XV INTERACTIONS International Art Festival
Piotrkow Trybunalski, symptoms Cracow May 4-19, 2013
Organizer:
Association of Artistic Activities, OFF Gallery in Piotrków Trybunalski
Art curator of the 15th Festival: Prof. Artur Tajber
Festival curators: Stanisław Piotr Gajda, doctor Gordian Bake
Contact:
SDA Galeria 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
General concept
International Art Festival? Interactions? is the most important cyclical project organized in Poland, presenting such areas of art as performance, happening, actionism, conceptualism, contextualism as one of the most important artistic practices of the discipline broadly defined as "live art". ? Interactions? is a festival with a 14-year tradition, one of the oldest consistently built cyclical projects in the world. In 2013, the 15th jubilee edition of this event will be held. ? Interactions? show both phenomena already known and recognized in contemporary? living art? (mainly performance) as well as young, seeking art, which often cannot be clearly classified as defined genres of creativity.
The festival's 15th anniversary falls at a time important for the genre's short history? performance art, shaped at the turn of the sixties and seventies, reached the moment of the final generational replacement. The artists who created it from scratch are gradually departing, and their place is taken by younger generations, formed partly on the basis of existing patterns. 2013 coincides with several anniversaries, which we want to use to symbolically summarize both the balance of 15 festivals and the entire sequence of time that created the present form of action art. It is an opportunity to invite artists and creators of this cultural phenomenon to be confronted between generations and to ask questions about its future.
The festival's design is based on the use of symbolic anniversaries and birthdays in 2013. Those are:
15th anniversary of the "Interactions" Festival;
35th anniversary of "IAM. International Artists Meeting ”, the first performance art festival in Poland;
90th birthday of Jan Świdziński (born 1923), patron of "Interakcja", creator of theoretical foundations of contextual art;
80th birthday of Stuart Brisley (born 1933), senior British performance artist;
70th birthday of Alastair MacLennan (born 1943), Irish influential performance artist who was one of the curators of Interaction;
The 60th birthday of four artists (born 1953), representing a generation that combines their artistic initiation with the creation of the phenomenon of performance art: Jaap Blonk (Netherlands), Seiji Shimoda (Japan), Artur Tajber (Poland - curator of this edition of the festival ), and Roi Vaara (Finland).
The reference to the composition and selection of program elements to the "anniversary" key of this jubilee edition of the Festival is a pretext to attempt to enter the chronology of the evolution of performance art, to show a parallel process of change and succession of facts occurring in art and in the world around it. The implementation of several seemingly separate projects as part of one festival is to provoke a discussion about the forms of transferring patterns and experience in performance art, about the changes and evolution taking place in this artistic phenomenon as new generations of artists enter it.
The festival is built of equal, mutually complementary artistic and theoretical presentations, called "projects". It is a departure from organizing the festival in the classic formula of a several-day program consisting of successive daily series of relatively short author presentations. The organization of a symposium, debates with the participation of artists, first of all, presentations of works of artists important to the genre of artists in the form of an exhibition and thematic workshops are elements that complement the program of an artistic event, so that it constitutes a coherent and comprehensive formula of a problem festival, a festival that starts a discussion on the evolution and formulas of the public functioning of art.
An important element of the festival is moving some of the events outside of Piotrków Tryb., Which significantly increases its range of influence. So far, after the conclusion of the festival in Piotrków, groups of artists were sent to the galleries of Warsaw, Kraków, Bielsko-Biała and other cities as part of cooperation with other centers. In the case of Interakcja 2013, thanks to the involvement of a strong partner of the Intermedia Department of the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, it will be possible to organize significant parts of the entire project (exhibition, workshops, artistic actions) in prestigious locations in Krakow (MOCAK Museum of Contemporary Art, Academy of Fine Arts). Fragments or elements of these implementations will be covered by the principle of relocation so that all parts of the project are 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 of Artistic Activities in Piotrków Trybunalski, Museum of Contemporary Art MOCAK in Kraków, Galeria Działań in Warsaw, Art and Documentation Association in Łódź, Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, Intermedia Department.
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