Friday, 22.11.2013, at 7pm (following the opening of „Bogota. A City on The Edge” exhibition)
LAZNIA CENTRE FOR CONTEMPORARY ART
Meeting conducted by Kamila Wielebska
Laznia CCA cordially invites to the meeting with Julia Draganovic, Director of Kunsthalle Osnabruck and a member of the international jury of The Outdoor Gallery of The City of Gdansk who is also the editor of a publication summarizing the last year’s symposium This Troublesome, Uncomfortable and Questionable Relevance of Art in Public Space.
The meeting will take a form of a conversation between Julia Draganovic and Kamila Wielebska (curator at CCA and art critic) about the book, their curatorial practice, controversies attributed to art in public space and about the influence of The Outdoor Gallery of The City of Gdansk on the image of The Lower Town district in Gdansk .
We invite everyone interested in art in public space, people who want to learn more about The Outdoor Gallery of The City of Gdansk project and citizens of The Lower Town to attend the meeting and to join the discussion. The talk will be translated consecutively into Polish.
The Symposium This Troublesome, Uncomfortable and Questionable Relevance of Art in Public Space was held at Fabryka Batycki in Gdansk on 23-24 November 2012. Julia Draganović and Adam Budak curated the event and on behalf of Laznia Centre for Contemporary Arts and have called international artists, critics and curators to bring together debates from varied perspectives and practices in an attempt to evaluate which roles artists, curators, designers and architects can actually play in revitalizing and regenerating urban space.
This year, on the anniversary of that event, Laznia CCA publishes a book by the same title summarizing the symposium. The publication is edited by Julia Draganovic and Anna Szynwelska, curator of The Outdoor Gallery of The City of Gdansk. For the book, Jadwiga Charzynska, The Director of Laznia Centre for Contemporary Art, introduces the work of The Outdoor Gallery of The City of Gdansk from its start to the current state. Agnieszka Wolodźko presents a survey of public art in Gdansk of the last decades.
The order of the further essays presented here follows the structure of the homonymous symposium that took place in Gdansk on 23-24 November 2012. The essays are elaborated versions of the oral contributions of those lecturers who were able to participate in this publication project, which was done a few months period only. We are proud that Chantal Mouffe, keynote speaker of the symposium, accounts for a reflection about Critical Artistic Practices as Counter-Hegemonic Interventions. Mika Hannula agreed to reprint chapter two of his book Politics, Identity and Public Space (Expodium 2) entitled Social Imaginaries. Hannula’s contributions serves background for a series of texts dealing with Close Encounters. Strategies of Collaboration for which artists Mel Chin and Barbara Holub as well as curators Julia Draganović, Aneta Szylak and Joanna Warsza give examples of best practice models regarding questions like: what are the strategies to access existing knowledge systems and to foster collaboration between different stakeholders?
In the second section entitled Museum without Museum. Tactics of Emancipation and Autonomy curator Claire Doherty and artists Maria Papadimitriou and Berth Theis ponder the question, how far public art can be a complement or an alternative to museums and reflecting on strategies of enhancement for self-organization.
Publication edited by: Julia Draganovic, Anna Szynwelska
Authors of the texts: Chantal Mouffe, Mika Hannula, Jadwiga Charzyńska, Mel Chin, Claire Doherty, Julia Draganović, Barbara Holub, Maria Papadimitriou, Aneta Szylak, Bert Theis, Joanna Warsza Agnieszka Wołodźko,
For more information go to: www.outdoorgallerygdansk.eu
The book is published within the framework of The Outdoor Gallery of the City of Gdansk project realised by Laznia Centre for Contemporary Art in Gdansk. The project supported by The National Centre for Culture within the framework of its programme Culture – Interventions
Julia Draganović – (Ph.D.) is a curator for contemporary art whose interest is focused on new artistic strategies including art in public spaces, socially engaged practices and new media. She has curated shows in Germany, Italy, Spain, the USA and Taiwan, including the curatorial projects of Bologna Art First (2010-2012) and at Art Miami since 2009. Draganović is member of the committees of the Outdoor Gallery in Gdansk (Poland), board member of No Longer Empty, New York and member of the Scientific Committee of Mudam, Luxembourg. As founding member of the curatorial collective and platform for contemporary art LaRete Art Projects she is in charge of the International Award for Participatory Art launched by the Legislative Assembly of the Italian Region Emilia-Romagna.
Institutional positions covered by Julia Draganović include Artistic Director of the Chelsea Art Museum New York (2005-2006) and of PAN Palazzo delle Arti Napoli (2007-2009). Since November 2013 she is the Director of Kunsthalle Osnabruck, Germany.
Kamila Wielebska – an art historian, critic and curator, and editor-in-chief of Intertekst, an online magazine about art which is published by the Łaźnia Centre for Contemporary Art in Gdańsk (www.intertekst.com). She curated two exhibitions in public space in Gdańsk (
Embarkation for Cythera, 2008 and
The Fifth Element, 2010) She was co-editor (with Kuba Mikurda) of the bilingual book
A Story of Sin. Surrealism in Polish Cinema (2010). She has published in 'Odra', 'Czas kultury', 'Ha!art' 'Panoptikum', 'Obieg', 'Intertekst', 'ARTMargins', 'Flash Art', 'Frieze' and exhibition catalogues.