Activities – Page 2

At the heart of community

Exhibition

Melitopol Museum of Local Lore | Ukraine
September 27 – November 29, 2015

Exhibition At the heart of community sums up the project of the same name initiated by Open Place (Kyiv) and the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw (Warsaw) and realized in collaboration with Municipal Museum of Local Lore (Melitopol). The main goal of which was an attempt to identify an effective model of socially oriented cultural organization and testing of certain aspects of this model in the Melitopol museum of Local Lore.

From March to September 2015, there were a series of meetings (lectures, workshops, working sessions) in the museum aimed to establish the direct links between the museum and the local community, with the widest possible audience involvement in the process of studying the links between the development of cultural institutions and the development of society. Visitors became active participants in the process of rethinking the role of the museum in the life of the community, as well as their own role in the formation and development of the institution. As a result of the sessions were collected a variety of materials from diagram of the connections, video and photo documentation that illustrate the creative process during the sessions to the art objects, created both the invited experts and the participants themselves.

Among the most intriguing works on the exhibition, there were the pieces proposed by participants from the local community, representing the alternative to the permanent exhibition of the museum. These materials, along with archival documents from the personal file of the museum, telling about its history, formed the narrative of the exhibition.

Works: Mark Isaac + Gabriela Bulisova, Lyubov Alekseeva, Galina Bysha, Sasha Borodina, Valentina Ermak, Natalya Kidalova, Natalya Krasko, Larion Lozovoy, Denis Miroshnik. Curators: Yuri Kruchak, Yulia Kostereva.

Migration in Transition

Exhibition

Flux Faxtory | Long Island City, New York
November 15 – 20th, 2018

The exhibition Migration in Transition presented two volumes of research: Fresh Market Archive and a publication titled SOURCE.. An archive is a kind of mélange – a mixing of various narratives and social compounds. Open Place has been collecting stories determined by the themes of emigration, violations of employee and human rights, patriarchal control over women, xenophobia, self-identification and identity, and other precarious conditions. The publication SOURCE is a collection of interviews of people and groups who are actively challenging the political status-quo regarding the status of marginalized people and other difficult political issues, and who have visions of proactive tactics on how to address them.

The works in Migration in Transition included materials gathered from Open Place’s international research as well as stories collected during their residence in New York.

Migration and challenges that arise because of migration, was the starting point of Open Place’s research. They began to understand migration as a process of transition, which is fundamental to so much of contemporary life. People migrate between identities, countries, languages, economic realities, genders, political beliefs, contexts. Migration in Transition is an attempt to build bridges through disparate experiences, and create a source of trust and solidarity. Migration in Transition is a collaborative environment and the place for reflection.

The goal of Migration in Transition was to record diverse experiences in one expansive text, and to create a political and social document collectively. This exhibition presented Open Place’s ongoing goal to bring together different perspectives into a universal message, offering strategies and tactics that we can all access.

This is the Future Before it Happened

Exhibition

The Glendale College Art Gallery | Glendale
February – March, 2009

“The past is never exhausted in its virtualities, insofar as it is always capable of giving rise to another reading, another context, another framework that will animate it in different ways.” – Elizabeth Grosz

Artwork by Jeff Cain, Krysten Cunningham, Tom Dale, Veaceslav Druta, Adam Frelin, Olexander Gnilitsky, Vlatka Horvat, Tim Hyde, Yuliya Kostereva + Yuriy Kruchak, Nebojsa Milikic, Maarten Vanden Eynde, and Angie Waller. Curated by Julie Deamer, Director, Outpost for Contemporary Art

This is the Future before it Happened plays with the fixity of time and how one moves through it. Rather than thinking of time as a linear progression, the title suggests an elliptical oscillation that allows mental projections from the present to the past and into the future in a start-and-stop dynamic.

This exhibition concludes two years worth of artist residencies and exchanges sponsored by Outpost for Contemporary Art. Over half of the included artists are presenting new work developed during their residencies in Los Angeles or while on exchange in Kyiv, Ukraine. This exhibition is an opportunity to bring this work together alongside that of other artists whose work enhances the exhibition’s themes.

