ARTLAND

ART LINE - YES!!

Art Line - the application for the EU-programme South Baltic Cross-Border Programme was granted a positive decision on September 29^th 2010.

An application to EU, South Baltic Cross-Border Programme.

Project period: October 2010 – October 2013 (and future plans)

Artland has been the project manager of the application, starting up and managing contacts, arranging seminars in co-operation with partners and written the application.

”- The Baltic Sea does not divide us, it connects us”

Prof. Zenon Ciesielski during a lecture about the historic relations between Poland and Sweden, Laznia April 16th 2009.

“- Eliminate borderlines”

Robert Mazurkiewicz talks about the South Baltic Cross Border Cooperation Programme in Gdansk, April 16th 2009.

Department of Regional Development and Spatial Planning i Gdansk.

Art Line will…

…Create networks and structures in the arts and academy to strengthen the intercultural dialogue, knowledge, understanding, tolerance and common identity in the South Baltic area.

…Develop joint cross-border events and projects on partner institutions, on the ferry between Poland and Sweden and on an interactive digital platform open day and night.

…Show art projects both in our everyday public living-room and in virtual and digital space.

….Experiment with digital media, technology and arts.

…Arrange workshops, seminars, public events and exhibitions.

…Produce concepts for art- and cultural travelling in the regions and on the ferry between Gdynia-Karlskrona.

…Interact with people in the streets and online and deepen the public understanding and interest in art.

Project partners

Laznia Center for contemporary art, CCA Gdansk www.laznia.pl

Gallery EL, Elblag www.galeria-el.pl

Gdansk City Gallery, Gdansk www.ggm.gda.pl

NCK, Baltic Sea Cultural Center www.nck.org.pl

Kunsthalle Rostock, Rostock

Blekinge Museum, Lead Partner www.blekingemuseum.se

Kalmar Konstmuseum/Art museum www.kalmarkonstmuseum.se

Ronneby Kulturcentrum www.ronneby.se

Karlskrona Konsthall www.karlskrona.se/konsthall

Blekinge Tekniska Högskola, Blekinge Institute of Technology www.bth.se

Associated partners:

Kaliningrad Contemporary Art Centre, Kaliningrad www.ncca.ru/kaliningrad

Vilnius Art Academy, Lithuania

Stena Line

Region Blekinge

Experimental Digital Art Platform

What can public art become if we connect the digital with “the real”?

The Experimental Digital Arena Platform is a platform for continual exchange, artist’s commissions, seminars, real-time screenings and a combination of exhibitions in physical, virtual and digital space. It is a co-operation between artists, the academy, art institutions and art- and technology-experts.

The Storytelling Project “Telling the Baltic” will be a co-operation between artists, cultural workers and academics and sea travellers - people whose jobs are connected to the sea, such as mariners and their families, fishermen, shipyard workers, naval officers etc. who normally do not have a contact with culture in their everyday life.

The Experimental Digital Arena Platform intends to explore experimentation, innovation and artistic practises in new media through seminars and workshops in both countries. Seminars will include lectures, demonstrations and presentations by artists, teachers and researchers, generating ideas for exhibitions in physical and virtual locations. 

The project will support cross-cultural education, research and development within the interdisciplinary fields. Collaborative exchange and interaction through web-casts, online discussion forums and virtual worlds will be some of our tools. Pre- and post-seminars assure that data is available for future research, collaboration and development.

“Telling the Baltic” starts by collecting stories from ‘sea travellers’. The stories will be written down and fragments will be published in various media such as film, audio and text on a public portal/web site as a central node, to create an interest among inhabitants. There will be a call for sea travellers in media and stories will be collected during several workshops. We will bring together researchers of different disciplines with professionals in the cultural sector and other interested parties.

The collected stories form a cross-cultural memory bank and will become a source of inspiration for artists who will work together in a long workshop and use the stories for re-interpretation in art projects and making the stories possible to be seen from new and unexpected perspectives.

A final presentation of these art projects will take the form of a mixed media exhibition, which will be presented in Poland, in Sweden and on the digital platform.

