Kicking off next June 6 is the 13th edition of Tribeca Immersive: an innovative program in a brand new location that we can’t wait to discover. We met with curator Ana Brzezińska to discuss the undoubtedly innovative approach she took for this new edition.
With the collaboration of visionary artists and an exceptional team, including the group of digital professionals at the Mercer Labs: Museum of Art & Technology, where the exhibition is hosted, Ana has created a program that is unique, both experientially and in its deep meaning.
Keep reading to discover what she told us. And to learn more about previous editions of the festival, visit XRMust’s Tribeca Immersive page.
A revolution in space and curatorship: the new edition of Tribeca Immersive 2024
ANA BRZEZIŃSKA – It all started with a change. With a revolution of what Tribeca has been doing for the past 12 years.
This is the 13th edition of Tribeca immersive, and not only did we completely change the presentation format of the selected works. We also chose to suspend the VR/AR competition: there is no jury, there are no headsets.
It’s a different edition that offers something unique: I believe it can be considered the first curated exhibition of immersive works-not digital works, which are excellently curated by specialists in the field all over the world, but of large-scale immersive experiences, such as you normally see in places like the Cosm, which opens in June, at the Sphere, at Superblue, or even in progressive art galleries like the PHI Centre.
I’ve never seen an exhibition made up only of works which surround you and immerse you in something that is more about the way you feel than about the story being told, and which were designed and created specifically for a festival.
I think one of the main reasons there hasn’t been anything like this so far, is that there were few exhibition spaces that offered such a possibility. This year we had the opportunity to collaborate with a recently opened space in Manhattan, the Mercer Labs Museum of Art and Technology. And Mercer Labs is something incredible… An immense three-story building, with multiple exhibition spaces on each floor. Some of these rooms host permanent installations that are integrated into the physical architecture of the museum, while other rooms – and these are the spaces that Tribeca will curate – are equipped with state-of-the-art immersive technology, which opens up the possibility of programming various works.
Discovering Mercer Labs: Museum of Art and Technology
A. B. – When I first visited Mercer Labs in January, I immediately noticed that this was not a four-walled warehouse repurposed to accommodate video projections. Rather, it is a bespoke space with a distinct architecture, where each room is different because it was designed for a digital technology that lives within that room.
The first room you see, before going into the Main Hall, is a round-shaped space, with an oculus opening above you. This is where the journey begins. You see a portal to a different dimension – the oculus is equipped with a very powerful screen that creates an absolutely extraordinary illusion of depth.
Everything about the room contributes to the overall feeling: the way it is physically constructed, the color of the walls, the fabric of the bench where you sit to look around you before moving on… Each room you visit blends physical architecture with technology, offering a new canvas for the artists to create.
Our immersive selection lives across five exhibition rooms. You can flow freely through the space, staying in one place for either 30 seconds or for 20 minutes. There is no beginning, middle, or end. We never know if the visitor will see the work from the start to finish, or if they will enter halfway through. That is something we have been thinking a lot about: how to curate an exhibition knowing that you cannot control how the audience will explore the works. You have to offer them full freedom to move through the space. Once they enter it, they should immediately feel connected to the experience they are witnessing, and then it is up to them to decide how they want to experience it, and for how long.
The experience is very fragmented. But so is our daily digital life, the way we live and how we consume information and online content.
A unique and innovative creation process
A. B. – We worked with six artists, who created eight new works. This is an important point to make: we could not simply take, for example, a pre-made video installation and project it on a screen. We had to create a work for this particular room. It was a complex process that was new for everyone involved. For us, for the artists, and for the Mercer Labs team as well.
The Mercer Labs team are a wonderful group of digital professionals without whom we would never have been able to do this exhibition. They were crucial for the process: from the first day to the last one. Our show is also the first guest event that they are hosting – until now they have created their own works, and never collaborated with an external partner.
All but one of the Tribeca teams worked entirely remotely, never having seen the space that would host their work. Artists needed to trust us, to listen to all the feedback about what worked, what didn’t, what might have been better for the space, and what was best for the overall user journey. It’s an extremely courageous attitude, and I greatly appreciate the trust our creators have placed in us.