Publication

The 7th of November

Intervention

November 7, 2009
Conches – Geneva, Switzerland

Transforming the methods of political activism, the artists use mass media tools to invite the citizens of Geneve and the guests of the city to take part in an artistic intervention on November 7th (the anniversary of the October Revolution – an official holiday in the Soviet Union). The people were invited to join the intervention at any point of its conduction, yet in a joint effort covering the distance, or part of it, between Villa Lombard, Conche, situated in Geneve’s suburbs to Place des Nations, Genève, situated down town.

The statue of Broken Chair on Place des Nations was the final destination of the route. The purpose of the journey was a renovation of the absent part (a broken leg) of the chair with the help of new media – bags filled with newspapers for the Swiss elite real estate advertising. Appropriating the language of the «civil movement», the intervention explores the role of public space as well as the art objects’ function within it.

Selected video screening:

Athens Digital Arts Festival
Video program “On Public Space”
Curated by Agricola de Cologne
Diplareios School, 3 Theatre Square, 10552, Athens, Greece
May 21-24, 2015

Vetlanda Museum
Cologne Art & Moving Images Awards
Kyrkogatan 31, 574 31 Vetlanda, Sweden
August – September 2013

Detmold International Shortfilm Festival
Video program “Art & the City”
Curated by Agricola de Cologne
Detmold, Germany
31 May – 9 June, 2013

CCA Tbilisi / Georgia
Video program “Art & the City”
Curated by Agricola de Cologne
Center for Contemporary Art. Tbilisi. Georgia
16-17-18, May 2013

Aferro Gallery
Cologne Art & Moving Images Awards
73 Market St. 07102, Newark, NJ, USA
February 23, – March 30, 2013

700is Reindeerland Experimental Film Festival
Video program “Art & the City”
Curated by Agricola de Cologne
Nordic House, Reykjavik, Iceland
Saturday, February 9, 2013, from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m.

Kunstvlaai: Festival of Independents
Exposure – “Local is the new global”
Curated by Yuriy Kruchak
Amsterdam, Netherlands
November 23 – December 2, 2012

Euroshorts Film Festival
Video program «The Best of “Art & the City”»
Curated by Agricola de Cologne
Gdansk, Poland
November 21-25, 2012

Art;Screen Fest
Video program “Art & the City”
Curated by Agricola de Cologne
Orebro, Sweden
October 4-7, 2012

Ionian International Digital Film Festival
Video program «The Best of “Art & the City”»
Curated by Agricola de Cologne
Lefkas, Greece
September 15-22, 2012

International University in Imagination (I.U.I)
Exhibition – “Let’s Play”
Curated by Jin Sup Yoon, Yongim Kim
“Space Radio M”, Seoul, South Korea
August 04 – August 12, 2012

Ares Film & Media Festival
Video program “Art & the City”
Curated by Agricola de Cologne
Siracusa, Italy
July – August, 2012

The VideoBabel Festival
Video program “Art & the City”
Curated by Agricola de Cologne
Cusco, Peru
July 18, 2012

META ART CENTER CAMBODIA
Video program “Freedom of Memory”
Curated by Agricola de Cologne
Nico Mesterharm, Director Street 264, #6, Sangkat Chaktomuk Khan Daun Penh, Phnom Penh, Kingdom of Cambodia
July 14, 2012. from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m.

One Shot – International Film Short Film Festival
Video program “The Best of “Art & the City”
Curated by Agricola de Cologne
Armenian Center For Contemporary Experimental Art, Armenia, Yerevan
May 17-24, 2012

Urban Culture and Fire Festival
Video program “Art & the City”
Curated by Agricola de Cologne
Stadium “Tractor”, Belarus, Minsk
May 19-20, 2012

Athens International Video Art Festival
Video program “Art & the City”
Curated by Agricola de Cologne
Greece, Athens
May 2012

Festival Internacional de la Imagen
Video program “Art & the City | The Best of Cologne oFF VII”
Curated by Agricola de Cologne
Teatro Los Fundadores, Museo de Arte de Caldas, Colombia, Manizales
April 18, 2012, from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m.

