[spectre] competition "Dead or Alive"

[jurij krpan]

Break 21
6th International Festival of Emerging Artists

May 19th E 24th, 2002
Ljubljana, Slovenia
http://www.break21.com

Organiser
K6/4, Kersnikova 6, Ljubljana, Slovenia

BREAK 21 E Statement of Purpose
The festival is dedicated to younger, not yet recognised artists who
modulate their artistic expression within research artistic practice.
The age limit has been abandoned by this year=EDs festival to be able to
follow the theme more thoroughly. Besides artistic works, selected
through Call for Applications, selectors have the opportunity to invite
authors, whose known works may add up to the entire exhibition of the
chosen theme. However we will prefer  the latest projects, which are, in
our opinion, important for the discourse, pursued by the festival, in
the selection.

In the year 2002, the festival=EDs construction will differ from the last
five editions. We will invite only the artists, who are indispensable
for the presentation or installation of their works, to Ljubljana; the
rest of them will be presented with their works. Holders of the
programmes will take up the roles of selectors since they have already
been connected to permanent activities of the K6/4 board. The festival
will thus obtain the content frame, which can already be detected in the
current activities of the K4 club, which will provide the sound, the
Kapelica gallery, which covers the field of the visual arts and
performances, and the Kiberpipa, which covers the field of cybernetics,
video and film production. We also invited a few associates, who
specialise in the field of cartoons, animated films, short films, web
art, designing, culinary art and fashion to help us in the selection.
Custodians of the festival (we invited them from Zagreb, Croatia, this
year) proposed the theme, which, we believe, opens an extremely
important, stigmatised and taboo field in totalitarianism of the
consumer society. Custodians will make a selection of applicants
together with selectors/advisors, who are experts for specific artistic
fields. Concurrently, uniform criteria of the selection are being
guaranteed.
We tend to create the selection and the Break 21 festival upon explicit
artistic projects, texts, and not numerous exhibits to be able to
reflect upon the selected field precisely enough, since the selected
field will be presented in the collection of texts after the festival.
We expect around 60 participants, including artists, researches,
engineers, theoretician and publicists to participate at the festival.
In the postproduction of the festival, a catalogue on CD ROM will be
published. Later on, we will publish a printed collection of texts and
artistic project, presented at the Break 21 festival, and projects,
which influenced the development of the selected theme greatly, for
which we would like to become the reference in the future.


 THEME:  =EFDead or AliveE

=EFDead or AliveE implicates the urge, which tends to satisfy something a=
t
all costs, taking no regard whether it demands the life to be taken. It
is assumed, that 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 implicated or some urgent denunciation
in the economy of one=EDs own life, which we could call a particular
death, for the sole purpose E to accomplish something.
In the title, the initial question appears. It questions death and life;
it demands an answer to the question about definitions, what is actually
dead and what is alive. To what extent something is dead, though only
inert; to what extent something 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 imaginary or the top cyber laboratories, our
or the parallel world? Bionics and eugenics establish 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 modern age. Intermingling of everyday violence, which we encounter in
the streets, car accidents, murders, suicides, diseases, wars and
catastrophes on higher scales 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 meditation or
sex, pain and dreams are utterly intimate and identical to themselves.
Mental deviations, such as insanity, psychosis, neurosis, obsessions,
paranoia and hysteric states were interpreted as a kind of intermediary
state between life 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 being obliterated.

Life and death are great themes of art and a lot has been said about
them, however, some things can=EDt 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 at the poetics of life than poetics,
which is already known from traditional aesthetic paradigms. Forms of
expression may not be products and aesthetic artefacts but rather
processes, states, situations =D6 that comprise the dimension of time E
transition.

FIELDS
Theory, visual arts, performative arts, intermedia arts, mobile
pictures, music and sound, architecture, applied arts, culinary arts.

PRESENTATION FORMS
2D exhibitions, installations and ambients, performances, actions,
concerts and sound installations, fashion shows, round tables, lectures
and presentations, projections, food preparation.

 CUSTODIANS
Sun=ABica Ostoi=B6, Chief Custodian, sunce@picigin.net
Olga Majcen, Chief Custodian, olga.majcen@inet.hr

SELECTORS/ADVISORS
Sandra Sajovic, Jurij Krpan, Igor Prassel, Gregor Fras, Iztok Drabik,
Jaka =E9eleznikar, Zoran Garevski, Sabina _ogi=AB

CALL FOR APPLICATIONS E BREAK 21/2002

Theory
We will organise a series of lectures and presentations and the texts
will be published in the catalogue. We will also publish essays,
theoretic and critical texts of the selected theme. The emphasis will be
put primarily on the texts, which deal with the complex of life and
death through the perspective of modern and new art. Proposals for
lectures should be texts (in Slovene and English language) and the list
of photos or videotapes matching the lectures. Theoretical texts should
not exceed 32 typed pages (48000 characters E no spaces), and critical
texts should not exceed 16 typed pages (24000 characters E no spaces).

Visual Arts
Proposals for the exhibition of printed material (cartoons, graphic
prints, digital prints), photographs, interactive works, visual
communication (subvertising), computer-assisted art (from web art to
robotics) etc. should be clearly presented (in written form, with
pictures and sound) so that the content and technical demands are well
understood for the presentation (max. one typed page in Slovene and
English). In the presentation material, all dimension and technical
demands (equipment) should be evident (hardware, software, audiovisual
equipment, installation aids/tools etc.).

