Festival – BIEFF. He curated a series of screenings at the Romanian Cinematheque, as well as retrospectives of experimental cinema, queer cinema, silent cinema, etc. In 2024, he curated the first Il Cinema Ritrovato on Tour in Bucharest. He has been working for the Romanian Filmmakers' Union since 2020.

Neža Knez

Neža Knez (1990) completed her bachelor’s and master’s studies in sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design (ALUO) in Ljubljana. She participated in the international WHW Academy in Zagreb, where she also attended the documentary and experimental film school RESTART. Neža Knez is a recipient of various awards: the recognition (2012) and award (2014) for outstanding academic achievements at ALUO in Ljubljana, the award for an innovative approach to printmaking Zlata preša (2015), the Prešeren Prize for Students for outstanding academic achievements (University of Ljubljana, 2015). For her master’s thesis, she received the highest distinction – summa cum laude (2017). In 2017, she participated in the Youth Biennale in Tirana. In 2018, she received the OHO Award and participated in a two-month residency at Residency Unlimited in New York. In 2021, she received a work scholarship from the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia. Neža Knez has shown her work at numerous solo and group exhibitions, screenings and performances. She lives between Ljubljana and Zagreb.

Amélie Nilles

Amelie Nilles is a French composer and spatial audio expert from Paris, drawing inspiration from her background in singing and drumming on the jazz music scenes. Explorer of experimental realms, she offers an aesthetic approach to spatialisation in her music. Under the guidance of composer Régis Renouard-Larivière, she honed her skills in electroacoustic composition, while simultaneously pursuing her Master's degree at Paris 8 University, delving into research exploring the spatial dimension of music. Constantly in the process of creating sound environments, she crafts captivating soundscapes weaving together her voice, field recordings, electronic textures, and organic rhythms. In November 2021, she unveiled her debut EP, A croqué le fruit étrange, with the Planisphère label, introducing listeners to her deeply personal and experimental universe, both dark and pop. Since then, she has performed live at various venues across Austria, France, Germany, and Greece and has designed multichannel sound installations, collaborating with diverse artists along the way. Among the themes dear to her, she challenges the intrusion of technology in every aspect of our lives without us ever questioning it. While we tend to forget that humans are living beings among others, she advocates for a re-humanization of society, in opposition to trans-humanism.

Line Katcho

Line Katcho je skladateljica in avdiovizualna umetnica, ki jo v prvi vrsti zanimata zvok in podoba kot dokaza kinetične snovi. Immortelle XR je priredba nastopa v živo, ki so ga na premieri na festivalu elektronske glasbe MUTEK v Montrealu leta 2018 sprejeli s stoječimi ovacijami.

Kisito Assangni

Kisito Assangni je togovsko-francoski kurator, ki je študiral muzeologijo na École du Louvre v Parizu. Trenutno živi med Londonom, Parizom in Togom, njegova raziskovalna zanimanja pa težijo h kulturnemu vplivu globalizacije, psihogeografiji, kritični vzgoji in arhivskim sistemom. Njegovi diskurzivni javni programi in razstave so bili prikazani v mednarodnem prostoru, med drugim na Beneškem bienalu, v ZKM Museum v Karlsruheju, Whitechapel Gallery v Londonu, Centru sodobne umetnosti v Glasgowu, Muzeju sodobne umetnosti v Sydneyju, Malmö Konsthall na Švedskem, Torrance Art Museum v Los Angelesu, Nacionalnem centru za sodobno umetnost v Moskvi in Centru sodobne umetnosti HANGAR v Lizboni. Koordinira vrsto različnih kulturnih projektov.

Valentina Tanni

Valentina Tanni is an art historian, curator and lecturer. Her research is centred on the relationship between art and technology, with a particular focus on internet culture. She teaches Digital Art at Politecnico University in Milan; New Media Aesthetics and Contemporary Art Language at NABA – New Academy of Fine Arts in Rome; as well as Meme Culture and Aesthetics and Digital Media Culture at the John Cabot University in Rome. She has published three books: Random: Navigando contro mano, alla scoperta dell’arte in rete (Link Editions, 2011), Memestetica: Il settembre eterno dell’arte (NOT/Nero Editions, 2020–2023) and Exit Reality: Vaporwave, backrooms, weirdcore e altri paesaggi oltre la soglia (NOT/Nero Editions, 2023).