We work with artists who have a rich professional experience and who exhibit in various locations. They are also the makers of their artworks, they create their projects themselves. It was the only way to build an exhibition like this in such a short time and under extraordinary circumstances. The artists had to figure out what the impact of a particular kind of technology and architecture could have on their work, and then work within those parameters very quickly, through various iterations, testing new versions every week.
Experientiality as a tool to facilitate fruition
A. B. – We show the works in three different thematic configurations: Body in the World, Redesigning Tomorrow, and Far From Nature.
We target a wider audience, which includes not just festival goers and industry members. Since this kind of format is so new, I wanted to make sure to remove the burden from the audience to understand what they can expect. Creating themes for the different days makes it easier for the visitor to get their bearings on what they want to see.
What is interesting about the set of works we present is that in this particular format what emerges is not so much the story as how the work makes you feel. The eight selected works are not narrative projects. They are not story-driven. They represent a much more experiential form.
That’s why it’s so difficult to explain what Tribeca Immersive is about this year. I think it’s more about figuring out what we want people to feel when they enter that space, and what emotions we want it to leave them with when they walk out. .
It will be interesting to see how people will receive it. There is no denying that the works are inspired by issues such as climate change, or how we connect with the world and other human beings on a physical level. Some of these works are inspired by a deep introspection about how we are in conflict with the society, and how our spiritual layer and identity are torn apart by the fact that there is so much friction between what we feel and what we see in the outside world. So in a way, of course, each of the projects was inspired by a theme or a topic, but that doesn’t always manifest itself through a specific story.
Confronting immersivity today: a different perspective on the role and choices of the curator
A. B. – Even before the collaboration with Mercer Labs, I knew I wanted to curate a program that wouldn’t punish people anymore. I wanted to create an event that would offer a sense of shelter, that would put people in a space where they are no longer judged, and where no one wants to judge anyone else anymore.
We wanted to avoid challenging visitors with drastic experiences. That said, it is not necessarily an exhibition about healing or hope, but it is an exhibition meant to help us feel less overwhelmed by situations we can no longer control.
This was the first thought, aimed at bringing out more of a feeling than a theme: it was also not about avoiding difficult topics but about changing our approach to them, bringing the audience into a conversation that is difficult, but that doesn’t make people suffer even more..
Many of us experience a sense of guilt about what happens every day: about the two ongoing wars, about the climate crisis, about the things that happen to us on an individual level, in our lives, in our families. From an industry perspective, we observe a tech hype centered on the fact that we need to progress immediately. We have to get to mass adoption now, we have to create profit, we have to hurry, rush. We don’t even have time anymore to think about how technology could be meaningful, because the priority is market adoption. We feel that the reality we live in is a race, one we don’t even have a chance to win.
On the other side there is something that I have always felt inspired with: what’s the best way to discuss difficult topics to create social impact. And how to tell stories that have not been told before but that are important to address.
Ken Burns, the famous documentary filmmaker, said during a workshop I attended that the role of a documentary filmmaker is to take the audience to the bottom of hell and then bring them back. Many storytellers take their audiences to the bottom of hell – and then they leave them there.
I don’t want to choose between these two extremes, between a technology race and a continuous sense of guilt. That’s why I started thinking about a program that would approach technology and impact in a completely different way.
The importance of trusting your audience
A. B. – When you make an exhibition that will be seen by hundreds, if not thousands of people every day, people from various backgrounds, you have to think about it differently than when you curate a much smaller show.
When you work ten hours a day, you have a family to feed, and you feel overwhelmed because you live in a reality where everything is a struggle, what is it that you want to see when you have 30 to 60 minutes of free time? Which leads to the question we need to ask ourselves: what can we offer our audiences, in terms of experience, that is enriching, valuable and meaningful, but also accessible?
Accessible not only in the sense of not having to wear a headset, but also in a sense of experiencing an artwork that is generous and welcoming.
So, what I want, for our visitors, is the chance to stop for an hour and look at beautiful, thought-provoking experiences. And I’m sure our audiences will know what to do with them, because I trust them and I trust our artists. I never had any doubt that these works will be extraordinary.
…and trusting artists….
A. B. – I think artists working in the digital and immersive space have a unique superpower: they are innovators, they know how to behave in a situation they’ve never been into before. It’s in their bloodstream, because they live on experimentation.
