Open Call for Participants The international symposium Frontiers of Solitude, organized as part of the eponymous art project, will offer a comparison of the opinions, experiences, and points of view of artists, curators, and invited guests on the theme of transitions in the landscape in which we currrently live.
The symposium will search for relationships between the cultural, political, and economic aspects of contemporary concepts and our understandings of what is meant by such words as countryside, landscape, and land, including the topography of transitional zones, with an eye on both establishing and crossing over boundaries and limitations. The term landscape can be understood to reflect our relationship with the land. It is everywhere around us, under our feet; it is our shared starting point; it is that which at once unites and separates us. With this in mind, we can begin to raise questions about what is happening to the land. How are we connected to it, how do we relate to it, what separates us from it? How and to what extent can we understand the land, and what do we all know and not know about it? To whom does it belong, and how do we change it, for better or worse? The artist, architect, businessman, scientist, farmer, and specialist each see the land in their own terms. How can we express and capture in human, rather than statistical, terms, both the visible and invisible transformations that the land undergoes, both locally and globally, with regard to the entire biosphere and climate? Industrialization brings about mobility of people and goods, hyper-connectivity, overproduction and urbanization, which have transformed a large part of the 21st-century landscape into an industrial concourse, test laboratory, and a field of conflict among people, and between people and other living creatures. From this, there comes about a blurring of existing, seemingly well-defined borders, zones both separate and interconnected, with regions of safety and danger, rich and poor, managed and wild. Have we already entered an ideosphere of beyond imaginary boundaries? Does contemporary art make it possible to orient ourselves within this unstable and ever-changing territory? Do these art projects and festivals on the theme of the Anthropocene offer fresh approaches, or rather exploit the fascination and anxiety that is elicited by superficial and ultimately temporary phenomena? We encourage artists, scientists, cultural researchers, environmentalists, and other lateral thinkers to submit proposals for the symposium. We welcome proposals until 30 November 2015. Proposals should comprise: an abstract (250 words) and a bio/resume (200 words). Please direct proposals to: i...@frontiers-of-solitude.org. This project focuses on current transformations of the landscape and the close connections between our post-industrial civilization and nature. These themes are elaborated in terms of the cultural geography and morphology of three specific areas of central and northern Europe. The project includes residencies and workshops in selected areas of the Czech Republic, Iceland and Norway. The project is a joint initiative of the Školská 28 Gallery (Deai/setkání), the Atelier Nord, and the Skaftfell Center for Visual Art, and is supported by grant from Iceland, Lichtenstein and Norway through the EEA Grants. http://frontiers-of-solitude.org/
_______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list NetBehaviour@netbehaviour.org http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
