As a result of a 43% funding cut by the Austrian federal government for servus.at, this years LiWoLi festival has had to be canceled.
With the great support and interest of the Art University, servus.at developed "LiWoLi - Art Meets Radical Openness" into a bustling art festival over the past five years.
Reaching the tipping point, where international attention for the festival became noticeable, servus.at - the main host - is surprised by a dramatic cut in funding and has to cancel the event for 2013. The future is uncertain, but of course we hope for LiWoLi 2014.
The LiWoLi festival has its roots in the successful Free Software Events from early 2000s, which had been held yearly by local linux user groups, supported by servus.at.
As the success of Linux made that kind of events obsolete, servus.at -being an artist run data and competence center - re-created the event for artists and cultural producers while keeping focused on the spirit of the free software movements: Art meets radical openness.
Over the past five years over 300 active contributors, from all over the world, visited Linz for the purpose of sharing skills, code, visions and experience. Artists, developers and educators worked together and discussed the benefits and challenges of openness. This year we take the opportunity to rethink our exhausted structure caused by constant budget cuts. A common decision is to keep things alive and so of course we will work to make LiWoLi 2014 happen. We hope to meet you soon again!
Uschi Reiter for servus.at