We often use the slogan that refers to digital creators as artists who are pushing boundaries… but they really do push boundaries, they innovate not only artistically, but also technologically. They reinvent the wheel every time they create a new artwork.
Maybe that’s why they are less intimidated by the experimental process than traditional artists who are used to a more established process. They are ahead of the curve in the way they approach their practice.
Tribeca Immersive 2024: the lineup
A. B. – The program consists of eight works, three of which will be presented in the Main Hall, which is the largest immersive space at Mercer Labs. In a sense these three works are the ones that determine the theme of each day.
The team that was most ready to start this process was ScanLAB Projects, which worked on an adaptation of Framerate, which is a well-known title that has toured extensively. ScanLAB are very familiar with all the materials they’ve shot, and they know how their footage behaves depending on the kind of edits they make, and the space they exhibit in.
Still, the whole piece had to be re-designed for the Main Hall, a space that uses four LED walls plus the floor.
FRAMERATE: Rhythms Around Us, in the Far From Nature chapter, is a very sophisticated experience, and it was very interesting to see the way ScanLAB orchestrated it: with extreme attention to detail, making sure the rhythm was perfect, the level of color and contrast worked brilliantly, the speed of the images and the way they live together was just right. I think this work is finally being shown in a space that does justice to its full potential.
Framerate is a visual symphony about the relationship between humanity and the Earth, both good and bad. It shows what we’ve destroyed and what makes our presence here unique. The things we create and the destruction we bring are presented from a distance. That’s why there is no judgment in ScanLAB’s practice, because they focus on observation.
Embodied Simulation by Memo Akten and Katie Peyton Hofstadter is a brand new 12-minute meditative installation which is the central piece in the Body in the world section. Like most of Memo’s works, it was made with the use of a proprietary algorithm. Created in collaboration with artist and curator Katie Peyton Hofstadter, Embodied Simulation is a combination of dance, choreography, and neuroscience, as well as animation that is hard to compare to anything we know, because it is so sophisticated in terms of visual language. For me, watching Embodied Simulation is like looking at the cycle of human life and the way humans communicate with various life forms and the environment around us.
It is a piece that introduces a new approach in Memo’s practice. I find it very delicate, almost romantic. But also, in a way, it speaks about the vulnerable condition that we all share, because of the way our physical relationship with the world is changing, and the way we often ignore it.
It reflects on how important it is to realize that we are still physical, biological beings, and that much of what we perceive and what we experience is, in a sense, triggered by this fact, which is challenging, but also poetic and beautiful.
The Redesigning Tomorrow chapter opens with Liam Young‘s amazing new video work, which is the most cinematic of the three central pieces. It’s titled The Great Endeavour, and it is based on a short video that Liam made for the Biennale Architettura last year.
When I first listened to the original score, it almost made me cry, because it is so lyrical and majestic. Visually, you are confronted with a very toned-down, gray-beige color palette, with images of the speculative reality in which silent machines are painstakingly cleaning the air. This vision is a continuation of what Liam created with Planet City, it is a story of the incredible effort we should make as humanity – which Liam compares to the moon landing – to decarbonize the air we breathe on Earth.
The Great Endeavour is inspired by research and science. Liam interviewed various scientists, engineers, and startup owners who are working on green technologies today.
So the process he describes is already happening, but obviously it should be happening on a much larger scale. Liam’s work is a documentary that feels like a poem. It is a cry for a better future that we have not yet begun to build.
We work in a 4DSOUND room with a Slovenian sound artist Robertina Šebjanič and a Berlin-based audio collective, Monom. The technology behind the 4DSOUND room is absolutely incredible. Monom have developed a proprietary system to build spatial sound installations that feel like physical sculptures made of sound.
The room is completely dark, and covered by a soft fabric. You can’t see anything, there are no images, you just sit in the dark, and the sound moves around you.
Monom spatialized CO_Sonic 38,144 km², a brilliant audio piece by Robertina Šebjanič. Co-Sonic is an installation that blends field recordings of a river that flows through Slovenia, with AI-generated sounds representing the ecosystem around it. Robertina mixed it with the sounds of the Hudson River in New York and the Atlantic Ocean.
