Pixel Tattoos will transform Kunsthaus Graz into a rhythmically pulsating tapestry of perceptual phenomena, piercing the urban space. Pixel Tattoos displays the interaction between the biomorphic architecture of the Kunsthaus and digital animations by four Slovenian media artists – Marko Batista, Igor Štromajer, Neven Korda and Luka Prinčič invited to the project by intermedia artist Janez Janša – who have been asked to face the unusual technical parameters offered by this peculiar medium.
The “minimalistic” and “limited” structure of the Kunsthaus façade creates a challenging surface for artistic expression, imparting an unconventional visual-spatial experience: a ghostly screen of dynamic light and reflection, an outer membrane where a particular “process of writing” and “exploration of the surface tension qualities” transpires.
The result is a dialogue between the two elements, a “conversation” happening neither inside the building nor outside but exactly on its skin.

Marko Batista
H-Structure:101

Marko Batista's new video work presented in Pixel Tattoos is part of the series entitled “Displaced Objects and Hybrid Structures” in which the author focuses on the idea of tactical transportation and cybernetic mobility through specific modular events. Using contemporary architectural environments Batista introduces visual intervention as part of the hybrid structure based on so-called ‘meta’ relations and objects as being simultaneously real, social, and discursive formations. Artist, media theorist, and researcher Trebor Scholz explains that “Distributed real-time interaction strategies and negotiations for data sharing and processing are examples of dynamic systems with a high degree of complexity, just as culture itself can be viewed as a highly complex system.”

Neven Korda
The Same New Story

Luka Prinčič / Nova deViator
(null)

The basic questioning, almost a frustration behind this work is the struggle of how to ask questions (a contemporary art practice!) through a monster which is the facade of Graz's Kunsthaus. How is it, that a multimedia artist is faced with a challenge to ask something on a 56x25 resolution gray-scale display in times of HDTV (1920×1080 in millions of colours)? Sure, we love lo-fi and old-school pixel-art, we really do, but we need to focus on monstrosity ... How can an artist ask a question if a man is really an Oedipalized animal through a device which is interesting only because it has 930 neon lights that can flash as fast as 20 times per second in any intensity or because it is on a house dedicated to the presentation and promotion of contemporary artistic production? Super toy or something to behold?

Igor Štromajer
The Condition of the Working Class in England
(Die Lage der arbeitenden Klasse in England)

Working Men! To you I dedicate a work, a faithful picture of your condition, of your sufferings and struggles, of your hopes and prospects. I wanted to see you in your own homes, to observe you in your everyday life, to chat with you on your condition and grievances, to witness your struggles against the social and political power of your oppressors. Having, at the same time, ample opportunity to watch the middle-classes, your opponents, I soon came to the conclusion that you are perfectly right in expecting no support whatsoever from them. Their interests are diametrically opposed to yours. Their doings give them the lie. Have they ever paid any serious attention to your grievances? Indeed not, those are things they do not like to speak of – they have left it to a foreigner to inform the civilised world of the degrading situation you have to live in. Go on then, as you have done hitherto. Much remains to be undergone; be firm, be undaunted – your success is certain, and no step you will have to take in your onward march will be lost to our common cause, the cause of Humanity!