Programme:
saturday 3.6
10.00–10.30
Welcome, Jan-Erik Lundström (Sweden), Bild-
Museet Umeå, Introduction of the contemporary
art museum in Umeå.
Introduction, Ulrika Ferm (Finland), artist and
curator, board member of Platform.
10.30–11.30
Alenka Gregoric (Slovenia) is curator for Gallery
Skuc in Ljubljana. Since 2003, Skuc Gallery has
changed from dealing with more commercial
activity into presenting more radical positions of
artists, coming out of critical or even ironical
situations, towards the actual global problems
such as migration, surveillance, urban planning,
consumerism, terrorism, etc. The artists
presented are dealing with all these issues and
are presented with different art works ranging
from new media installations and videos to
photography and drawings.
http://www.galerija.skuc-drustvo.si
who if not us
Slovenia has been labelled with different
names, which generate different geographical,
historical and political dimensions. From the
point of view of political history, Slovenia is one
of the republics of former Yugoslavia, which had
a different position in comparison to the
countries of the former Eastern bloc. For Western
countries, it is one of the countries of the former
East, of the New Europe, of the post-socialist
regime. From the geographical point of view,
the range of names widens – Central Europe,
South-Eastern Europe, Eastern Europe, the
Balkans. Most of these labels are stereotypical
representations. They speak about who we were
or who we should be. Responses to rapid
political and social changes, which occurred in
the last decade, add a special flare to the story.
The cultural atmosphere, which filters everything
that occurs, is still bound to mixed
responses.
The interest of the professional art world still
primary stems from an interest in the exotic.
Researching the unknown and the different is
still exciting enough, although there have been
numerous exhibitions where works of Eastern or
Balkan artists have been presented. Western
curators still classify according to social and
behavioural features. It is time to redefine the
space I come from or to establish its position
towards the established Western world or,
better yet, to step on the international scene by
establishing itself in the international context,
which would define its essence, thus stopping
to wait silently for the others to tell us who and
what we are.
11.30–12.00
Coffee
12.00–13.00
Cesare Pietroiusti (Italy), trained psychoanalyst
and visual artist based in Rome, is interested
in exploring peripheries of mind, neglected
thoughts and mental distances. Cesare Pietroiusti
has accepted to be the compere and Godfather
of “Out on the Edge”.
at the peripheries of thought
“Rather than changing reality, the artist proposes
to change the gaze, the point of view, the way
of interpreting reality. And sometimes he/she
can turn a difficulty – something that, most of
the time, has to do with historical/ personal
conditions – into an artwork, and this way
reconfigure the mental space. To do so, it is
necessary to use so-called divergent thinking,
to move towards the peripheries of thought,
the neglected thoughts.”
on the edge of social space
“...the artist can claim for a perfect dilettantism:
a freedom of moving among techniques and
languages, using the ones and the other instrumentally
and contextually. Trying to do so with
a collective action offers the particular opportunity
not only to create a network and a multiplication
of ideas, but also to mix and exchange
competences. An exchange with ‘similar others’
(other artists, or curators) can create ‘a group’.
An exchange with ‘different others’ (people who
come from a very different geographical or
social situation) can create a community and
therefore change a social space.”
being too close: the paranoid group
”The main difficulty for collective initiatives,
especially in marginal contexts and on small
scales, is to get out of the all-local (‘provincial’)
conflict and negativity, mostly based on
jealousy, by people who are very near and who
share the same desire to move out from that
local dimension, but who do not admit it and
charge it with fear and guilt. As with psychoanalysis,
discomfort is the main element that
activates meaning. It can usually be instrumentally
used, when someone expresses discomfort
in the context of a group and the others tend to
‘understand’, to share the feeling, to move their
identity towards that person. And often this
contributes to activate mechanisms of changing
perspective and point of view.”
