[spectre] last call - Dead or Alive

[jurij.krpan@kapelica.org]

Dear colleagues,
this is the last call for applications which should be sent by March 1st  =
2002.

Key words: Death, Life, Body, Poison, Oxymoron , Fatal Sex, Biotechnology,=
 
Artificial Life, ...


CALL FOR ENTRIES - BREAK 21/2002

Break 21
6th International Festival of Young Emerging Artists

May 19th =96 24th, 2002
Ljubljana, Slovenia

Integral description of the festival: http://www.break21.com
 
Organiser
K6/4, Kersnikova 6, Ljubljana, Slovenia

THEME

=93Dead or Alive=94

=93Dead or Alive=94 implicates the urge, which tends to satisfy something =
at all costs, 
taking no regard whether it demands the life to be taken. It is assumed, t=
hat it 
represents something, for which, imperatively, it is greater than life or =
death. In 
the tendency to give up life as the highest value, the sacrifice is implic=
ated or 
some urgent denunciation in the economy of one=92s own life, which we coul=
d call a 
particular death, for the sole purpose =96 to accomplish something.
In the title, the initial question appears. It questions death and life; i=
t demands an 
answer to the question about definitions, what is actually dead and what i=
s alive. 
To what extent something is dead, though only inert; to what extent someth=
ing is 
alive, though tends to be prolonged with the help of machines; how to 
understand organic material in the cryobanks and how biotechnical 
mechanisms/organisms? Are the cyber space and avatars with artificial 
intelligence, which are present in the Hollywood apparatus of the imaginar=
y or the 
top cyber laboratories, our or the parallel world? Bionics and eugenics es=
tablish 
new paradigms of life and death as much as nanomechanics and intelligent 
neuronic nets. Artificial life is the oxymoron, which penetrates the core =
of our 
theme.
Questions, posed to us by high technology, are still utterly legitimate in=
 
traditional sense, since we understand them through the perspective of mod=
ern 
age. Intermingling of everyday violence, which we encounter in the streets=
, car 
accidents, murders, suicides, diseases, wars and catastrophes on higher sc=
ales 
are balancing with births, rebirths, changes of identity and initiations, =
creations of 
new life situations and cosmic phenomena. Religious repertoires and great 
ideologies are all built upon dichotomy of life and death. They tend to be=
 valid 
within the scale of the universal, while moments of ecstasy during meditat=
ion or 
sex, pain and dreams are utterly intimate and identical to themselves. Men=
tal 
deviations, such as insanity, psychosis, neurosis, obsessions, paranoia an=
d 
hysteric states were interpreted as a kind of intermediary state between l=
ife and 
death in primitive cultures, while in modern societies, the border between=
 the 
healthy as an attribute of life and the ill as an attribute of death is be=
ing 
obliterated.

Life and death are great themes of art and a lot has been said about them,=
 
however, some things can=92t be talked about too many times. Our intention=
 is for 
artists to deal with them innovatively, through the perspective of new art=
 and 
research artistic practice, which owns a tactical value that points more a=
t the 
poetics of life than poetics, which is already known from traditional aest=
hetic 
paradigms. Forms of expression may not be products and aesthetic artefacts=
 but 
rather processes, states, situations =85 that comprise the dimension of ti=
me =96 
transition.

FIELDS 

- THEORY: we will organise a series of lectures and presentations and the =
texts
  will be published in the catalogue. We will also publish essays, theoret=
ic 
  and critical texts of the selected theme. The emphasis will be put prima=
rily 
  on the texts, which deal with the complex of life and death through the 
  perspective of contemporary and new art.
- VISUAL ARTS: computer-assisted art (from web art to robotics), comics, 
  graphic prints, digital prints, photographs, interactive works, visual 
  communication (subvertising), etc.
- PERFORMATIVE ARTS
- INTERMEDIA ARTS
- MOBILE PICTURES: films in all categories will be presented at the festiv=
al: 
  documentaries, fiction, video art, animated films, experimental films, s=
hort
  films ... 
- MUSIC and SOUND: concerts, sound installations and intermedia performanc=
es, 
  in which sound holds the priority.
- ARCHITECTURE: we are interested in the projects, which sublimate themes =
of 
  life and death in the most radical meanings. Architectural semiology sho=
uld 
  be oriented towards conceptual projects and less towards utilitarian 
  realisations.
- APPLIED ARTS: although we recognise the fashion creativity through fashi=
on 
  machinery of the consumer society, we decided to underline the part of a
  designing production, which holds highly personalised approach and thus =
point
  at semiology of dressing, which wrenches from the vice of mass economy. 
- CULINARY ARTS

DEADLINE
 
Call for applications should be sent by March 1st  2002 to the following a=
ddress:

=8Atudentski kulturni center
Break 21
Kersnikova 6 
SI - 1000 LJUBLJANA 

e-mail: break21@k6-4.org
 

phone: ++ 386 (0)1 438 03 00
fax:   ++ 386 (0)1 438 02 02 


Thank you!

Andreja Kralj
Coordinator of the Festival