Heinrich Böll Stiftung Brandenburg

Time future in the time past

Now that Batumi has regained new life and importance, old pieces of art and artworks are being reassessed and recognized. Café Fantasy is a work by George Chakhava (an architect best-known for his former Roads Ministry building in Tbilisi, Georgia, recently published in Frédéric Chaubin’s “Cosmic Communist Constructions Photographed”). Together with participants, the curator of the project brought one building in Batumi back to life for only one day and filled it with memories and symbols of her childhood. more»

Pirimze

- A presentation of the research phase and lecture series to a Georgian audience in collaboration with the architect Levan Asabashvili (Urban Reactor, http://urbanreactor.blogspot.com)

The Pirimze building was built in 1971 in Soviet Georgia. The six-storey building provided working space for all kinds of handicrafts. Basically everything could be repaired there: shoes, watches, glasses, jewellery, bags, suitcases, belts, hair dryers, kitchen machines, etc.. Knives and scissors were sharpened, hair was cut and shoes were polished. Tailors and sewers of fur and leather created individual garments for customers. Pirimze was well-known and its services were used by everyone in the city and the surrounding villages.

XVIII. Rohkunstbau POWER

- The artistic content of ROHKUNSTBAU XVIII revealed many faces of the transformative aspects of “Power” as derived from the Alberich theme in Richard Wagner’s “Das Rheingold”, part one of the four-part German saga of the Nibelungenlied that was the first of an intended four-part exhibition cycle. The intention of the first part was to show the relevance of power today, its forms and manifestations, which might be either affirmative and/or coercive in their application. It dealt with issues of human creative energy since they are linked immediately and symbolically to the political, economic, social, and cultural forms of power and influence that operate in the world of today. more»

DRIFTING IDENTITIES (Exhibition & Colloquium)

- DRIFTING IDENTITIES is focused on researching, documenting and archiving the identity phenomena located in the past and the present of post-socialist societies. It was designed to contextualize the identity tendencies two decades after the dissolution of the Eastern bloc. more»

STEAUA

- Performance by Tatiana Fiodorova

Placed in the context of the development of market relations and of the emergence of the neoliberal economy and of contradictory and complex transformations lasting two decades, this performance is a metaphor for the adaptation of the former Union (the USSR) and of the Soviet people to the new realities and the new standards. more»

Exhibition "Common Identity?"

- The aim of COMMON IDENTITY? is to reflect the issues of heritage, identity and communication in European contemporary art practices. It uses various media and artistic strategies in an attempt to answer whether being part of the European Union justifies claims to possess a common European identity. more»

Urban Dreams

- An exhibition/archive/library of European artistic urban research at the Center for Contemporary Art, the Ancient Bath and interventions in public spaces of Plovdiv.

URBAN DREAMS invites the audience to explore the city as a space full of opportunities to employ, model and perceive.

Dimentions of Cultural Identity and post-Soviet ways of Modernization in Armenia

- In the series of seminars Hrach Bayadyan gives an overall summary of his recent articles that concern the issues of Eastern Armenian cultural identity. The main stimulus behind this work has been the wish to understand the complex post-Soviet situation with its cultural, social, and political aspects. This desire has led to an interest in the central themes and some decisive developments of the past two centuries that have been, although fragmentarily, reflected in his works. more»

LOVE of POWER of LOVE...

- Veronika Tzekova is an artist, urban practitioner and creative strategist. Her work concentrates on articulating and conceptualizing in the fields of art and design, and in the broad spectrum of public spaces and urban imaginaries. In the last couple of years her artistic process and production have been inspired and evolved around urban environment and the currently intense social and economic dynamics. She has employed various forms of play in her recent work as an artist and urban practitioner. Temporary urban processes and their visual expressions have interested her for a long time. At this point in her career, her field research and artistic outcomes have focused on and emerged from encounters with urban districts in different cities. more»