13.00–14.30
Lunch
14.30–15.30
Juraj Carny (Slovak Republic), is freelance
curator since 1995; he is interested in public art,
video art, site specific installation, sound art,
light art and computer art. Since 1999, he is
curator and gallerist in SPACE Gallery (former
Priestor) for Contemporary Arts, Bratislava. He
has initiated two international networks –
Billboart Gallery Europe, www.billboart.org, and
crazycurators.org, organised four international
conferences and curated a number of
exhibitions of international and local artists.
“During my studies in Copenhagen, Denmark,
in 1996, I realised how different the international
artistic communication can be in two
small European countries such as Slovakia and
Denmark. Copenhagen was at that time the
European Cultural Capital running several
principal international exhibitions. However,
what struck me, was the fact that none of those
exhibitions presented Danish artists exclusively.
The standard exhibition practice in Slovakia was
considerably different at that time. Shortly after
the 1989 change of our political system, the
velvet revolution, determinative theorists as
well as galleries spontaneously started to look
for the character of 1990‘s art. Curators did their
best to beat the others and find new unknown
artists, but they did not work on development
of international relationships. Since Danish
artists and theorist in the past were free to
travel, communicate or study abroad, they
found it natural that activities they do today are
international. Some Slovak curators were trying
working on an international level, but without
any particular success due to lack of interest in
the west. The situation is now very different.
Artists are studying and exhibiting abroad,
communicating with curators and galleries,
participating in residencies in various countries,
producing international artworks, but - international
curators are still coming to find something
local in their works ...”
15.30–16.30
Catalin Gheorghe (Romania) is an art critic, a
theorist, and curator for Vector Association in
Iasi. The Vector Association in Iasi is a group of
young artists, philosophers and sociologists that
organizes Periferic Biennial and other events
focussing on contemporary art and culture.
Vector also organizes different exhibitions and
discussions, creating an independent cultural
infrastructure in Iasi.
http://www.periferic.org/index.html
The main ideas are to identify, edit, display
and mediate information related to artistic
and institutional critical reflection on social,
political, economical and cultural situations
and analyse the artistic and cultural situation
of the South East European countries, in the
process of transition, and of the Middle East
region, subjected to the pressures of conflicts.
Catalin Gheorge will talk about two different
artistic-curatorial, publication and archive
projects initiated by Vector Association and
dealing with such issues as peripheral networking,
engaging local cultural connections
and exchanges, mapping and researching the
context situated at the South East border of EU
(Iasi, Cluj, Bucharest, Kiev, Chisinau, Novi Sad,
Belgrade, Sofia, Istanbul etc.). Vector can be
seen as a project-platform which is redistributing
relevant information, assuring cultural
exchange and facilitating regional cultural
expertise.
16.30–17.30
Discussion
20.00
Dinner + Party
|
sunday 4.6
11.00–12.30
Sally Timmons and Susan Gogan (Ireland) are
artists, part of Via, Dublin.
Via is a three-person, Dublin based, artist-led
group that was initiated in 2001 to investigate
and facilitate the points at which cultural
practice meets the everyday. Via has formed
itself as a nucleus from which associations and
exchange occur during relevant historical contexts.
Via promote audience interaction with the
city and its inhabitants through collaboration
between artists, services and disciplines of
which the Via Workshops – a mutable, portable
activity – is part of the group’s current
programming. As part of the Via exchange
initiative, Mark Clare (Potlatch Foundation,
Dublin) will travel to Vaasa to undertake a
residency with the artists collective, Platform.
http://www.via.ie
Via founding members Susan Gogan and Sally
Timmons will discuss their interests as individual
artists in order to illustrate the ”usefulness”
of collective activity in art. The initial
motivation for setting up Via Artists Group was
the fact that artists and individuals living in
Dublin City were stimulated to comment on the
rapidly changing urban context in which they
found themselves.
