The Art Today Foundation presents for the second time
THE COMMUNICATION FRONT’2000 /electronic and media
art/ at the Centre for Contemporary Art in the Ancient Bath, Plovdiv. Duration:
from June 1. to June 20
The Project comprises:
from June 1. to June 14 a theoretical seminar;
a workshop, centered around common web-based production;
from June 1 to June 20 an exhibition section
- installations (interactiv, video, net, sound)
The theoretical seminar and the workshop are meant to
be practically and conceptually interrelated with the exhibition section
of the Project.
The Project will additionally include formal presentations
delivered before audience by the invited participants, as well as meetings
and discussions with the local media-art community.
A group of 23-25 media artists, theoreticians, curators,
and activists from the UK, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Romania,
Finland, Serbia, Croatia, Canada, Greece, USA, Turkey, New Zealand, and Bulgaria,
who have all voiced in their creative work a commitment to the development
of media and visual culture in South-Eastern Europe, will be invited to
work side by side on their individual projects. The participants will be
encouraged to hypothesize on the possibilities of a common project aimed
at provoking our desire for dialogue and mutual recognition, thus appealing
for a tolerant overcoming of the boundaries imposed by our cultural and
political differences.
Through the theoretical seminar and the workshop, CF’2000
will grant the opportunity for creative activities directed at compiling
a unified body of theoretical and critical texts, and small-scale artistic
projects, to be later included in a common web-project presenting the overall
idea of Crossing Points: East - West.
The strive for concrete practical results is one of the
underlying strategies of CF’2000.
The Exhibition Section:
The New Media Generation on the Balkans
presents a selection of 15-17 prominent young media artists
based in South-Eastern Europe, whose work is immediately concerned with
the development of contemporary media and electronic art, both in their
own countries and on a global scale. These will be invited by the curatorial
team of CF’2000 to carry out their projects in the space of the Ancient
Bath at the Centre for Contemporary Art in Plovdiv.
Opening will take place on June,1, 2000.
The exhibition section of CF’2000 is meant to draw our
attention on the insufficient demonstration of mutual interest in each
other among Balkan countries. It also aims to build a common idea for the
development of media-art in South-Eastern Europe. Indeed, the shared characteristics,
trends, and thematic threads that bring together this community of artists
go beyond our expectations since they are determined by the identical factors
that were at play in the making up of their artistic personalities.
We intend the exhibition to become one of the basic starting points for the theoretical seminar of CF’2000 by calling forth an open discussion on the issues of the new media culture in the region. In this way, it would additionally facilitate the establishing of closer contacts between media-artists and theoreticians.
CFront’2000 is interested in the crossing points
within the media-stream and information-flow of the Net that create opportunities
for bringing closer the communities and media-artists from the Balkan region
and Europe. These can be crossing points between objective reality and
the interactivity of the Net, between history and utopia, the state and
the ethnic community, between the personal and the socially-grounded, the
physical and the technological, between culture and politics, between the
commercial and the non-commercial, the local and the translocal, between
two epochs. Or else, the crossing points of the subtle interaction between
past, present, and future, which provides us with a starting point for
a reflection upon the neutral time of the year 2000 that anticipates the
challenges of the new century.
CF’2000 has set as its aim the stimulating of
ideas-exchange and partnership between media-artists, curators, theoreticians
and activists from the Balkans and Europe, who are all in search for the
crossing points between our cultures. We would like to find a common language
in the field of art and media-practices, while at the same time retaining
the rich blend of our cultural and ethnic variety.
Along with that, CFront will centre around the
shared interests and problems of the media community in the fledgling democracies
on the Balkans. The historical and political reminiscence of the past has
long been one of the main driving forces for the international and the
ethnic relations in our region. In the face of media-culture, however,
we hope to have found a new strategy.
Moreover, it is our belief that a second edition of the
project will play a significant part in the stimulating of Bulgarian media-culture,
which has definitely started to develop in the recent years, but due to
the lack of experience, is still in need of a more clear-cut conception,
social position and institution support.
Chief Organizer:
The Art Today Foundation
<arttoday@bitex.com> and <sevo@olb.net>
Curatorial Team: Emil Miraztchiev, Dimitrina
Sevova
Organizing Committee: Emil Miraztchiev, Dimitrina
Sevova, Monica Romenska, Nadya Ghenova
Co-curator: Honor Harger (New Zealand, United Kingdom)
<honor@va.com.au>