Fedor Tot looks into this year’s Diffusion photography festival and Buzz’s collaborative workshops as part of the festival.
The third edition of Cardiff’s biennial photography festival returns this year, after successful runs in 2015 and 2013. Always at the cutting edge of visual arts, Diffusion International Festival of Photography will host a number of exhibitions from artists all over the world this May, as well as a series of workshops and talks, held in partnership with Buzz Magazine to celebrate our 25 years in existence!
The theme this year is Revolution. In today’s tumultuous, uncertain modern world, the word ‘interesting’ seems damning with faint praise at times. With Brexit, Trump, the migrant crisis, rising hate crimes, divided communities and resentment everywhere, it’s as vital a time as any for art to fight back, using its capacity to provoke debate and bring together communities in a positive way.
As such Diffusion’s diverse variety of exhibitions this year will cover a vast amount of ground. State of the Nations by kennardphillips aims to question the status quo and the narratives that form around news images and the media, alongside its murky relationship with political and financial elites. An ongoing collaboration by Peter Kennard and Cat Phillips, two of the UK’s most important photomontagists, kennardphillips began in 2002 as a protest against Tony Blair’s Iraq War policies, with the aim of taking art out of the galleries of the art world and into public and popular discourse via simple, powerful messages, encouraging direct interaction with the wider world.
There will also be exhibits by Slovenian-born artist Bojan Radović, The Icon/The Star, and Paolo Cirugia, Perestrojka. The former looks at the iconic five-pointed red star, for much of the 20th century a symbol of revolution and radicalism, including in his home country of what was then Yugoslavia, and the way it has been increasingly divested of meaning by bland consumerism: a nostalgia tool for those pining for the comforting old days of socialism, be they Slovenes, Serbs, or Slovaks, now an object emptied of its old meaning. Cirugia’s project draws on his own personal archives in covering the Kiev Uprising and the subsequent Ukrainian war, aiming to revise the often simplistic narratives of the war that most media in the West has provided us with, challenging it by eradicating the most commonly used (and arguably ethically troublesome) of war photography—bodies, blood, trauma—producing corrosive, incomplete-seeming images, that strike towards the heart of the truth. If Radović’s work hopes to look at how the past changes in tandem with the future, then Cirugia’s work is aiming to cut beneath that and start its own future.
There’s more too; over 70 artists will be featured in this year’s Diffusion. To just scratch the surface, Laís Pontes’ Born Nowhere and Born Now Here trace the way individuals use social media as an extension of themselves; Tatiana Vinogradova’s Days of Melancholy focuses on the lives of gay men in Russia; Marcelo Brodsky’s 1968: The Fire of Ideas reconfigures the fiery tumult of that year’s worldwide wave of protests.
In addition to these exhibitions, Diffusion’s importance also lies in encouraging future generations to take on the baton. As such, the pop-up workshops and talks, held in The Tramshed in partnership with Buzz, are just as vital a part of the festival. Cardiff’s Iris Festival, the world’s leading LBGTQ+ short film festival, will hold talks and screen films on Thurs 11 May at 6pm, whilst David Evans, BAFTA-nominated film director and director of the Wales International Documentary Festival will hold a DIY iPhone film challenge for aspiring filmmakers on Fri 5 May at midday. Elsewhere, there will be workshops on independent publishing, DIY zine making, and music recording. Truly an exciting and expansive programme that has plenty to offer not just aficionados of the arts, but anyone interested in the state of the world today.
Diffusion: International Festival Of Photography, venues across Cardiff. Mon 1-Wed 31 May. Admission: prices vary per event. Info: www.diffusionfestival.org