Tine Vrabič – Nitz

In the last decade, Tine Vrabič – Nitz has become established as one of the most prominent representatives of the Slovenian electronic scene. He creates original music and performs live at all the more important festivals and events. For many years, he was the programme director of K4 Club in Ljubljana. He is an experienced DJ, who regularly performs at eminent European clubs. He is the programme director of Keep in Mind, a festival of contemporary electronic club music, the head of the AmbientSoup record label and the creator of Senzorama, a programme on Radio Študent dedicated to ambient, experimental and electroacoustic music.

Mirjam Baker

Mirjam Baker is an animation filmmaker and painter. She studied Media Technologies at St. Pölten University of Applied Sciences, Austria (2010) and Animation at Royal College of Art, London (2014). Her work is shown at film festivals and exhibitions. Since 2014 she lives and works in Cologne, Germany.

Filipa César

Filipa César is an artist, filmmaker, educator and community organizer. She is interested in the fluid borders between cinema and its reception, the politics and poetics of the moving image and archival practices. Since 2011, César has been collectively researching the militant cinema practice of the African Liberation Movement in Guinea Bissau and its potencies through the production of workshops, archives, films, performances, publications, architecture and community gatherings.

Anže Peršin

Anže Peršin is a film producer with many years of experience in film. He had worked on commercial film productions throughout Southern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, and owned a commercial production company in Lisbon. Since 2015, he has been developing Stenar Projects, a production platform for the artists’ moving image, based in Portugal. He is a member of Associação de Produtores de Cinema e Audiovisual in Portugal and a 2019 Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program Grantee. He is the producer of Resonance Spiral.

Marinho de Pina

Marinho de Pina is a research assistant at DIN MIA’CET – ISCTE, Centre for Studies on Socioeconomic Change and Territory, currently doing a PhD on Sacred Spaces in Bissau. He is a transdisciplinary artist, performer, poet, musician and writer, even on weekends and holidays. Since 2017, with Filipa Cesár, Sana na N’Hada and Suleimane Biai, he has been working on Abotcha – Mediateca Onshore, Guinea-Bissau (mediateca-onshore.org), a programme for the cultural creation of dreams and utopias with the local community, collaborating in the management, production, curation, communication and animation of cultural activities.

Miro Manojlović

Miro Manojlović (1985, Croatia) works in music, film and theatre. Since 2014 he has been working as an Art Associate at Academy of Dramatic Art and cooperates with numerous artists at home and abroad. His experimental films Showgirls(2011) and Klopka za mag.. i česte udaljenosti(2019) won Maksimilijan Paspa Awards. He has created music for numerous films, theatre and dance performances, and actively works as a film author, editor and music composer. In his free time he is devoted to exploring merry mysteries of sound and vision.

Ana Hušman

Ana Hušman (1977, Croatia). Her practice disassembles the structures and textures of cinematic elements through film, installation, books, sound, image and text. Hušman experiments with the possibilities of animation, documentary and fictional cinematic methods, and the possibilities of recorded voice and its articulation. She teaches at the Department of Animation and New Media at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, and is a co-founder of the documentary film organisation RESTART where she has been holding film education programs for children and young people for many years. Since 2003, she is a member of Pangolin, anartist-run organisation working in film, visual arts and research practices, where she produces films, books and other works. Her works have been shown at film festivals and exhibitions worldwide.

Nadja Šičarov

After finishing her undergraduate studies in Conservation and Restoration of Fine Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts, University of Ljubljana, Nadja Šičarov (Ljubljana, 1992) obtained her MA in Preservation and Presentation of the Moving Image at the University of Amsterdam. She further developed her interest in the archiving and restoring of experimental and amateur cinema through her work at the Slovenian Cinematheque between 2017 and 2019, where she set up its home movie collection. Between 2019 and 2022, she worked as a restorer at the Austrian Film Museum in Vienna, were she was also a co-coordinator of the international project Share That Knowledge: Finding Strategies for Passing on Knowledge Across Generations of Archivists. She currently lives between Ljubljana and Belgrade and works as a freelance conservator-restorer and archivist.

