The festival NInA Beta Version, scheduled for the 25-27 September 2015 in Warsaw will be focused on new narrative strategies in culture, digital and interactive media and the depiction of archives from an affective perspective. In 2015, as the doors to the newly renovated headquarters opened, NInA has become a space completely available to the public. The festival will also be a way to acquaint the general public with everything that the Institute has been doing for the past year.
The theme of the festival is “digital narratives”. Why? After a brief infatuation with ever shorter forms, culture, not only online, seems to return to longer forms enhanced with interactive and multimedia content. Examples of that trend include interactive productions released by the National Film Board of Canada, interactive longform narratives published by The New York Times or on medium.com, or even entire web services dedicated to longform journalism: longreads.com and longform.org. Are complex narratives making a comeback because they’re much better at explaining the intricacies of modern life? Is storytelling, and stories themselves, changing under the influence of technology? What problems do new media present to artists and audiences? How can we use archives in storytelling and tell stories about archives?
NInA Beta Version will feature a panel discussion with Lev Manovich, one of the most important media theorists of the last decade, Jeremy Mendes of the National Film Board of Canada, and Dominique Willieme of ARTE. The panelists will discuss whether storytelling as fundamental cultural practice has run its course. The festival agenda also includes live screenings of selected interactive online projects inspiring the audience to perform main roles in the narrative and the exhibition “Retelling” featuring selected cross-media projects. Throughout the weekend the newly opened courtyard will be taken over by musicians, e.g. from the Igor Krenz Warsaw Entertainment Orchestra, directed by Macio Moretti, screenings of interactive music videos and much more.