ART KONTAKT FESTIVAL
CURATORIAL PROJECT
The sixth edition of Contemporary Art Festival “Art Kontakt 2015” comes up with an innovative way where the central subject theme of communication interacts with visual arts in other forms of art such as: music, urban and suburban architecture, design, photography, film, literature and modern dance. The bridge building theme links these artistic fields together and wipes out in the same time all the obstacles and borders that exist. Communication theme is so original and sensible today, as a result of the impact that the new capitalist system in the globalization era has in other forms like: between us and the world we live, between us as artists no matter which art concept we belong to, between east and west, north and south, between us and the traditional information of digital technology, etc. The use of “Communication” theme as the center of contemporary universe essentially is nothing else than bringing on the focus the global phenomenon at the beginning of the third millennium. In a synchronous sophist interaction of all arts, “Communication” embraces a multidimensional living not only esthetic, but even human as it is the world in artist’s soul.
The sixth edition of Art Kontakt 2015 in his philosophy has the purpose of sociocultural experiences interchange between Albanian and foreign artists who will take part. Communication theme makes this edition an authentic laboratory of exploration where new artists can express themselves and investigate different phenomena such as: sociopolitical, ideological, race, religion or even can take the media role which today plays an essential role in the interchange of information worldwide. The edition theme is not a simple dialog between people in a verbal way, but an action or a reaction mode moving towards a multidimensional approach. Simultaneous messages and impulses are sent to the society in need of new and social evolution, made possible through arts as an entity.
The approach to the communication theme creates new interactive spaces not only among artists and arts, but creates a dialogue path to the public for visiting contemporary art exhibitions; creates cooperation between public institutions and partners as well as motivate the growth of different group ages audience who will not only find the traditional picture in the old form of a cliché in the past, but will relish in the magic interaction of all arts in one, the magic of contemporary art.
Selection of the columns in “Italia” square as the place for opening, running and closing the festival is not a coincidence. The wide variety of arts that Art Kontakt festival holds in his DNA make a return of this place to the residents or become a kind of “audientibus humanitatis”: a place where you observe and are being observed, where the public is not only spectator but even protagonist, a common open space where artists, public and artworks meet up. The historical viewpoint of columns transmute along the festival from a place of political symbol in a place for contemporary art. This square, currently released from the ghosts between the two worlds, the fascist past which created and built it, and the post ‘90s with its consumerist functions, will serve to stimulate emotion and desire by the artworks. Along the festival the columns will be transmuted in “Communication” columns through video-art, installations, music, contemporary dance, performances, photography and poems. Communication is not only a theme, but a metaphysic alchemy between the audience and art works rinsing off the sludge of the political myth abusively built upon this square. The confrontation in the name of contemporary art, between the ideological past consciousness which buried the “Communication” as concept and the present mediocrity, is of great courage.
Communication is a multidimensional involvement, it is the key of our responsibilities against the history, socio-political-cultural phenomena, that are born, grown and will die in our époque. Contemporary artists see the world from a different point of view, searching and absorbing new dimensions for the contemporary man, putting it in the center of the universe because
“To create is likewise to give a shape to one’s fate” (Albert Camus).
Art Kontakt Festival itself interprets the columns in a poem, in a place which observes the public sensation and the messages that the new artists bring in their artworks. Communication in this itinerary of contemporary art touches and draws attention to different problems such as: social, ecological, new information technologies, work, life and its everyday rhythm, joy and sadness.
Art Kontakt festival 2015 reunite artists from different countries who with their works return to observe “the Man” but this time highlighting of how and with what He Communicates. At this point, Art Kontakt festival will supply the missing oxygen to the square and will conceive through the art a new language, a new “Communication” with it, where the visitors will find not only their twisted memoirs but the urban foresight of a city looking towards the future. The art critic Gillo Dorfles says “I hope, not in an abandonment of harmony because I retain closed the adventurous artistic thought of Renaissance, but I support a better understanding from the Western World of many contemporary art forms that are acceptable to those who look with a different perspective”.
Inspired by the above expression, Communication is the essence of our existence, and its diversity requires the maximum attention to preserve it as the relic of a common value and property. In this content “Communication” mutates in different forms and shapes, notably when it get filtered in the poetic sieve of art. In fact “All the problem in life is how we can break the solitude in ourselves and communicate with the others” (Cesare Pavese).
Communication has been, it is and will remain the inexhaustible power of man in aeternum, who evolved and socialized through communication among different cultures. Because: “Peace comes only through communication” says Ezra Pound. In the semiotic universe of visual arts:
“To communicate is natural; to accept what is communicated is an art”. (J. W. Goethe).
During the festival we will organize a dedicate workshop for video art directed by Joan Ikonomi, making those fields together and wipes out in the same time all the obstacles and borders that exist.