Multimedia interactive installation, 2022 Minecraft; computer; video, 40 ″ screen, headphones, projector; internet connection; table, chairs Implemented with the support Garage program on emerging technologies and median art and research “GARAGE.DIGITAL” If you ask a search engine about parenting, network, computer games, the articles explain how to protect a child from the net and draw the right boundaries between them and the medium. But what happens when, due to a pandemic or other social and political disasters, the boundaries between parent and child are physically closed? Then the digital network can become a place of freedom, the only way to maintain the connection between the two. In 2019–2020, due to the pandemic, regular travel from Saint Petersburg to Marburg to see my child became impossible. Therefore, my son Jonathan and I decided to rent a server and build a house in Minecraft, which became our virtual home. There we met every day to plant something together, eat together, travel, fight monsters and explore new areas of life. Digital activities became our everyday life for a long time, digital experiences and digital hugs. It changed our relationship, deepened it, and we became close in a new way. The Motherboard invites viewers into a digital home, guiding them through a shared online life with photographs and videos, and asking whether digital spaces can ever succeed in overcoming closed boundaries. — Mascha Danzis

Net-based multi screen installation, 2023 Marc Lee in collaboration with Nelly Vardanyan “Yerevan Unfiltered” is a net-based multi screen installation showcasing the influence of digital accessibility and questioning its impact on public consciousness, visual aesthetics, and identity structures. For this edition we will adapt the content and the questions to the festival theme, let local TikTokers from Yerevan have their say and to mix them with international influencers. With the help from TikTok Users form Armenia, user profiles, audio id’s and hashtags (e.g. vulnerability, fragility, antifragility, empathy), are researched. The posts will be automatically retrieved from tiktok.com. Questions will appear in large letters in front of the videos as following: Is vulnerability a natural quality? Are self-awareness and personal dignity based on vulnerability? Does the acknowledgement of one’s own vulnerability makes us truly stronger? Can empathic ability in ourselves grow by recognizing our own vulnerability? Can vulnerability be a truly positive force, as a counterbalance to obsessions of safety that we experience every day and that could not be guaranteed at any level? How will the next generation tell stories? Can inclusive platforms create space for all voices? Are regular people the superstars of the future?

Film [00:80:00, color, sound, loop], 2022 From the translucent golden eggs of the Tibetan bearded vulture to those of the British guillemot with their Jackson Pollock-like splashes, German ornithologist Max Schönwetter (1874–1961) collected them all. He devoted his life to oology, the study of birds’ eggs. But while Schönwetter created order in his world of eggs, chaos broke out in the world around him on the eve of the Second World War. Archive footage of turbulent outside events contrasts with re-enacted scenes from Schönwetter's study. As Nazis march through the streets, he measures eastern subalpine warbler’s eggs. His correspondence with fellow scientists and collectors (heard in voiceover) evokes both the zeitgeist and the single-minded collecting urges of Schönwetter and his associates. A soldier on the Finnish-Russian front, for example, is delighted with the ptarmigan eggs he has found between battles.