[aha] Fwd:[ann] VideoArtWorld Bulletin> TINA B. 08 - FORMS OF ENGAGEMENT

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VideoArtWorld - the imagery planet


Sep. 25 2008

The third edition of TINA B - This Is Not Another Bienial - Week of events

TINA B 08
Sep. 25 2008 - Oct. 15 2008

FORMS OF ENGAGEMENT - Curators: Micaela Giovannotti, Rosanna Musumeci, 
Yukiko Ito, Blanca de la Torre, Viktor Misiano, Marek Tomin, the 
Greyzone Collective.

Janovskeho 23
Prague, Czech Republic
+420 774 155 591
www.tina-b.com

	

The third edition of TINA B. – The Prague Contemporary Art Festival, 
strives to combine the creative energy of the cultural scene in Central 
and Eastern Europe with emerging talents and trends from around the 
world. The festival is organised by Prague’s Galerie Vernon and held 
under the auspices and with the support of the Ministry of Culture of 
the Czech Republic and the City of Prague. Tina B. 2007 has already 
featured more than 70 artists from over 15 countries.

Adopting the leitmotif FORMS OF ENGAGEMENT, TINA B. 2008 focuses on the 
relationships between art and society, exploring the role of 
contemporary art, artists and artistic practice as socio-cultural agents 
that not only provide a critique of social order, but also serve a 
direct, positive and symbiotic social function on both a local and 
global level.

TINA B. presents artworks that employ the new and innovative artistic 
media generated by digital and mobile technologies, as well as focusing 
on art in public space. The festival will feature light art, artworks 
with an essential active light component (projection, installation or 
neon), as well as focusing on the phenomenon if street art with a 
surprising and original approach. While the light art section will 
literally “throw new light” on various exterior and interior locations 
in Prague, the street art section will interconnect the energy of the 
urban environment with the contemporary art scene and provide space for 
artists working on the margins of art genres.

The third edition’s focus on the ways in which art engages with 
individuals and society is all the more pertinent in the year of the 
40th anniversary of the momentous events of 1968, which had a major 
impact on society and politics throughout the globe, as well as on 
Czechoslovakia in particular. TINA B. 2008 feels honoured to be able to 
make at least a small contribution to the commemoration of an 
anniversary that is a strong symbol of liberty and free thinking (as 
well, unfortunately, of the ill-fated imposition of political and 
military might).

ALTERNATIVE REVOLUTIONS, curated by Blanca De La Torre (supported by 
VideoArtWorld)

With her section Alternative Revolutions focusing on video art, curator 
Blanca de la Torre encompasses a series of works that could be seen as a 
subversion of the classical concept or behaviour of Revolution.

Taking Marshall Berman's ideas about understanding modern society in an 
open way (All That Is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience of Modernity, 
1982), de la Torre applies its core ideas to the concept of revolution, 
understanding it in a more expansive way. Therefore, we can see all 
sorts of political, intellectual, social and quotidian revolutions as 
part of one dialectical process, and to develop creative interplay among 
them, enlarging our vision of our own experience and giving our daily 
lives a new resonance and depth.

Participating artists include Katarina Zdjelar (Serbia/Netherlands), 
Eugenio Ampudia (Spain), Montse Arbelo and Joseba Franco (Spain), 
Avelino Sala (Spain), Cristina Lucas (Spain), PSJM (Spain), Brody Condon 
(US), Ana Prvacki (Serbia/Singapore), David Maroto (Spain), Jenny 
Marketou (Greece) and Johanna Billing (Sweden).

VIDEOCRACY, curated by Micaela Giovannotti (supported by Woolo Productions)

Wooloo Productions and its brainchild, Wooloo.org, questions issues of 
national identity and contemporary social structure, utilizing various 
forms of political engagement and professional collaborative 
undertakings. Through the web based artistic platform of Wooloo.org, 
Wooloo Productions launched an open call for international artists to 
submit videos on the theme of Rebranding Acts and to participate in the 
exhibition taking place in Prague, thus opening the dialogue to a wider 
audience and acting as a democratic messenger in the global art world. 
To even further echo the curatorial collaboration, Wooloo Productions 
presents a strategic political campaign with the title Defending 
denmark. The intentional lower case spelling does not refer to the 
specific nation but rather signifies the general notion of increasingly 
non-specific cultural and political identity in contemporary life.

Rebranding Acts is an investigation into cultural identity in an age of 
global migration. The project asks artists to look closely at the 
ongoing production of "nationality" in their home countries and to 
examine the ways in which this public narrative includes certain 
individuals and groups - while excluding others.

The REBRANDING ACTS project then encourage artists to perform and 
document acts that aims to “rebrand” the national identity in question, 
exploring questions of cultural identity in a time where national 
belonging is becoming an increasingly discussed topic in political 
debates throughout the world. Facing the challenges of an increasingly 
globalized economy, combined with internal demographic questions such as 
the issue of aging populations, and a growing number of immigrants and 
refugees, a large number of nation states are currently undergoing vast 
transformations. Often, these transformations include a strong rise in 
new forms of xenophobia, fueled by the media and capitalized upon by 
populist political parties.