FLUID GROUND. Across the Black Sea on a Cargo Ship

To get in contact with the real space of the Black Sea the participants of the symposium FLUID GROUND went on a cruise connecting two central locations: Bulgaria – latest EU- and still Non-member of the Schengen treaty- and the southern Caucasus – the historic and geopolitical threshold between Asia and Europe. more»

"Atlantis 11" at the Venice Biennale 2011

- Hundreds of art enthusiasts were attracted by the exhibition "Atlantis 11" in Venice. The participating partners in the Atlantis network presented their work under the theme "Power and contemporary art" at the Biennale in Venice from 1st to 5th of June 2011. The Atlantis network was situated in the Collegio Armeno, which also housed the Icelandic and Armenian pavilion. more»

ATLANTIS 11 AT THE VENICE BIENNALE 2011 - MISSING ARTIST

- Missing artist is a project that pops up as a response to the participants selected by the local authorities (Ministry of Culture) to represent the national pavilion of Moldova at the Venice Biennial. In Moldova the process was non-transparent and incomprehensible, and as a result none of the contemporary art scene artists or projects were selected. more»

ATLANTIS 11 AT THE VENICE BIENNALE 2011 - Black Garden

- The process of transformation of the national identity into a cultural identity and the rise of awareness as a political subject are of central importance to the artistic work of Archi Galentz. more»

ATLANTIS 11 AT THE VENICE BIENNALE 2011 - Rohkunstbau

- As the introduction to a four-year cycle of shows, the ROHKUNSTBAU XVIII is highlighting the subject of power in its 2011 summer exhibition - in a free interpretation taking Wagner's "Ring of the Nibelung" as its point of reference. "The Rhinegold" with its seeds of conflict in unrequited love and an overwhelming desire for power defines the context of the topics explored in the first part of the ROHKUNSTBAU Ring. In today's society, the idea of power tends to have a negative connotation, and is generally with a craving for power, suppression, manipulation or even avarice. Hardly any other concept has been discussed and interpreted in such conflicting ways. more»

ATLANTIS 11 AT THE VENICE BIENNALE 2011 - A Bulgarian Pavilion in Bulgaria

- As a partner of the ATLANTIS-network, Art Today Association, Plovdiv, invited "The Bulgarian Pavilion" project to be presented in Venice. more»

ATLANTIS 11 AT THE VENICE BIENNALE 2011 - GeoAIR

- The project 2ND CHANCE by GeoAIR curator Nini Palavandishvili presented 5 projects submitted by different artists/curators in response to an open call for participation at the 54th Venice Biennale announced by Ministry of Culture and Monument Protection of Georgia in November 2010. more»

ATLANTIS 11 AT THE VENICE BIENNALE 2011 - "I Remember Chernobyl"

- In the project "I remember Chernobyl", people from all over the world tell their personal memories about the power plant accident in Chernobyl in one to two minute long video statements. After the catastrophe on April 26th in 1986, similar events to this we can now recognize in Fukushima, there is a considerable uncertainty due to a lack of information - it took days before some information about recent happenings and their dangers for the population had been released for public dissemination. more»

ATLANTIS 11 AT THE VENICE BIENNALE 2011 - MALLdova

- The MALLDOVA film covers a series of chronicles through which the authors comment and reflect the current situation of economy, culture, public space, and other aspects of the society of the Republic of Moldova in a counter-documentary style. more»

ATLANTIS 11 AT THE VENICE BIENNALE 2011 - SPACE

- SPACE, Republic of Slovakia

"Rahova", video by David Mozny (CZ), 2010

"Luke 2. The Boy Jesus in the Temple",

"John 2, Jesus Cleanses the Temple" and

"Revelation 11, Measuring of the Temple",

HEICO

- Building on an already existing Atlantis Network of European art institutions, the project „Heritage, Identity and Communication in European Contemporary Art Practices“ (HEICO) fosters cross-border cultural exchange as well as the examination of the own identity in addition to the identity of partner countries and their political and cultural heritage. mehr»