XV International Art Festival INTERAKCJE
Piotrków Trybunalski, symptoms Kraków May 4-19, 2013
Organizer:
Association of Artistic Activities OFF Gallery in Piotrkow Trybunalski
Artistic curator of the XV Festival: Prof. Artur Tajber
Festival curators: Stanislaw Piotr Gajda, Doctor Gordian Piec
Contact:
SDA Gallery Off, treat ul. Sieradzka 8, 97-300 Piotrków Trybunalski
Tel. 501 575 496, 500 236 650
e-mail: gayda@piotrkow.pl, gordianoff@o2.pl
www.aspaceforliveart.org
Overall concept
The International Art Festival ?Interakcje? is the most important cyclical project organized in Poland, presenting such fields of art as performance, happening, actionism, conceptualism, contextualism as some of the most important artistic practices of the discipline broadly referred to as "live art" (live art). ?Interakcje? is a festival with a 14-year tradition, one of the oldest consistently built cyclical projects in the world. In 2013, the 15th anniversary edition of this event will be realized. ?Interakcje? show both the phenomena of already known and recognized contemporary ?live art? (primarily performance) as well as young, searching art, which often cannot be clearly classified into defined genres of art.
The 15th anniversary of the festival comes at an important time in the short history of the genre ? performance art, formed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, has reached the moment of the final generational exchange. The artists who created it from scratch are gradually passing away, and their place is taken by younger generations, molded in part on established patterns. In 2013, several anniversaries coincide, which we want to use to make a symbolic summary of both the balance of the 15 festivals and the entire sequence of time that created the current form of stock art. This is an opportunity to invite artists and creators of this culturally significant phenomenon, to have an intergenerational confrontation and ask questions about its future.
The festival's design is based on the use of symbolic anniversaries and birthdays that fall in 2013. These are:
15th Anniversary of the Festival "Interakcje";
35th anniversary of "IAM. International Artists Meeting," the first performance art festival in Poland;
90th birthday of Jan Swidzinski (b. 1923), patron of "Interaction", creator of the theoretical foundations of contextual art;
80th birthday of Stuart Brisley (born 1933), senior British performance artist;
The 70th birthday of Alastair MacLennan (b. 1943), an Irish influential performance artist who was one of the curators of "Interactions."
The 60th birthdays of four artists (born 1953), representing the generation that links its artistic initiation to the emergence of the performance art phenomenon, are: Jaap Blonk (Netherlands), Seiji Shimoda (Japan), Artur Tajber (Poland ? curator of this edition of the festival), and Roi Vaara (Finland).
Relating the composition and selection of program elements to the "anniversary" key of this anniversary edition of the Festival, is a pretext for an attempt to enter the chronology of the evolution of performance art, a desire to show the parallel process of change and succession of facts occurring in art and in the surrounding world. The realization of several seemingly separate projects within the framework of a single festival is intended to provoke discussion about the forms of transfer of patterns and experience in performance art, about changes and evolution progressing in this artistic phenomenon as successive generations of artists enter it.
The festival is built by equal, complementary presentations of an artistic and theoretical nature, called "projects." This is a departure from the organization of the festival in the classic formula of a several-day program consisting of a consecutive, daily series of relatively short author presentations. The organization of a symposium, debates with the participation of artists first and foremost, presentations of the work of artists important to the genre in the form of an exhibition, and thematic workshops are elements that complement the program of the art event, so that it constitutes a coherent and comprehensive formula of an issue-based festival, a festival that initiates a discussion of the evolution and formulas of the public functioning of art.
An important element of the festival is taking some of the events outside of Piotrków Tryb. which significantly increases its reach. So far, after the festival ended in Piotrkow, groups of artists were sent to the galleries of Warsaw, Krakow, Bielsko-Biala and other cities in cooperation with other centers. In the case of Interaction 2013, thanks to the involvement of a strong partner, the Department of Intermedia at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, it will be possible to organize important parts of the entire project (exhibition, workshops, artistic actions) in prestigious places in Krakow (Museum of Contemporary Art MOCAK, Academy of Fine Arts). Fragments or elements of these realizations will include the principle of relocation so that all parts of the project will be presented in both cities.
Media partners
TVP Kultura, magazines "Exit", "Kaleidoscope", "Art and Documentation", obieg.pl, independenceart.pl, livingallery.info, o.pl, Tydzień Trybunalski, Tygodnik 7 Dni, Radio Strefa FM.
Festival partners
Center for Artistic Activities in Piotrkow Trybunalski, Museum of Contemporary Art MOCAK in Krakow, Action Gallery in Warsaw, Association for Art and Documentation in Lodz, Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow Faculty of Intermedia.