2018 in review

It was a pretty crazy year. It was a hard-working one. Especially autumn was packed with reruns and new productions. Looking back personally I went through some emotional challenges, most strongly dealing with huge amounts of stress. Our work environment – small cultural organization – faced some setbacks in funding at the beginning of the year and loosing an important team member. World political climate is pretty grim, with environmental concerns more pessimist by the day. One feels pressure is on everyone to do something.

While not drinking, smoking or doing any drugs, I continue to be vegan for ethical, health and environmental reasons. I work as an artist and I hope to do so in the future. I’m a feminist, passionate supporter of free/libre software, Creative Commons and idea free cultural works. I consider myself an ally of LGBTQI+ and I support their rights as basic human rights.

Here’s (the good) stuff I did last year that I’m pretty proud of it.

Written music for four stage pieces, released it independently.

Produced three tracks for student contemporary dance production Entropija, released them in rehashed form on Entropy EP and made a video for it. Nina Dragičević wrote beautifully about it on our national online music magazine Odzven.

Written music for contemporary dance solo by Matija Ferlin: “Staging a Play: Antigone”, published it on “Antigone/Child” album, released all the code under GNU GPL, and made a video for one of the tracks.

Created music for Maja Delak’s new group choreography “Just for Today” with live processing, live sound recording, its reuse, and Sense/Stage wireless sensors to use movement data in sound synthesis and processing. Publishing the music is forthcoming at the end of january 2019. Video is planned too.

Produced a 4-track EP (with 3 hidden bonus tracks) called Image Snatchers 2 and released it with a beautiful packaging. Video is in the making.

Kamizdat netlabel: executed 7 releases and organized 6 music events.

  • Warrego Valles: Botox – N&N really invested themselves into the release and promotion of this album, psychologicaly and financialy. A USB booklet designed by Stefan Fähler and Rok Mar. They played as warm-up to Laurel Halo, thanks to our collaboration with Kino Šiška.
  • Luka Prinčič: Entropy EP – a CDR in a hexagon-shaped carton-only fold, designed by Stella Ivšek. I presented this on a night Kamizdat Rentgen at cafe Pritličje together with support from Gašper Torkar.
  • Dodecahedragraph: Mixtures and Leftovers released on tape manufactured in UK (most other releases are to a large degree locally hand-made). Designed by Stella Ivšek. Presented at Kamizdat Rentgen event in Klub Channel Zero with guests Lifecutter and Gašper Torkar.
  • Antigone/Child is a digital-only release that includes music from and inspired by Ferlin’s “Staging a Play: Antigone”. I’m particularly happy about this one, cause it includes the source code.
  • Access Frame: Collectivity – a compilation of Slovenian music producers released on a CDR in a hexagon-shaped carton-only fold at the occasion of Netlabel Day – 14. July. Presented at a relaxed summer event Kamizdat Rentgen at cafe Pritličje with various DJs.
  • Image Snatchers 2 – a mini-album on a USB carton fold printed on NotWeed paper which is made locally from invasive plants to save natural resources and biodiversity, presented at Kamizdat Rentgen event at cafe Pritličje.
  • rouge-ah: bare – a full USB-booklet album by a young local experimental musician printed on NotWeed paper presented at a packed Kamizdat Rentgen event at cafe Pritličje with a guest sound performance by Maja Osojnik.

23 reruns of stage pieces

Audio-visual creative coding work with a new chapter into computational creativity.

Did reruns around Slovenia of audio-visual project Interface Fractures V from previous year and started a first phase of multi-year project called Jitakami. Created an audio-visual lecture-performance with a team of amazing artists.

Patreon: 10 patrons, 11 updates, 2 releases.

I wrote 11 updates throughout the year including two paid posts – releases Entropy EP and Antigone/Child, each of them included a video. Through out the year patronage stayed pretty much the same at the max of 10 patrons.

Patreon is a membership platform created to enable modern-day patronage – rewarding creators you love with small regular per-month or per-thing donations. This ensures some form of regular income in the new digital economy and communication between members (patrons) and creators.

Deleted accounts on greedy evil corporate social media platforms Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

In 2017 I discovered Mastodon, just one of many federated, decentralized softwares that run what is called The Fediverse – a growing ecosystem of nodes/pods/instances that enable posting and (micro)blogging and federate posts between each other, thanks to something called ActivityPub. Apart from Mastodon instances there are other programs who all more or less speak the same communication protocol and therefore can federate between each-other: Pleroma, Friendica, PeerTube (a distributed YouTube-like platform) and PixelFed (an Instagram-like network). There are other communication protocols and platforms too in the fediverse, so it’s an amazing new uncharted territory where developers and users mesh and merge and try new things with technology and community building.

Personally the most powerful thing about certain Mastodon instances is emergence of communities that I share common values with (anti-harassment, social justice and more). That’s why I started a Slovenian instance toot.si with a desire to offer space for LGBTQI+ community. This didn’t really work out (yet), but the instance is still here with few active members. In june 2018 we celebrated first year of existence.

In March 2018 I deleted my accounts on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Self-employed cultural worker

My application to prolong the status of self-employed cultural worker with the rights to subvention of social security expenses was approved for another five years. It was fascinating to put together a list of works and activities for the last five years.

Promotion & funding: 12 months of newsletters, 37 mailouts.

For promotional purposes – public relations – I wrote 37 mail-outs, majority for Emanat Institute, 6 of them for Kamizdat netlabel project and my own work. I created 12 webcovers posted on Facebook and posted updates to the Emanat website with information mostly about projects I manage. Kamizdat website was also updated. I helped with writing applications and reports for our (Emanat’s) funders: Ministry of Culture of Republic of Slovenia and City of Ljubljana.

Increased attentiveness to mental health.

Depression and procrastination didn’t disappear. But awareness of their onset is higher. I have more words to describe the feelings. I can make a conscious observation of what and how I feel and have better understanding why. This actually had an effect: it feels it shortened downtime and reduced exhaustion from debilitating state of complete block to work. I’m more often ‘on time’ then before – I still miss deadlines, I still get in a slump, I can still be late on a rehearsal, but it’s somehow less taxing or difficult.

Fails and lessons?

I want to go over lessons from 2018 and possible prospects for 2019 in a new post. Let this post be a celebration of achievements, to congratulate myself, I’ve made it into 2019 alive and with little more experience.