CeC – Carnival of e-Creativity
Video program “Memory | Velvet Underground”
Curated by Agricola de Cologne
Sattal, India
February 24-26, 2012

BEFF06 – 6th Bangkok Experimental Film Festival
Video program “Seasons of Memory”
Curated by Agricola de Cologne
Goethe Institute Bangkok, Bangkok, Thailand
February 1, 2012, from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m.

Cinema Perpetuum Mobile Film Festival
Video program “Arte & the City”
Curated by Agricola de Cologne
Belarus, Minsk
January 13, 2012, from 10 p.m. to 11 p.m.

Modern Art Research Institute
Exhibition – “Ten Years”
Curated by Gleb Vysheslavsky
Kyiv, Ukraine
December 13, 2011 – January 16, 2012

Media Fest
Video program “Arte & the City 1”
Curated by Agricola de Cologne
Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana Xochimilco, Mexico City, Mexico
November 14, 2011, from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m.

ExTeresa Arte Actual
Video program “Arte & the City 1: Mirrors”
Curated by Agricola de Cologne
Mexico City, Mexico
November 10, 2011, from 8 p.m. to 8.40 p.m.

WATERPIECES Contemporary Art & Videoart Festival
Video program “Mirrors”
Curated by Agricola de Cologne
Art Center NOASS, Riga, Latvia
Friday, September 09, 2011, from 8.30 p.m. to 9.30 p.m.

Shams – Cultural Center
Video program “Mirrors”
Curated by Agricola de Cologne
Beirut, Lebanon
Wednesday, August 31, 2011, from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m.

Projector 2011-4º – International Video Art Festival
Video program “Art & the City. Gesture of Generosity”
Curated by Agricola de Cologne
OffLimits Gallery, Madrid, Spain
Thursday, July 14, 2011, from 8.30 p.m. to 9.30 p.m.

CologneOFF 2011
Video program “Europe: Ex Soviet Union”
Curated by Agricola de Cologne
Rajatila Gallery, Tampere, Finland
Saturday, May 28, 2011, from 9 p.m. to 10 p.m.

NCCA – National Center for Contemporary Art
Video program “Europe: Ex Soviet Countries”
Curated by Agricola de Cologne
St.Petersburg, Russia
Saturday, May 21, 2011, from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m.

TimiShort Film Festival
Video program “Art & the City”
Curated by Agricola de Cologne
CINEMA STUDIO, Timisoara, Romania
Thursday, May 5, 2011, from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m.

Supermarket art fair 2011
Video program “Crossing the Dimensions”
Curated by Yuriy Kruchak
Kulturhuset, Stockholm, Sweden
February 18-20, 2011

Modern Art Research Institute
Video program “Contemporary Ukrainian Media Art”
Curated by Maria Kulikovskaya
Kyiv, Ukraine
Wednesday, 14 July 2010, from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.

Subbotnik

Intervention

October 3, 2009
Conches, Switzerland

When visitors enter the Conches garden, they see an immense carpet of flowers which seems to have been planted by the city parks and gardens department. The pattern in the garden beds is indecipherable at ground level but when viewed from the top floor of nearest house it falls into place as the head of Lenin.

Floral pictures are a long-standing tradition, and are still popular today. The people of Geneva were invited to come to the park on 3 October 2009 for the first Switzerland subbotnik to plant the flowers. Volunteer workers from all social backgrounds had time to mix and talk about art and culture while they were working the soil.

Selected video screening:

Kunstvlaai: Festival of Independents
Exposure – “Local is the new global”
Curated by Yuriy Kruchak
Amsterdam, Netherlands
November 23 – December 2, 2012

Fine Art Film Festival Szolnok
Video program “Once There Was Art”
Curated by Agricola de Cologne
Tisza Cinema – Room “B”, Szolnok, Hungary
Friday, October 12, 2012, from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m.

