Art celebrated its 1000054th birthday

Yesterday, artists around the world celebrated the 1000054th birthday of art - with special programs that they performed and broadcast live under the auspices of Ars akoustica of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), and this time radio stations in the region - Belgrade, Zagreb and Ljubljana - joined the celebration. The theme of the celebration of the 1000054th birthday of art (Cross-Current) is dedicated to works that represent a kind of swimming against the current of the mainstream (or through the mainstream).

Radio Belgrade's drama program broadcast an interactive audio installation based on the composition of authors Ilinka Čolić and Arsenij Jovanović "Midnight Game of Glass Bowls". It is a composition for which the authors received the first prize of the Drama Program of Radio Belgrade in the category abstract form of radiophony in 2016. Composer and director Arsenije Jovanović also received a Lifetime Achievement Award on that occasion, and his works were previously performed during the celebration of the birthday of art within the EBU. The award-winning work "Midnight Game of Glass Bowls" was performed live by a group of musicians and artists (Miloš Keser, Miloš Gašić, Petar Krznanić, Milenija Stamenković...), broadcast on Radio Belgrade and via satellite.

Croatian Radio celebrated the birthday of art with a new collaboration with the collective SKROZ, i.e. the performance of singer-songwriter Sara Renar, who premiered the project "Where do you draw the line?" with her collaborators at the Vintage Industrial club in Zagreb. Crta combines arsacoustics, the strange and recognizable singer-songwriter style of Sara Renard and questions about the border between private and public, personal and collective, but also the direction in which such decisions lead us. Sara Renar (guitar, vocals, electronics) was joined by permanent collaborators Zdeslav Klarić (keyboards) and Konrad Mulvaj (electronics, percussion), as well as musicians Vedran Peternel (electronics, bass) and Ivan Laić (Moscow; Demoler, Demoler), and member of the Croatian National Theater in Zagreb, Dora Lipovčan.

Radio Slovenia and radioCona broadcast an electro-acoustic performance by Alessandra Eramo from Italy and Jake Berger from Slovenia, which is part of the artistic series ZVO.ČI.TI so.und.ing DUO, edited by Brane Zorman and produced by the Institute for Contemporary Art Processing (CONA). The program was broadcast live from Kino Siska, with a birthday cake in honor of art and a "Sleep concert".

The program of the celebration of the 1000054th birthday of art through the EBU was transmitted through the Haydn and List satellites, and in addition to Belgrade, Zagreb and Ljubljana, it was broadcast live from 20:24 to XNUMX:XNUMX live from Bratislava, Vienna, Lausanne, Brno, Utrecht, Lisbon, Bucharest, Antwerp, Graz, Toronto, Stockholm, Barcelona, ​​Berlin, Madrid, Freiburg, Paris...

In addition to the national radio stations within the EBU, numerous independent stations and initiatives participated in the celebration of the birthday of art. The celebration of the birthday of art has never been a formal event, but participants create programs independently, whether it is with friends in a private studio or a performance in a radio station, club or some other space. The only condition is that they bring their "gift", which they will share with others via radio network, satellite or internet transmission.

Creator of the holiday Robert Filju

The birthday of art is celebrated on the day, January 17, when the French fluxus artist Robert Filleu declared in 1963 that art was born a million years ago - when someone threw a dry sponge into a bucket of water.

"It happened on January 17, the day statistically most favorable for throwing sponges into buckets," said the artist.

Ten years later, Robert Filju celebrated the one million and tenth birthday of art in Aachen and proposed an official celebration of that holiday, and in memory of his concept of "The Eternal Network" (La Fête permanente), after his death in 1987, some artists began to celebrate their birthday art by e-mail art, fax messages or low-budget TV recordings. Over time, the event began to take on a global character, especially since the Internet began to be used more widely.