Performative Art
Performances should be clearly presented, either described in details
(scenes with time) or numbered photo documentation, or a videotape of
the performance. Performances in which the authors take part and where
technical equipment represents the scene have the priority. Besides the
content presentation of the performance the application should also
include the description of technical equipment, in which the part,
prepared by the organisers, should be specified separately.

Intermedia Art
Projects, which comprise various procedures of expression, should
include the background, so that a suitable presentation environment can
be selected, since events will take place at various locations. A typed
page of the presentation is required (in Slovene and English), sketches,
photo and video material. The description of the equipment and special
demands should be included in the text, which the organiser will resolve
at the specific location.

Mobile Picture
Films in all categories will be presented at the festival:
documentaries, fiction, video art, animated films, experimental films,
short films =D6 According to the content of the film we will select the
appropriate location, so that the films will be presented in suitable
halls; video and animated films will be installed as projections or
installations. Therefore, authors should specify demands and
requirements of presentations. Regardless of the form of media, used to
present the works (formats 70 mm, 35 mm, 16 mm, DVD, Beta), all films
should be sent in VHS format, electronic works on CD ROM, DVD or over
the Internet.

Music and Sound
The field includes concerts, sound installations and intermedia
performances, in which sound holds the priority. The most suitable form
of concert presentations is the video format, and the most suitable form
of installations is the draft or tape on CD, or a precise description of
the sound, which is expected. In any case, the presentation should
include technical demands, specially the part, which has to be prepared
by the organiser.

Architecture
We do not intend to exhibit sacral architecture and equipment, which was
built or is in the process of building, nor we expect competition
proposals, which will never take place. We are interested in the
projects, which sublimate themes of life and death in the most radical
meanings. Architectural semiology should be oriented towards conceptual
projects and less towards utilitarian realisations. In the competitive
phase, the projects, which represent intermedia, will be favoured,
however, they can be presented in 2D, on CD all over the Internet.
Application should include a typed page of the text (in Slovene and
English).

Applied Art
The selected theme evokes the memory of applicative objects, which have
more or less ritually accompanied humanity through the history. In
highly urban environments, extremely individual life stiles develop and
invent graphic attributes and other symbolic gestures for personal
rituals in the alienated everyday life. Although we recognise the
fashion creativity through fashion 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. Proposals should be
photographed and equipped with half a typed page of description and
eventual technical requirements. Photographs or extremely precise
sketches, including comments, should present dresses in the application
for fashion designing.

Culinary Art
The question of life and death is structurally important in culinary
art, thus we think that creativity within the theme gives excellent
opportunities. Cooks, who tend to realise the menus, are offered the
classically equipped kitchen and assistants who will help him/her
prepare 50 meals per term. During the festival, the kitchen will be set
up to provide meals for participants and visitors. We believe that
participants and visitors of the festival are the ideal public for
dishes, which are hard to realise on other occasions.


 TRAVEL EXPENSES AND ACCOMMODATION
Organiser will provide for three nights with breakfast, three lunches
and dinners. Travel expenses have to be covered by the participants or
can be subsidised with the help of organisers (applications to embassies
or foundations).

DATA, WHICH NEED TO BE INCLUDED IN THE APPLICATION
- the description of the art work (it will be published in the
collection of texts)
-  audio and visual presentations (VHS, S-VHS, CD ROM, DVD, slides,
photos, sketches, notes)
-  title, dimensions, time of installation, instructions for use and
installation (space requirements, technical requirements, the form of
interactivity and the roles of participants)
-  the works which were produced over the last 10 years will be taken
into consideration
-  computer-assisted projects should include operation system
requirements and software
-  web art (net/web/internet/online art) E the URL works should be
reported at the web site address: http://www.jaka.org/break
-  the presentation of dresses (fashion show) should include dresses in
sizes 36/38 for women and 48/50 for men. Each designer can present the
collection in which there are 3 to 5 female dresses or male suits.
Designers can provide shoes (size 39/40 for women and 44/45 for men),
and all extras. Organiser will provide make-up, hairstyle, models and
music
-  cartoons can be sent on quality black-and-white copies, format A4;
texts should be in English, the number of pages is not limited
-  culinary art E call for applications should include the presentation
of two meals (meat and vegetarian). Expenses of ingredients should not
exceed 3 EUR
-  a short biography of the author and other associates
-  the name, surname, address, zip code, city, country, telephone, fax,
e-mail, URL
-  call for applications should be sent by March 1st  2002 to the
following address:


Studentski kulturni center
Break 21
Kersnikova 6
SI - 1000 LJUBLJANA

e-mail: break21@k6-4.org


Telefon: ++ 386 (0)1 438 03 00
Faks:     ++ 386 (0)1 438 02 02


Important notes:
- we do not return the received material, shipping has to be covered by
the sender
-  required documents for temporary export/import of exhibits and
objects (ata carnet) have to be taken care by the authors
-  to avoid import taxes when sending VHS cassettes and CDs, documents
which prove that the material is non-commercial is required. Notify the
organisers for required documents
-  we will notify you of the selected works by March 15th 2002; the
results will be published at URL:http://www.break21.com
-  additional information: break21@k6-4.org