The Touch Me festival is re-exploring the links between art and science this fall!

The program of exhibitions, sound performances, lectures, talks with artists, workshops and film program in HALL V begins on September 17.

Crossing chickens, giving birth to dolphins, a man who becomes a goat! In the midst of crisis and forbidden touches, the Touch Me festival from September 17 to October 3 in the industrial HALL V of the Nikola Tesla Technical Museum in Zagreb through exhibitions, performances, discursive program, talks with artists, film program and workshops explores new forms of coexistence between the living beings, nature and technology.

Renowned artists who create on the border of art, science and technology will present their works at the largest international Touch Me triennial organized by KONTEJNER. The program of the sixth edition brings together works from the field of research and interdisciplinary art and experimental sound, and in addition to the central exhibition and film program brings an exhibition and performance program under KONTEJNER’s curatorial concept within two European projects: EMAP – European Media Art Platform Re-Imagine Europe.

Touch Me festival presents renowned international names at the central exhibition MARRIAGE OF STATES *

The group exhibition MARRIAGE OF STATES with the subtitle * Diplomatic marriage or community between different living systems curated by Slovenian curator, Jurij Krpan (Kapelica Gallery, Ljubljana) and Croatian curators Klara Petrović and Luja Šimunović (CONTAINER, Zagreb) reflects on biotechnological and other possibilities of hybrid, symbiotic and chimerical intertwining of living but also inanimate beings. It consists of an experimental laboratory that explores new possibilities of connecting between living beings, nature and technology. Artists question the limits of what makes us human and expand the concept of the body – that of man, bacteria, animals, plants, artificial intelligence. These living art projects explore ways in which man can act in an ecosystem as a permeable, porous being subject to the actions of others. Like a floating blue stone, humans are complex creatures filled with cavities: porous beings interacting with other porous beings. Finding different entrances, this exhibition explores these cavities.

Curators: Klara Petrović and Luja Šimunović, CONTAINER (Photo: Damir Žižić)

The Chicken of the Planetary Community project by Belgian artist Koen Vanmechelen

Belgian artist Koen Vanmechelen will present the Chicken of the Planetary Community project as part of the Cosmopolitan Chicken Project that has traveled almost the entire world to date. This art-scientific project takes as its starting point a hen that experiences its evolution more than any animal through humans. For twenty years, by crossing different national and industrial chickens, strengthening their otherwise weak genetic structure, this project works on a symbolic as well as a practical level in rethinking the links and significance of global and local action. The Touch Me festival will present the 25th generation: Mechelse Hrvatica, created by crossing the Croatian Kokoš Hrvaticas Mechelse Kollonac, the 24th generation of cosmopolitan hen. Within the festival program, there will also be Cosmocafe – discussions held by Vanmechelen around the world on a specific topic, which are recorded and shown at the Human Rights Pavilion on the occasion of the Venice Biennale 2021 …