[spectre] Galerija Galzenica (Velika Gorica/Zagreb, Croatia), Open Call for Proposals in 2010

[galerija galzenica]

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 galzenica at gmail.com. by July 1st. The results of the Open 
Call will be known by July 15 2009. More: www.galerijagalzenica.info

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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