International University in Imagination (I.U.I)
Exhibition – “Let’s Play”
Curated by Jin Sup Yoon, Yongim Kim
“Space Radio M”, Seoul, South Korea
August 04 – August 12, 2012

Now & After 12. Video Art Festival Moskow
Video program “The Best of “Art & the City”
Curated by Agricola de Cologne
Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Russia, Moscow
May 24 – June 10, 2012

CeC – Carnival of e-Creativity
Video program “Memory | Velvet Underground”
Curated by Agricola de Cologne
Sattal, India
February 24-26, 2012

Modern Art Research Institute
Exhibition – “Ten Years”
Curated by Gleb Vysheslavsky
Kyiv, Ukraine
December 13, 2011 – January 16, 2012

Visual Culture Research Center
Exhibition – «Labour Show»
Curatorial team «HUDRADA»
Kyiv, Ukraine
November 17, 2011 – December 2, 2011

WATERPIECES Contemporary Art & Videoart Festival
Video program “Freedom of Expression”
Curated by Agricola de Cologne
Art Center NOASS, Riga, Latvia
Friday, September 09, 2011, from 9.30 p.m. to 10.30 p.m.

CologneOFF 2011
Video program “Europe: Ex Soviet Union”
Curated by Agricola de Cologne
Rajatila Gallery, Tampere, Finland
Saturday, May 28, 2011, from 9 p.m. to 10 p.m.

NCCA – National Center for Contemporary Art
Video program “Europe: Ex Soviet Countries”
Curated by Agricola de Cologne
St.Petersburg, Russia
Saturday, May 21, 2011, from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Supermarket art fair 2011
Video program “Crossing the Dimensions”
Сurated by Yuriy Kruchak
Kulturhuset, Stockholm, Sweden
February 18-20, 2011

Modern Art Research Institute
Video program “Contemporary Ukrainian Media Art”
Сurated by Maria Kulikovskaya
Kyiv, Ukraine
Wednesday, 14 July 2010, from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.

May Day

Intervention

May 1, 2009
Vienna, Austria

An intervention May Day shows how a space in the city park can be transformed after a pop concert. Taking a concept of invisible mental theater as a starting point, the intervention establishes connections between popular culture and mass consumption, and analyses the nature of contemporary society.

Using past events and objects – plastic glasses, packages, plates, bottles, left behind after a concert in Prater Park, Vienna, the artists initiate a game aimed to transform the viewers of the concert from the users of mass culture into creators of authentic culture based on personal mentality. Reorganizing the events in this particular way, the intervention gives us an example of how an artistic intrusion can help individuals find release from their common routines and patterns.

Start Time

Interventions

October 24 – 26 , 2008
Kyiv, Ukraine

The narrative of a Post-soviet park, its eclectic structure, became a starting point of the series of interventions Start Time on the territory of Kyiv Hydropark. An idea developing the park together was a leitmotif of the events. The challenge was to find a balance – a system of human interaction with the exterior of the park, with its past, present and future culture, in the self-organization of leisure activities by different social groups. We invited people with visual impairments and young Ukrainian artists to cooperate, as well as residents and visitors to Kiev who we reached through the mass media. Those who wished to take part built on the territory of the “Hydropark ” an artistic platform with both physical and intellectual manifestations. About fifty people – representatives of different social strata – cooperated on a program of artistic and social activity. We presented a number of artefacts, and identified several places that epitomized past and present culture of the park. Participants were invited on the basis of these objects and places, having created or transformed them as necessary, to reveal other, hidden meanings, or to determine new meanings. The result of this experiment was a series of interrelated, interpenetrating time-based events – consisting of objects, performances, happenings and sporting competitions, the course of development, and evaluation of which were determined by participants themselves. Work became the medium, uncovering the hidden meanings of the park.

Between the Vulnerable Territory and the Utopia

Workshop

October 27, 2018
New York, USA

Workshop Between the Vulnerable Territory and the Utopia emphasizes the importance of collaboration and solidarity, beyond borders, language and ethnic groups. Participants design a map of vulnerable territory based on their context, beliefs and experiences. Then together, we analyze the map, and strategize resilient strategies towards transforming vulnerable territories into safe and inspiring spaces. At the end the workshop participants, individually or collaboratively, design maps which imagine territories of possibilities. With collaborative facilitation by the artists, some renewed awareness and imagination, the vulnerable territory become the utopian territory – imaginary, but not necessarily unreal.

