Touch Me Festival

1/1/2002—ongoing

Touch Me Festival deals with interconnections between art and science through themes that engage and inspire contemporary artists and scientists in the field of biology, chemistry, physics, mathematics. From the perception of time to the exploration of pleasure, Touch Me Festival offers new sensation and opens up new dimensions of human perception, presenting within each of the triennial some of the most important projects of international and Croatian investigative art.

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Touch Me Festival approaches the relations between art and science from a thematic point of view, meaning that each festival edition evolves around a specific topic. Until today, the festival has been dedicated to intelligence and information (2005), pleasure and hedonism (2008), energy (2011), time (2014) and invisibile natural phenomena (2017).

The idea behind the festival is based upon a critical approach to the overwhemingly rapid scientific development. Nevertheless, it is not a project about scientific pessimism or optimism; it is about exploration of new possibilities, dismounting paradigms and existing models, and approaching the visions of our future without any compromise. The concept common to all festival editions is thus the future world and the post-human condition, with a focus on artistic practices of strong experimental quality which reflect and question current scientific research and trends. Artists working in this field use science and new technologies in order to question the contemporary and future world in the most radical and provocative ways, intervening also in the area of ethics and bioethics, as well as different social taboos.

The festival title emphasizes the prevailing interactivity and tactile features of the interdisciplinary artworks that deal with science and technology. This somewhat erotic conotation is also a reference to contemporary theories and the phantasm closely linked to creativity as a libidinous phenomena, as well as immersive aspects of artworks produced at the interface of art, science and technology. Immersion of the human body into the artwork is at the very basis of this Kontejner's project - immersion which brings new sensations, questions the canon of human perception and dismantles the artistic, scientific and ethical paradigms.

The festival concept is developed from the need to present the international and map the local scene engaged in the field, along with contextualization of this type of artistic production and stimulation of a more relevant theoretical discourse. Starting as a cycle of exhibitions and lectures in 2002, Touch Me in 2005 starts to take on a triennial festival format, presenting bio-art for the first time to Croatian audiences, and establishing partnership with numerous Croatian and international scientific institutions, such as CERN, and Institute Ruđer Bošković and Institute for Physics from Zagreb.