LANDSCAPES OF DESIRE 2004 – REPORT
14th International Art Symposium
Fortress Boyen, Gizycko, Poland, 11.7.-1.8.2004
For the 14thtime the International Art Symposium invited to a transnational adventure, to exchange of ideas and mutual art practice. Artists and participants from 10 nations and 3 continents directed and participated at the workshops from painting to new media and performance. 2004 was the year that saw the opening of the borders of ten nations in Middle-Eastern Europe through their joining the EU and it was also the year in which South Africa celebrated ten years of democracy.
The Symposium LOD 2004, brought together artists and participants from these nations to generate together the „Landscapes of Desire“ whose freedom consist in not being limited by any borders at all, being rooted in the fields of personal perception of individual identity. In this way the Symposium actively promoted an exchange of communication and ideas between artists and art students from the V4 countries therewith creating a network – and also initiated an exchange between the V4 and other European and overseas nations by workshop and project participation in fine arts, new media and communication strategies.
The Symposium programme consisted of residence weeks with workshops on visual arts in an interdisciplinary environment. Over and above imparting skills in classical artistic fields, the symposium fostered experimental approaches with a focus on new media and communication. The programme consisted of studios and project oriented workshops in the fields of painting, drawing, sculpture, publishing, performance, public art, photography, video and internet.
The workshops and studios were successfully realized at the working rooms of the fortress and the PWSZ, Private Higher Educational Institute of Gizycko, which also provided an ongoing internet connection. The workshops resulted in an impressively high output of artworks in the different fields of art media which were presented to the public on a weekly basis both at the fortress and in the City of Gizycko.
The issues of the Symposium were selected by their crucial relevance in the transnational debate of the 21st century. Operating from a fortress in Poland, the symposium questioned the development of today’s fortresses and discussed these topics at the evening lectures which regularly took place at the fortress Boyen. LOD, the symposium, fully achieved its aim of creating a platform for contemporary art practices and communication, for living, knowing and doing. A forum for personal encounters, for sharing and spreading information and for learning in a transnational and interdisciplinary context.
It operated on three levels: reflection, doing and community building. In order to assure an effective management of information and communication flow and to create the unique atmosphere that the symposium participants take home and remember long afterwards, the following environments were installed at the fortress: a lecture room for the daily evening lectures seating about 80 persons / the Jonni-b-Good Bar as a vivid meeting point after the evening lectures (open until 2 a.m) / an info-lounge with art books, catalogues and magazines installed at the symposium office / the LOD REDAKTION, our press and docu centre / the reflection tent: installation of the furniture pieces designed by architect Gerngross under a garden tent.
c8400.com/mip
Josef Bares, Prague, online gallery of photos from LOD 2004 symposium, Gizycko, PL
oe1.orf.at/…
Philippe Gerlach, photography
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Participants at the KulturAXE LOD 2004 symposium, Gizycko, Poland