The original stories will be preserved in the collection of museums to ensure the stories’ future accessibility to the broad public. The possible outcomes of the archive that is created are vaster than envisaged here, and it could become an important historical source for future study.

Cross-media and Public space

This component consist of art in digital space in combination with physical/”real” public space. All projects have a clear connection to the digital/technical/new media-sphere and investigate the relation between the digital-physical in a cross-media perspective.

During workshops/laboratories cutting-edge techniques will be used, serving as a meeting-place for innovation between art and technology. The history and identity of the regions will be taken into consideration in the works, which has ties back to different kinds of collaborations between art and industry.  

Projects are developed from technology/new media/digital space and then developed to be made into “real” three-dimensional art works for public space or prototypes. Examples can be 3D-modelling, 3D scanners, WaterJet-cutting – all which can be learned, prepared and sketched up in a digital environment.

We will arrange public events with screenings, experiments and interactive works in the field in public space. All these events will also be visible on the digital art platform and open access.

Art Line will arrange seminars to share knowledge about how to work with the digital/technical/new media art in public space.

The role of art in public space for the citizens will be examined when artists are invited to challenge our cultural heritage and traditions: Can one revitalize a run-down area, housing-areas or the country-side? Who has the power over public space? How can artists develop alternative strategies to work? 

Art Line will show that art in public space can be temporary installations like interventions, new media, screenings on buildings, actions - how different kind of events can be used to communicate and interact with the inhabitants.

Aims and background

We want to use public space as our arena and platform for meeting the inhabitants of the region in their everyday environments - use both physical and digital space. By temporary actions that involves people in housing areas, countryside, cultural heritage sites, working-places, as well as in their virtual and digital living-room, the internet, we intend to surprise. Participation, interaction and possibilities to influence for the inhabitants is hence possible. Who decides upon public space?

In developing an intercultural dialogue, art and culture is a tool to get to know and understand each other, which in its turn is a condition for a good functioning co-operation. We want to change the notion of art as being an eternal bronze-statue depicting history, to something that is closer to relations, experimentation, new media, storytelling and the everyday life of people. Our common history, different developments and practises will cross-fertilize the committed partners.

Art Line wants to initiate, develop and strengthen sustainable networks in contemporary art, digital media, technology and cultural heritage between the art institutions, museums, academies, tech-laboratories and artists. Workshops, interdisciplinary seminars and research will be our tools to encourage experiments, cross-border and multi-disciplinary co-operations. Processes and art works will be visible on an experimental digital platform, in a joint catalogue, in open public space and on the institutions. The artists’ knowledge, new perspectives and skills to give form are essential for the projects.

Despite the close geography and possibilities to travel and transport in the South Baltic area there is no professional network and co-operation between the art institutions. Art Line aims to change this in a long-term co-operation. Through pilot-projects we will try new concepts; exchange knowledge and best practices. 

We want to raise the importance of art and culture as important factors for the growth in the regions - for economic growth, for the benefits of the inhabitants, for tourists and for the growth of understanding and tolerance between our regions. Cultural tourism in our regions is related to historical heritage, in Art Line we will work with contemporary questions having the history as a springboard.

Our common problems in attracting a younger audience and with the socio-economic differences still prevailing in our regions, made us focus on art in public space, in the cities and in the digital/virtual meeting-places to reach people on an everyday basis. One goal is to see a strengthened role and capability of public space when public space is shrinking, as semi-public space like shopping-galleries expands and consumer-marketing grows. Internet can be an anonymous and hostile arena; we aim at creating a platform for cultural exchange and serious contacts.

Seminars, study-visits and work-meetings

Autumn 2008 and spring 2009

A two-day seminar in Gdansk, one work-meeting in Karlskrona and several pre-studies and study-visits in both Poland and Sweden has been made during autumn, spring and summer. Research in needs, defining common problems and to hear more about common history and culture has been the main focus. Resources, possibilities and dreams of the institutions are mapped. An agenda on how to work further has been made and developed into tangible projects.

PP from seminars