MONTREAL · few weeks ago we attended the International Marketplace for Digital Art (IMDA) at ELEKTRA 12, a digital art festival in Montreal. we´ve been invited to present PLATOON, our international network and our KUNSTHALLEN in Asia.

during my stay i had the chance to develop opportunities and bonds with very valuable contacts. cruising through studios, discovering hidden galleries and talking directly with artists about their work, was a very interesting and fulfilling experience. i was impressed by the infrastructure available for creatives in Montreal... thats definitely the way forward!

i would like to mention that the whole ELEKTRA crew was an incredible host. everything was organized very professionally and in detail; avoiding being pedant and always leaving the possibility of personal choice.

i think that all participants found something appealing to their needs and bonded with each other, creating the preconditions for future collaborations, and in some cases, for real friendships.

obviously we also recruited some new members on location. we got the chance to discover the person behind each organizazion, institution and artwork presented during the festival... which on a human level, has a tremendous value.

since there isnt space here to enlist all participants, let me just mention few people that made this mission very special:

Alain Thibault #5770, founder and director of ELEKTRA, an incredibly charismatic person, who gave us the possibility to discover the digital art scene in Montreal and so many international players in the cultural sector.

Émelie Boudrias #5757, project manager of ELEKTRA. thanks to her everything went very smoothly... and im sure it will be the same in the next project she is involved. Émelie is in fact working on the realization of the International Digital Arts Biennial in 2012.

Dominique Moulon #5771, who just launched his latest book: Contemporary Art and New Media- available only in french. if you ever need an expert on New Media Art, you should definitely get in touch with him!

Alessandro Ludovico #5773, artist and editor of NEURAL, an extremely interesting mag about hacktivism and digital culture, which is distributed worldwide.

Anne-Sophie Garcia #5755 from Le Labo, an experimental platform for new media emerging artist, with an accent on collaboration, interdisciplinary exploration and transmission of knowledge.

how not to mention our Japanese friends, independent curator Fumihiko Sumitomo and Rina Watanabe curator of the Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media. incredible people. i even gave them a HELP JAPAN bag, to show back home how a local initiative of Berlin Creatives can have an impact on the other side of the planet.

Zhang Ga, artistic director/curator of TransLife, and representing the National Art Museum of China. although at times we had diverging points of view, we actually had some friends in common. back in 2008 Zhang curated the etoys exhibition in Beijing... which we had as the opening exhibition for KUNSTHALLE GWANGJU in 2010. we wish him good luck for the opening of TransLife on July 26!

Dooeun Choi, Art Center Nabi, which although is based in Seoul, we never had the chance to really meet in person until now. im sure we´ll have the chance to collaborate in future.

Ryan Stec #5457, from ARTENGINE, an artist run center focused on technological and social innovation. during his presentation he mentioned the canadian Graffiti Research Lab and i was sure he knew Jesse #5656 and Mirae #5667 from the GRL chapter in Berlin... and in fact they were good friends. at the end i realized that we are already all connected in this worldwide nomadic tribe.

we visited the studio of Thomas Macintosh and Emmanuel Madan from THE USER and their explained us their work in detail. i loved their gigantic 3D printer!

we also visited the studio of Peter Flemming, artist&inventor specialized in robotic art. see his hilarious solar canoe paddling into itself.

had an inspiring conversations with Kristin Tretheway from INDEX Festival in NYC, discussing how several established artists often support emerging festivals with their work without expecting huge returns. its not all about money and prestige!

was nice to exchange opinions with Peter Kirn #5777, a musician and visualist who writes for the createdigitalmusic blog in NYC.

Yan Breleux #5455, a pioneering visual artist in Montreal, and veteran at SAT, a cross disciplinary center for research. creation, production and training devoted to the development of digital culture. check out their impressive dome, which serves for immersive audio-visual environments.

Felipe Cesar Londono, director of the International Image Festival in Manizales (Colombia) which integrates art, science and technology. many still dont know about Colombia´s cultural scene but it is definitely something to keep an eye on.

last but not least, we´d like to introduce you to Daniel Iregui #5762 and Santiago Ramos Bravo #5458! the duo runs IREGULAR, the young agency that took care of all visual communication for the festival. check out the button at the bottom of the ELEKTRA website... you can change the design only by sound... the new frontier of webdesign is in interactivity. no question about it.

it was a bit long... but there is more to come.