Susan Gogan’s photographic practice has
developed around an awareness of the
importance of our spatial environment to the
formation and development of our (social)
relationships. In the material production of the
modern urban environment, particular values
and power structures project and inscribe
themselves into “social” spaces. French theorist
Henri Lefebvre’s critique of everyday life
identifies a lived space of resistance to these
power structures where social space is transformed
through human imagination, action,
passion and the symbolic. Entering this lived or
third space involves the disruption of oppressive
binary categorisations and designations of
identity that inform racism, stereotyping and
other forms of discrimination. Gogan intends to
discuss the usefulness of her involvement with
Via as a means to allow the artist to make
photographic representations of the subject
matter of her research through associating with
other artists who’s everyday interactions with
the real environment has allowed her to
develop her own photographic and communicative
processes.
Sally Timmons has developed a participatory
practice specific to and as a critique of
formalised cultural norms such as the museum,
the archive and mediated desire. Through her
association with Via, Timmons has developed a
time-based practice specific to each location/
environment which the artist chooses to engage
or associate herself with. Via’s ‘usefulness’ for
Timmons is that her placement in a supportive
collective has allowed the artist to bring
concepts and ideas to meet with audiences
through the construction of those audiences
in a conscious manner. For Timmons, the
process that the artist has undertaken in order
to conceive and produce work has allowed her
to build an audience specific to her personal
mode of enquiry.
Via plan to undertake a small intervention in
Vaasa during their visit for the symposium.
Information will be available on the Via website
in June...
12.30–13.00
Coffee
13.00–14.00
Francesco Ventrella (Italy) is an art historian
and curator based in Rome. He’s part of the
collective -hyphen, which, since 2004, organizes
GARBa (Young Artists Residency, Basilicata,
Italy).
blindman’s buff*
Addressing peripheral art practices and
restricted audiences.
We can re-map the “peripheral” within the
network of the audiences that a certain art
practice is addressing: this different(iated)
standpoint helps us to imagine new
communities which can point at contemporary
art as one means for the production of shared
narratives.
The English language, the one I am writing in
now, is supposed to be the lingua franca of
contemporary art, because it’s capable of
reaching the “wider audience”. But what is this
wider audience about? If the English language
allows us to confront what is distant from us,
why not try, then, to deal with proximity,
addressing new discursive practices, which are
able to talk local languages? Dialogue is the
discursive practice able to reach this goal: to
stage a dialogue with somebody, we have to
invite someone to “come closer” in order to
listen and be listened to (epistemology and
ethics of the gossip). But there are stories that
we can’t tell anyone; that’s why I want to talk
about some experiences in which the art intervention
has been addressed to a restricted
public only.
If spectacle is demagogic, and mainstream art is
elitist, should peripheral art then be the
alternative place for democracy?
*Blindman’s buff is the game in which the visual
order is obliterated (someone has to be blindfolded)
and the player who is “on” has to catch
the other players by reaching for a perceived
location following their voices.
14.00–15.00
Lunch
15.00–16.00
Vasif Kortun (Turkey) is curator at and founder of
Platform Garanti in Istanbul.
Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Center was
initiated in September 2001. Located in Beyoglu,
the most vibrant part of Istanbul, Platform acts
as a central meeting point for cultural exchange
between contemporary artists, curators and
critics. The building contains an artist archive,
research and lecture spaces, an Istanbul
residency programme and, on street level, a
gallery committed to exhibiting contemporary
art from Turkey and abroad.
http://www.platform.garanti.com.tr
Kortun will speak about his institution as one
not fulfilling the premises of a mainstream
institution nor those of an alternative institution
set out to be customized according to a
place that makes sense in Istanbul but not
necessarily anywhere else. Relevant questions to
Kortun are how to help emergent practices; how
to provide a space for discussion beyond and
above the parameters of the art world; how to
retain memory of practice without necessarily
doing the research but still safe-keeping and
providing the war footage of memory, and
finally creating a residency context in a hyperurban
setting, a residency that now expands
regionally to make a good mix between places
that are institutionally well supported, and
those that do not have any public funds.
16.00–16.30
Coffee
16.30–18.00
Discussion/summary
|
Platform is an artist–run initiative founded in
2000. Platform maintains a project room and a
residential programme in Vaasa, Finland. 
