For someone who has never been to this amazing event, it may not be easy to understand what it is at first. We must confess that in the general presentation we attended last September in Ljubljana, we were quite shocked, as we witnessed a creative scene with a life of its own emerged in the Slovenian capital and built on a local computer company. An unusual combination that requires a detailed context, a story that goes along the materialisation of the creative works they present in what is one of the most important international graphic arts biennials. And it is that the history of Iskra Delta, a national technology company and one of the largest computer manufactures in Yugoslavia, constitutes the starting point of the event itself.
Its rise and subsequent fall now serve to the creatives and artists to imagine how the corporation would operate today if it was not extinguished. A recreation that draws on the history of a business (and a country) mixing it with a large dose of imagination, resulting in an impressive symbiosis where it is difficult to discern what is true and what elements are the result of the most absolute creativity. “In a time haunted by the spectres of the ‘lost futures,’ the Biennial rather than focusing on the past, harnesses the desire to inhabit a reality other than the one we inherited,” we read in its manifesto.
Acting as a fictional and virtual entity, Iskra Delta turns into a collective point of reference when it comes to shaping a future in which designers, poets, writers and experts in the digital universe coexist: from creative groups to individual artists, journals and events that aim to make creative synergies a better future. There are many stimuli to which this event exposes us, being fully integrated into the heart of the capital, with a main location and exhibitions throughout the city, achieving a plausible coexistence of graphic arts with society as a whole.