Workshop Between the Vulnerable Territory and the Utopia has been conceived in collaboration with EMIRETH HERRERA – independent curator and professor at Universidad Autonoma de Coahuila in Mexico

Migrations of bodies and words

Workshop

October 20-29, 2017
Warsaw, Poland

For five days of the workshop Migrations of bodies and words we shared stories, experiences, poems and reflections on the situation of people of a foreign origin living in Poland. Poetry and linocut were constituted our means of communication, collective action and designing a social change. To what extent may non-citizens count on protection on the grounds of employee rights and human rights in Poland? By which tools does the patriarchal capitalism wield control over women of a foreign origin and to what forms of labour does this capitalism sentence those women? In which acts of physical and psychological abuse does Polish xenophobia manifest itself? What is the reason behind the immigrants’ problems with self-identification and difficulties in entering close relations with the Poles? In what way does the capitalism create the precarious condition of a human being while interfering with their material and social status, as well as their physical and affective domain? And finally, how to find a field of social solidarity with the people excluded due to their origin?

Each of the meetings left a mark in the form of a poetic phrase which was handed over to the participants of the next meeting in order to be cut. As a result, a poem was created as a record of common experiencing and meetings. At the same time the linocut became a manifesto of a collective action.

The workshop Migrations of bodies and words was initiated by artists Yuriy Kruchak and Yulia Kostereva and realized in collaboration with poets Maja Staśko, Michał Kasprzak and Aneta Kamińska, as well as with the visitors of the exhibition “Gotong Royong. Things we do together”.

Exhibition

October 19, 2017 – January 14, 2018
Center for contemporary art U-jazdowski
Warsaw, Poland

Curators: Marianna Dobkowska and Krzysztof Łukomski
Architecture: Maciej Siuda

Open Place worked with economic migrants from beyond Poland‘s eastern border, Belarus and Ukraine. They conducted extensive research, led workshops and meetings, and recorded dozens of stories to make a series of posters. The documentation of their work was shown on the exposition, and their linocut workshop operated in the exhibition space as a place to meet, discuss and work together on a shared poem about the situation of immigrants and its representation by the linocut technique.

The immigrant condition observed by Open Place paradoxically has not changed in years and is free of cultural contexts. The first theme that emerged in the research was the search for a better future, and how much a change in context makes it possible. The second was the physical labour performed by people arrived from Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine. It is represented here in the form of shared creative work, during which the discussants will address the key themes and develop a joint position. The themes that emerged during the research were psychological violence, the instability of one’s position in society, restoring one’s agency and defining individual identity, violations of labour laws and human rights, corporatizing relations among people. Can the group formulate a joint manifesto, develop a shared hierarchy of values and establish priorities over individual preferences?

The project attempts to go beyond context and personal experiences to create a universal manifesto understandable to the grand public. It explores and broadens the model developed collectively as a series of impulses coming from different sources, which build up into a joint communiqué in the course of the discussion. The communal work, in which all visitors were invited to take part, aimed to integrate problems, themes, controversial issues and various points of view into a single work. The artists have stated their goal as building a universal dialogue tool that can strengthen civic engagement.

Exhibition “Gotong Royong. Things we do together”

Culture as a method for change

Workshop

May 10, 2018
Poltava, Ukraine

The workshop Culture as a method for change worked with the range of issues faced by cultural workers with aim to elaborate together the possible solutions.

The participants were introduced to available practical methods and tools used by cultural institutions in Sweden, Belarus and across Ukraine to drive the development of their audiences and the local community.

We together with the participants reviewed the examples that inspire us. This included looking at curatorial practices characterised by inclusiveness and democracy, promote interaction with different age and social groups, and support interdisciplinary collaborations. By combining the case studies, personal experience, and use the method, introduced during the workshop, the participants had developed the propositions that may be used in work at cultural institutions such as museums, as well as by individual cultural workers.

The workshop Culture as a method for change was initiated by Kultura in Motion and Open Place, as part of the Creative Force programme supported by the Swedish Institute.

Events in the frame of the workshop

Lecture

Anna Karpenko

Curatorial practices and ways of social interactions

May 10, 2018

Lecture

Anneli Bäckman

Shifting perspectives in contemporary art practices and work in communities

May 10, 2018