This extraordinary installation is only seven minutes long. It may feel a little abstract which offers every audience member a chance for their own interpretation. When I first listened to it, I imagined New York lost in the future, like a memory of a once vibrant city that is now under water. It almost feels as if you too were part of it, as if we were already gone and existed only as a memory.
In the Infinity room we have a beautiful piece by Sutu, While We Wait, built in Sutu’s distinct neon style, very fun to look at, playful and full of color. The project explores a topic that we have somewhat abandoned after the pandemic: what does it mean to put so much hope in digital representations of who we are in virtual worlds in which we seek comfort and connection with other human beings?
While We Wait is trying to understand how we live in these virtual worlds, how we connect through digital technologies, and what it means to be together in those spaces.
Finally, there are the two new works by a young Taiwanese artist, Wen Yee Hsieh: The Great Filter and Invisible Them. Wen-Yee made his debut at Tribeca in 2022, when he presented a VR work called Limbotopia. We were the first big festival to select his work, before he won several awards and traveled to various events.
It is wonderful to see this young artist bloom, because Wen-Yee is an extraordinary talent. He works with a very classical black and white palette and his animation is entirely handmade. He is inspired by science, but also by deep and dark spiritual reflections on human identity: for me, he is the voice of a younger generation that I want to understand, that I see struggling, and that I recognize is very different from us. His work is an inspiration to me, because the quality of the visual language he has developed is absolutely off the charts.
We present Wen-Yee’s work in the opening space, which we call the Window Room. Another project of his will be presented in rotation with Sutu’s While We Wait in the Infinity Room.
The value of different festivals and different perspectives
A. B. – There is value in offering a different approach at every single immersive event. When all festivals start to look alike, it becomes less interesting.
I love going to CPH:DOX Inter:Active, because Mark Atkin (a/n curator of the section, read XRMust interview with Mark about the 2024 edition of the festival) every year comes up with a very different and original program. Mark always invites artists and speakers you wouldn’t meet anywhere else.
I enjoy going to CPH:DOX because you get to be in a comfortable environment where you don’t have to rush and you don’t have multiple things going on at the same time. For me, that brings more value than going to an event where I will meet the same people I see everywhere else, and watch the same works that I saw at my own festival.
Seeking different paths in production too: the case of “Colored”
A. B. – I noticed a slowdown in experimentation regarding immersive production. It’s a bit like in the film industry: there was that time, especially for documentaries, when you felt that the films presented all had the same structure. They were designed to fit specific slots within the broadcasting system.
VR production seems to be in a similar place: you know that the work has to meet certain expectations presented by that very thin layer of broadcasters, platforms, organizations that can provide funding. So in a sense, you try to make the project work by adapting it to these models.
That’s why we see so many VR or mixed reality experiences that introduce game mechanics: not because these mechanics come from the desire of the artists, but because they come from the demand of the platforms.
Is this something that enriches the creative experience from an audience’s perspective? That’s an important question to ask. I think of Noire (Colored), the experience that we premiered at our Tribeca last year and that won the first immersive award at Cannes. It was extraordinarily successful because it is completely different from every single work we’ve seen in years past.
The team, in relation to the process, worked outside of the regular system. They didn’t present at big markets, they didn’t do a lot of pitches. They started working with Centre Pompidou and were less part of the immersive circuit. I found the project by chance, browsing through catalogs, while I was looking for new works.
I contacted the team, and started following their work, because I felt there was something there. When I saw the first full draft, I was blown away – and that was almost a year later. It was a very long process, but interesting in the way they approached it, creating an end result that was different… in the best possible meaning of the word.
The Tribeca Festival’s 2024 Immersive program will be at the Mercer Labs: Museum of Art & Technology from June 6 to 17.
Here are the themes of the various days:
BODY IN THE WORLD | Our bodily relationship with the world: on June 6, 9, 12, 15
REDESIGNING TOMORROW | Scenes from a future that is already here: on June 7, 10, 13, 16
FAR FROM NATURE | The ever changing balance between humans, the environment and the urban landscape: on June 8, 11, 14, 17
Tickets are available at the Mercer Labs page.
You can uncover an even deeper and personal perspective on the meaning of this curatorship in this article written by Ana herself. A very thought-provoking read we definitely recommend.
And the Voices of VR podcast by Kent Bye of course!
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