FESTIVAL IZIS
INSTALLATION

Black Box is a manifestation of total algorithmically driven curation, encapsulated in the form of a video game. The intermedia installation codes between the physical and virtual realm, tasking players with exploring the inner workings of a deconstructed recommender system that forms, facilitates, and amplifies online identities. In a political environment where the Overton window is drastically shifting, the complex relations of different ideologies and identity positions can be difficult to fully grasp. The player will navigate this dense memetic landscape by feeding themselves to different filter bubbles and interacting with diverging pills, creating an aesthetic representation of their internet-mediated belief system. (Lea Sande)

Sara Bezovšek is a visual artist working in the fields of internet art, experimental film, and graphic design. Her artistic practice is characterised by reappropriation of online and pop cultural materials. Using a dense visual language of references, she taps into the collective imaginarium and constructs engaging narratives that are both a critique and a celebration of the highly saturated online media landscapes we navigate daily.

She has participated in numerous group and solo exhibitions, among others in Slovenia at Aksioma, Kino Šiška, Ravnikar Gallery Space, Osmo/za, DobraVaga, P74, SCCA-Ljubljana, MSUM, MFRU, BIO, Kiblix, and IZIS; in Switzerland at Fotomuseum Winterthur; in Poland at The Zachęta National Gallery of Art; in Austria at viennacontemporary and Angewandte Interdisciplinary Lab; in Spain at the MMMAD festival and Fundación Foto Colectania; in Germany at panke.gallery; in Sweden at NSFW/SVILOVA; in Italy at the galleries Metronom and Foto Forum; in Serbia at the Danube Dialogues Festival; and online, on platforms such as Open Systems by the Singapore Art Museum, Are You For Real by ifa – Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen, Feral File, and The Wrong Biennale. Her projects have also been featured on online platforms such as Do Not Research, Linked Spheres, and in ETC magazine, among others.

She is based in Ljubljana, Slovenia, and holds an MFA from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design at the University of Ljubljana. In 2018, she received the Prešeren Award for Students and was nominated for the OHO Young Artist Award in 2022. She received the Grand Prix at the Ljubljana Short Film Festival (FeKK) in 2021 and the Vesna award for the best Slovenian experimental film at The Festival of Slovenian Film in 2022. In 2024, she received a Special Mention for her film The Future… Is Just Like You Imagined at the Festival of Slovenian Film.  

Since 2023, she has been working on a project for the research platform [permanent beta] of the gallery Fotomuseum Winterthur. She is also part of the curatorial team behind KRES, an exhibition series initiated in 2023 with Dorijan Šiško and Lara Mejač and produced by Atol.

Dorijan Šiško (1990) is an intermedia artist and graphic designer whose practice spans the fields of video games, experimental interfaces, spatial installations, 3D graphics, and digital animation. He is interested in the speculative, post-digital, post-internet, experimental, and critical aspects of art and design. By creating virtual visual-theoretical worlds, his work explores themes such as peripheral digital culture, parallel realities, the dark side of the internet, alternative futures of humanity, and post-truth.

In 2014, he graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana with a degree in Visual Communication. In 2019, he graduated with honours from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design with a Master’s degree in Visual Communication with the speculative design project TRIBE. He is the coordinator and founding member of the art collective Freštreš and a member and visual coordinator of the group Nimaš Izbire.

His artistic work has been presented at the 34th Ljubljana Graphic Biennial – Iskra Delta, for which he designed and co-curated the musical programme, in addition to his artistic contribution, and at the KIBLIX International Festival 2020-2021, for which he also designed the overall graphic design. He has also presented his work at festivals such as Grounded, Yami-Ichi, Parameter, Pixxelpoint and MFRU, and participated in the international project Shaping the Future in Como, Italy. Together with Sara Bezovšek, he organised and presented the KRES Pavilion at the 6th International Art Biennial Wrong; in collaboration with Lara Mejač, the pavilion was later developed into an exhibition platform for contemporary digital young art in the space osmo/za. As a creator of the show’s visual design, video designer, and artist, he has collaborated on theatre projects in institutions such as the Prešeren Theatre Kranj, the SNG Nova Gorica and the Slovene Youth Theatre.

He has received two Brumen awards and several Brumen recognitions, as well as an award and special mentions from the Tresk festival. He is the winner of the first “Ljubljana Prompt Battle” event. His projects have been featured on the online platforms Do Not Research, Contemporary Lynx and Vizkultura, as well as in the magazines ETC, Mladina and Delo.

In Slovenia, he has exhibited at the Moderna galerija Ljubljana, MGLC, Cukrarna Gallery, Jakopič Gallery, Cankarjev dom, Aksioma, osmo/za, Kino Šiška, UGM Studio, Centre of Contemporary Arts Celje, Kibla PORTAL and the Slovene National Museum; in Croatia at HDD Zagreb and HUiU Pula; in Belgium at the Us by Night festival in Antwerp; in Germany at the NRW-Forum in Düsseldorf and in the panke.gallery in Berlin; in the USA at the Out to See festival in New York, etc.

CREDITS:
Author of the text: Lea Sande
Development: Esben Holk
Music and sound design: ascyth
Additional 3D design: Jaka Juhant
Production of installation boxes: Matic Gselman
Financial support: Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Ljubljana
Many thanks to: Tadej Štrok
Production: self-production, 2025