The 13th edition of the Media Art Festival Arad (MAFA 13), entitled “re: 7.1e.C°π – bête comme un prompt” opened recently at Arad Art Museum. Taking place from September 25 to October 1, the festival brings together installations, moving image, artificial intelligence, interactive systems, sound, and experimental practices, starting from a question that runs through the history of modern art: if the artwork is, first and foremost, a mental thing, is execution still necessary? In dialogue with the legacy of Leonardo da Vinci and Marcel Duchamp, MAFA 13 transforms the prompt into an artistic instrument and the invitation into a method: 13+5+1+2 artists formulate 13+5+1+2 prompts, without being required to materialize them.
The opening will also mark the reopening of the permanent exhibition kinema ikon :: room service and the launch of the publication A.I. Paper for Data, Entropy & ReadyMedia.
PROMPTS
- Thea Lazăr
- Irina Bako
- Suzana Dan
- Gabriela Mateescu
- Taietzel Ticalos
- Floriama Cândea
- Adrian Ganea
- Flaviu Rogojan
- Levente Kozma
- Bogdanator
- gH
- Alex Halka
- 13m10j
QUANTXT
- Edith Lázár
- Monica Vlad
- Mirela Stoeac-Vladuți
- Josépha Blanchet
- Horea Avram
ROOM SERVICE
kinema ikon
Curators
Calin Man / Ileana Selejan
MAFA 13 re: 7.1e.C°π
bête comme un prompt
“The 13th edition of the festival places two formulas, separated by five centuries, face to face: la pittura è cosa mentale (Leonardo da Vinci) and bête comme un peintre (a malicious expression from the 19th century). Both, through the Duchampian lens, lead to a radical conclusion – if art is a mental thing, execution can be omitted. The readymade replaces creation with selection; L.H.O.O.Q. reduces the masterpiece to the support of an idea.
The prompt is the contemporary form of this gesture. A sequence of words precedes and, increasingly often, replaces the image; the choice of terms has itself become the technique. MAFA 13 invites 13+5+1+2 artists to formulate 13+5+1+2 prompts that constitute the starting point of the edition. Their materialization is not mandatory. There is a precedent: the moustache omitted by Picabia in 1920 was only completed by Duchamp in 1942 (moustache par Picabia, barbiche par Marcel Duchamp), demonstrating that an artwork can postpone its execution without losing its status.
MAFA 13 starts from the idea that the artwork no longer coincides with the object. It can exist as text, algorithm, protocol, system, network, or process. The image is no longer the origin of the work, but one of its temporary forms. In a culture in which code generates images, while images generate other systems of production, art becomes a field of relationships and continuous transformations.
The festival brings together projects that explore this shift through installations, moving image, artificial intelligence, interactive systems, sound, and experimental practices. Technology itself is not the subject of the exhibition, but rather the transformation of the status of the artwork and the artist in a world where creation is distributed between human, machine, and network.
Organized by kinema ikon, MAFA 13 continues a line of research that began more than fifty years ago: the exploration of the medium as artistic material. If the last century redefined the object, the present is redefining the medium itself. From this perspective, the exhibition is not a collection of works, but an ecosystem of processes, while the festival becomes a space in which art functions as a technology of thought.”
GLOSSARY
L.H.O.O.Q. by Marcel Duchamp – an inexpensive reproduction (a postcard) of Leonardo’s Mona Lisa, on which Duchamp drew a moustache and goatee in 1919. In 1920, Francis Picabia wanted to reproduce the work in his magazine 391, but Duchamp failed to send him the original in time, so Picabia drew the moustache himself on a Mona Lisa – forgetting the goatee. In April 1942, Duchamp came across a copy of that reproduction, added the missing goatee himself, and wrote: “Moustache par Picabia, barbiche par Marcel Duchamp, avril 1942.” The inscription “7.1e.C°π” at the bottom suggests that this is a reproduction/subsequent edition of this version, rather than the original copy.
“La pittura è cosa mentale” – Leonardo da Vinci, Trattato della pittura.
(True painting is born in the mind: from knowledge, geometry, perspective, anatomy, and the observation of nature. The hand merely executes what the intellect has conceived. The painter is a thinker, not a mere painter of surfaces.)
“Bête comme un peintre” – a 19th-century French expression, appropriated by Duchamp and used as an accusation against painting, which he called “retinal art” – art that addresses itself solely to visual pleasure. The painter content with pleasing the retina remains precisely that: bête comme un peintre. Duchamp’s proposed alternative: art should be idea, intellectual game, concept. The result is the readymade. Selection replaces execution.
“D’après” is the established term for a work created on the basis of another artist’s work. (L.H.O.O.Q. is, technically speaking, a “d’après Léonard.” Duchamp preserves the form of homage while reversing its meaning.)
PROMPT
MAFA 13 re: 7.1e.C°π
bête comme un prompt
Context: la pittura è cosa mentale (Leonardo da Vinci).
Context: bête comme un peintre (an expression turned by Duchamp against “retinal” art). Five centuries apart, the same instruction: the artwork is decided in the mind, not in the hand.
Task: Formulate an artwork. Do not execute it. Choose the words as Duchamp chose objects. Selection is the technique. Everything else is optional.
Constraints:
– The image is not the origin of the work, but one of its temporary forms. You may omit it.
– What you omit now may be completed by someone else, at any time: moustache par Picabia, barbiche par Marcel Duchamp, 22 years apart. The artwork does not lose its status through postponement.
– If the work appears, declare it d’après: after a prompt, after a machine, after an idea formulated by someone else.
– If it does not appear, the statement remains the work: self-sufficient, deliberately redundant, in the tradition of kinema ikon.
Final check: Between the painter who does not think and the machine that does not think, occupy the position left open: that of the one who merely chooses. If you have executed more than you have chosen, start again.
Output: 1 prompt. The artwork, possibly.
&
An inexpensive postcard of a masterpiece, annotated by hand. La pittura è cosa mentale; bête comme un prompt. The artwork is decided in the mind: choose, do not execute. Moustache par Picabia, barbiche par Duchamp, 22 years late. If the image appears, label it d’après; if it does not, this caption is the artwork – self-sufficient, deliberately redundant. 13+5+1+2 artists. 13+5+1+2 prompts. MAFA 13 · MAFA 13 re: 7.1e.C°π · 25.09.2026 · kinema ikon”
(curatorial text)
MAFA
Media Art Festival Arad is a kinema ikon project, curated by Calin Man and Ileana Selejan, focused on visual, sonic, and performative experimentation in its playful, technological, hybrid, digital, analogue, and deliberately redundant forms. MAFA seeks out ways of playing, using available spaces as a pretext. Its interests in art and technology bring together a heterogeneous group of multimedia artists, predominantly from the younger generation. The festival seeks to motivate local producers and facilitate the creation of international collaborative networks in the cultural field.
The festival is organized by the Arad City Hall and the Arad Municipal Cultural Centre.
