Concept

Concept of »Opening Our Closed Shops«

The three-year project »Opening Our Closed Shops« intends to strengthen the existing Eastern European Network of young artists and cultural operators who work with the Akademie Schloss Solitude and its five partners in the involved cities (Budapest, Bucharest, Novi Sad, Sofia, and Warsaw). What distinguishes the new objective and situation is that not only artists from Eastern Europe will reside at Solitude and vice versa (former fellows of the Akademie are hosted by each of the concerned residence centers), but that from now on exchanges among all six partner institutions will also be implemented. This is exactly the step where the existing connections of Solitude artists, previously interacting only with one of the partner institutions, evolve into a real network, in which free movement and exchange among all parties will be possible.

The title and topic »Opening Our Closed Shops« was developed by all partners during several meetings at Akademie Schloss Solitude. In different discussions the partners identified their common activities and interests: interdisciplinarity, working in broader cultural and political contexts, mobile platforms, publishing and support of young artists. The partners also expressed observations on the European art scene as well as on their local contexts. Similar problematic notes on the national and international level were discussed: a lack of communication and cooperation between Eastern and Western European countries, large distances between the Eastern European countries in real life, despite the seemingly close proximity in history and geography, and loose regional artistic networks.

Apart from the wish of overcoming this insularity, every single partner mentioned about their own country: the notion of “shop” as in the title, points out exactly what art residencies are about. They do not only display the works of artists, as in a shop window, but also reveal and communicate the process of creation as in the meaning of “workshop.”

To reach the main goal stated in the ambitious title, the existing bilateral exchanges between Solitude and the partners will be extended. Every year, at least five Solitude fellows will have the possibility to visit one of the partner cities for three months and from each partner city one or two artists will stay at Solitude for the same duration. Additionally, the five partners will also start to exchange artists. Everybody will have the possibility of sending one artist to a preferred location and in reverse will host one resident a year.

Apart from the extended residency program the three-year project »Opening Our Closed Shops« seeks to open up the situation through intensifying and enlarging the network. The partners will travel to one-on-one meetings for a deeper understanding of the other institutions and the local art scene, to meet different artists and curators and to present their own institution to the local communities. After these trips the meetings will be intensified by bringing artists from the home country of the travelling partner to organize lectures, workshops and symposia at the visiting institutions. The network will be extended and gain more visibility, the cooperation between the partners fortified and the integration of new artists into the network assured. Additional yearly curatorial meetings with all partners will be held to plan larger projects, and to discuss cooperations resulting from these exchanges. Having the projects travel to more than one partner city will encourage their adjustment and transformation to each institution.

The exchange between the partners should be understood as necessary for sharing experiences. The project aims to make this experience accessible and understandable for a larger audience in the different cities involved in the exchange. Every year, public events will be organized and presented by the partner organizations, including exhibitions, publications, concerts, and performances. Through their participation, the artists selected will have the opportunity to compare their own work and life conditions and their different aesthetic practices. This is a way for the cooperating institutions to understand how the resident artists, writers, musicians, actors, etc. are able to transcend their daily and social life to produce art. In each social, urban or national context of the participating artists the conditions of life – i. e. the contingency –, the conditions of art production and distribution may be different or have some similarities: At the end the process of making art consists in transcending these contingent particularities in order to create art. Despite these daily material constraints artists have to build an own territory for their aesthetic practice on which they can take decisions on their own, expressing by doing so their sovereignty. The ultimate question asked by this project is in deed the issue of sovereignty as a necessary condition of art in the local contexts of its production. In Baudelaire’s definition of modern beauty, one could say contingency is related to the „relative circumstantial element which will be [....] the age, the fashions, its morals and emotions“, sovereignty to the „eternal, invariable element“ which makes art universal.

The project “Opening Our Closed Shops” will be concluded by a last public presentation focusing on the strategies of artistic sovereignty in the different urban contexts of the partner institutions.

The different public events taking place in the frame of “Opening Our Closed Shops” can be used by Allianz Kulturstiftung as platforms to present its own activities.

Jean-Baptiste Joly

director of the Akademie Schloss Solitude