What does experimentation look like when technologies that seemed new just yesterday have already been assimilated into everyday life? This is the question that SIMULTAN—the Timișoara-based festival dedicated to video art, unconventional sounds, and the possibilities offered by emerging media—has been seeking to answer for over twenty years. Throughout this time, both technologies and the cultural paradigm have undergone profound and unexpected shifts, while SIMULTAN has evolved in parallel and in dialogue with international trends, advancing a curious, adaptable spirit that remains ever-open to hybrid encounters.

The title of the 21st edition of SIMULTAN, Against Resolution: Unfinished Thinking, Undisciplined Art, addresses the question above through friction, imperfection, and an open-endedness that allows us to remain attentive to a present that is increasingly algorithmic and chronically online. These concerns are reflected in the festival’s programming: for the first time in its history, the international open call for video art did not take place. Instead, this year’s edition had a more theoretical and retrospective vibe: presentations and discussions created space to revisit perspectives, exchange ideas, and bring into focus the community that has gathered around SIMULTAN since 2005.

These discussions were held by artists who have previously performed at SIMULTAN and whose practices have long intersected with its core themes. Among the international guests, Dieter Kovačič (dieb13) presented the history of the online independent platform and server klingt.org, founded in 2000, as well as its role in supporting a dispersed community of experimental musicians and cultural practitioners. These perspectives found a local equivalent in Felix Petrescu’s exploration of netlabels, whose ideals, rooted in the early days of the internet, centered on free circulation and collective ownership, offered alternative models for accessing music. Erik Bünger’s work, Thou Shalt Not Speak, shifted the focus toward the politics of representation, examining how a voice-over directs the interpretation of images, as well as what remains beyond its control. For his part, Brandon LaBelle approached listening as a practice of social recognition, radical care, and interdependence. Anamaria Pravicencu, a long-time collaborator of SIMULTAN, marked a decade of SEMI SILENT with a presentation and a listening session centered on voice and its sonic possibilities, while Elena Dobîndă and Emilian Mărgărit presented OFFBEAT, their project focused on collectors of niche music.

The community around SIMULTAN became tangible through the ever-present interactive installations, which awaited activation, exploration, and experience by visitors. Marginal, a collective with a long-standing collaboration with the festival, brought together two works exploring the relationship between technology and the environment in a small exhibition titled “Techno-natural Mutations.” In Unplugged? Symbiont No. 3, Lorena Cocora and Alexandra Costea envisioned a system sustained by the electromagnetic emissions and vibrations of urban life, while Cezar Mocan’s work, A Field Guide to Orbital Melancholy, used a fictional satellite network to generate conflicting accounts regarding the disappearance of a toxic lake. The relationship between technology, space, and the body was also explored in Sound Lines—From Avant-Garde to Immersive, Alex Deak’s 12-channel interactive sound installation, which responded to the movements of the public, integrating this dialogue into the architecture of the former tram depot. Elsewhere, sound served as a gateway to cultural memory and to endangered forms of knowledge. In magnum sunset, Vlad Hodrea brought together field recordings and oral histories related to Romanian folk magic; Mădălina Ciocanu’s work, sunrises in formation, invited visitors to shell sunflower seeds while listening to intimate conversations about memory, uncertainty, and disinformation.

The live music program remained one of SIMULTAN’s strong points, continuing the festival’s tradition of highlighting experimental sounds and artists who challenge conventional ways of listening. Exuvie, by Noémi Büchi, opened the festival with an immersive audiovisual performance where complex electroacoustic compositions, orchestral abstraction, dance, and uncanny imagery evoked themes like transformation and impermanence. On another evening, the sound ventured into a more club-oriented realm with Australopitecus Oltensis, a collaboration between Ion D and Horațiu Șerbănescu, featuring electronic textures infused with dub influences, primitive techno, and cavernous delays. Meanwhile, dj sniff’s exploratory turntablism and improvised electronic music added a new dimension to this spectrum, leveraging the tactile potential of instruments he built himself. The most spectacular concert, which also served as the festival’s closing event, Hypermobility by Montreal-based artist Myriam Bleau, transformed sound into a mesmerizing spatial experience: laser beams carved luminous geometric shapes above the crowd, synchronized with high-energy dance rhythms. The piece, which explores the concept of hypermobility and the resulting environmental pressure, also lent a critical dimension to the performance.

Taken together, the musical performances, contributions from long-standing collaborators, and works developed during artistic residencies delineate an ecosystem built over time, one rooted in the continuity of collaborations and the emergence of new production contexts. The communal dimension of this edition was further reflected in the active role afforded to the audience: questions and interventions during discussions, combined with direct interaction with the installations, ensured that the exchange between artists, artworks, and spectators became an integral part of the festival experience.

Perhaps the longevity of SIMULTAN is due to its capacity to keep generating questions and lines of thinking, even when the context in which they arise is full of unknowns. This year’s retrospective edition has redirected this exploration toward the people, practices, and encounters that have left their mark on the festival from 2005 to the this day. A publication dedicated to the two-decade history of SIMULTAN will continue this process of reflection, bringing together memories and critical perspectives on the networks that have sustained it. Looking back also means making space for what lies ahead: the question of experimentation, in a context where once-innovative technologies have become part of everyday life, will remain open, and SIMULTAN will continue to address it in the years to come, in relation to the urgent needs and possibilities of the future.

SIMULTAN Festival XXI. “Against Resolution: Unfinished Thinking. Undisciplined Art” [MX/ Timișoara, 24–27.09.2026].