Ejla Kovačević

Ejla Kovačević (1989) is a freelance film critic, curator and independent/experimental cinema researcher. She is a member of the curatorial team of the International Experimental Film and Video Festival 25 FPS, a selection committee member at the Belgrade-based International Analog Film Festival KINOSKOP and a film programmer at /’fu:bar/ Glitch Art Festival in Zagreb. Since 2011, she has been a member of the Zagreb-based filmlab Klubvizija, within which she has organised numerous screenings, workshops and lectures on analogue film practice. As an Erasmus + scholar, she completed a four-month internship at the filmmakers’ cooperative Light Cone in Paris, expanding her knowledge on the promotion and distribution of experimental films. Her texts have been published in various media for film and culture (Hrvatski filmski letopis, Filmoskop, a programme on the Third Channel of Croatian Radio, Vizkultura, Kulturpunkt etc.). She earned her MA in French Language from the Sorbonne Nouvelle University and her MA in Comparative Literature from the University of Zagreb.

Hrvoje Spudić

Hrvoje Spudić (1987, Zagreb) graduated in 2015 from the Faculty of Architecture, where he is employed as an assistant for Drawing and Plastic Design. In his work, he explores the techniques and technology of printing, photography and film and the phenomena of light and sound. He is a member of the experimental laboratory Klubvizija, where he experiments with images and sound on 16mm film. His work has been shown at solo and group exhibitions at the Miroslav Kraljević Gallery in Zagreb (Sound Reproduction Experiment, Rotoprojector), the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Rijeka (translations 1 with Sara Salamon), 3m3 gallery in Belgrade (1m2 of light), the Sound Art Incubator festival (Light Analysis, Soft Objects with Sara Salamon), the EMAF festival in Vienna (1m2 of light) and the Avant festival in Karlstad in Sweden (Rotoprojector 2). In 2020, he received the Young Artist Award for the visual identity of the 30th Zagreb Music Biennale at the 55th Zagreb Salon (together with Sven Sorić, Sara Salamon and Tin Dožić). In 2020, he and Sara Salamon received Youth Salon’s “Vladimir Dodig Trokut, Iva Vraneković – Artist to Artist” award for Soft Objects.

Peter Fettich

Peter Fettich (1979, Ljubljana) has engaged in photography since 2009. At first, as a professional commercial and sports photographer. In 2011, he began studying Photography at the Faculty of Applied Sciences in Ljubljana (VIST), where his approach to photography transformed from a primarily photojournalistic to a documentary/auteur one and he began his active path in the darkroom. In 2019, he completed a semester at Vraa Hojskole (Denmark), where he gained experience in "alternative" photographic techniques under the mentorship of Emil Schild. In 2020, he co-founded the Artard Institute, within which the Kela production space operates and develops. He is actively engaged in developing photos, self-publishing and conducting photo workshops. His work has been presented at solo and group exhibitions in Slovenia and abroad.

Rok Kajzer Nagode

Rok Kajzer Nagode (1992) is a director of photography, who graduated in 2014 by his work on the short fiction film The Springtime Sleep. In 2018, he obtained his MA from AGRFT with his master's thesis Researching, Restoring, Digitising and Revitalising Film Heritage. Since obtaining the status of a self-employed person in culture in 2019, he has worked on several short, feature and documentary films, TV series and videos. For his work during his studies, he received two Prešeren Awards for Students from AGRFT, while for the student films C.H.A.O.S. and What Remains and the music video for Koala Voice's Vertigo, he received the IRIS Awards conferred by the Slovene Association of Cinematographers. He is a member of the European Film Academy, Slovene Association of Cinematographers and the IMAGO Film Preservation and Restoration Committee. He is Assistant Professor of Film and Television Picture at AGRFT and is writing his PhD thesis in Film and Television Studies on the datafication of film heritage. He is also completing his MA in Art History at the Faculty of Arts.