In his book Century, Alain Badiou describes the 20th century as the century determined by politics and art. On the one hand, revolutionary politics, resolved to end all the contradictions of modernity, and, on the other hand, uncompromised art, resolved to equally participate with other social practices in creating the future. What marks the 20th century, claims Badiou, is the moment in which the artistic and political project meet and intersect; at one point it seems that art has more political value and impact than politics, and that politics had more beauty than art.
Therefore, the whole 20th century in art is a criticism of representation. In that criticism, the visual arts have advanced the most. The avant-garde was new, it expressed the present and announced the future; all the rest was old, classical, conservative and represented the past. That constant confrontation of “old” and “new”, Badiou claims, resulted with an unsolved tension, some form of non-dialectic disjunction, without synthesis.
Following Badiou’s thesis that the 21st century deserves some form of conjunction, some form of resolving the constant tension, some and-and¸ not or-or, we invite you to participate with your works and projects in Galerija Galženica’s 2010 programme. We hope that the questions below will help.
Does today’s artistic representation carry the same problems as in the 20th century? Is painting still a simulation? Or is it a simulation of a simulation, or both? Do we still have to choose between painting and action, or are we allowed to equally use both as artistic tools? Do the so called new media bring about some form of change into this, for Badiou, typically modern paradigm of artistic invention? How does iconoclasm for the 21st century look like – if it exists? If the art of the 20th century has exhausted itself in implementing its own emancipation, what options does it have in today’s global society? Does it have the option, as in anti-globalist demonstrations or the blockade of the Faculty of Philosophy and Social Sciences in Zagreb, of representing some form of background fortification before the clash with the police, a reprieve between two actions? Or does it have the option to simply guarantee for the visual attractiveness of the event and its representation in the media?
Please, send proposals (artistic and curatorial works and projects) to the address [email protected]. by July 1st. The results of the Open Call will be known by July 15 2009. More: www.galerijagalzenica.info
-- Pučko otvoreno učilište Velika Gorica GALERIJA GALŽENICA Trg Stjepana Radića 5 HR - 10410 Velika Gorica tel:+385 1 6221 122 / fax: 6226 740 www.galerijagalzenica.info ______________________________________________ SPECTRE list for media culture in Deep Europe Info, archive and help: http://coredump.buug.de/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/spectre
