Art Today Association
Center for Contemporary Art - Plovdiv
The Ancient Bath


OPEN CALL FOR PROJECTS

The Art Today Association kindly invites you to submit proposals artistic interventions in public spaces of Plovdiv. Three of the submissions will be produced by the Art Today as part of

URBAN DREAMS in the framework of the international project

HEICO – “Heritage, Identity and Communication in European Contemporary Art Practices” - http://www.atlantisprojects.eu/web/112.html -

an activity of the ATLANTIS network - http://www.atlantisprojects.eu/

URBAN DREAMS will be presented in October 2012 in public spaces of the city and in a parallel exhibition and reading room in the Center for Contemporary Art – Plovdiv, “The Ancient Bath” – an archive of previous artistic practices in urban public spaces of Bulgaria, Germany, Slovakia, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, Serbia, Macedonia and others. Parts of this archive will be added to the library of the Art Today for extended public use after the exhibition.

Requirements:

1. the artist`s CV
2. concept: description of the idea and a budget for realization
3. visual materials

The proposals are to be sent to office@arttoday.org in the following file formats: doc, pdf, jpg, mpeg2, quick time, mp3.

Deadline: 20 June 2012

All artists and cultural institutions are invited to provide documentation material of their projects realized after the Fall of the Berlin Wall.




URBAN DREAMS


The city as a potential space

Public urban spaces are sensually perceptible reservoirs of knowledge. Such collective and individual sensitivities - interwoven with desires, dreams and visions - form various possible subtexts of a city. We can regard the city as a walkable landscape of these subtexts. Old structures made of concrete, a poetically decorated balcony, the stroke of graffiti, the density of shops specialising in bridal fashion - all these phenomena are witnesses of preceding dreams. The dreams' realisations, either succeeded or failed, may inspire and teach us. Because dreams and desires are more than indispensible nourishments of human existence: We deduce our will from them - the impetus of our action and work. Hence dreams imply possibilities and consequences.
URBAN DREAMS is an invitation to conceive the city not as a simple scenery of daily routine or the past but as a space full of options for utilisation, formation and perceptions - both as a potential physical and mental space.

URBAN DREAMS is mainly focused on the artistic practice of South Eastern Europe. With this in mind, the project is a response to identity forming as a consequence of historical happenings. „For the small nations of the East history is of particular importance: They are constantly imagining and experiencing it, creating a ’victimized history’ of their own“ (Longinovic 2002). The burden of recent history will indeed influence URBAN DREAMS, likewise, history, thus also identities, can be interpreted anew. Hence the city becomes an astonishing find indicating the persistence of space for dreams and their implementation, which has always been active, despite the legacy of a common victim mentality. In this sense, URBAN DREAMS aims to contribute to a creativity of forming identities.


URBAN DREAMS consists of two project moduls:

1. Artistic interventions in public space

Based on manifold perspectives of diverse artists URBAN DREAMS explores public and semi-public spaces. Through URBAN DREAMS art becomes a research strategy and the city changes into a laboratory. Arts, the city and everyday life confront each other. Reactions and interactions with the inhabitants will join the continuous process of research. Since the attained insights stem from urban spaces, presentation opportunities are to be found in precisely these spaces. Connections will be generated directly at the place of origin. Recipients turn simultaneously into objects of observation and observers of objects, into the investigated and the investigators. The act of (re-)search becomes an artistic performance itself.

At the same time it is not only about locating the dreams as such but about contextualising them within their realities. Artistic methods may provide us with a certain readability of urban dreams and their contexts. What we gain is visibility of the manner the citizens' dreams and desires are embodied in materialized manifestations and atmospheres, of the way they get projected into urban spaces, of how they get evoked, served or resisted.


2. The exhibition as an “archive” of dreams

For this project the exhibition space of the Center for Contemporary Art changes into an archive and reading room of (mainly Eastern) European artistic urban research saving dreams expressed in explicit, such as in implicit manners. Beside the results of the latest artistic urbanism in Plovdiv and in other partner cities of the HEICO network, this archive will also present international projects from the last twenty years by different forms of media, based on material provided by partner organisations and artists.

About the partners of the HEICO network:
http://www.atlantisprojects.eu/web/112.html

With the support of the program "Culture" of the European Commission, the Goethe Institute Bulgaria and Robert Bosch Foundation.

Art Today Association
Center for Contemporary Art - Plovdiv
The Ancient Bath


Open Studio and Artist Talk by Baptist Coelho (India) – current artist-in-residence at the Art Today Association and winner of the Facade Video Award 2011

2 May 2012 from 6 to 7 p.m.
Corridor Gallery, Konstantin Stoilov Str. 36, Old Town

Coelho will talk about his research developed for “You can’t afford to have emotions out there” - a project about the conflict between Indian and Pakistan on the Siachen Glacier and discuss his current video project in Bulgaria.

In 2006, Baptist received his Masters of Arts from the Birmingham Institute of Art & Design (BIAD), UK. Solo Exhibitions have included Grand Palais, Bern (2009); Project 88, Mumbai (2009) and BIAD, Birmingham (2006). Two Person Exhibitions include Pump House Gallery, London (2012) and Visual Arts Gallery, Delhi (2009). His work has been exhibited at galleries and institutions worldwide. Coelho was awarded the “Facade Video Award” of the Art Today (2011), “Promising Artist Award” (2007) and “Johnson Prize Fund” (2006). The artist lives and works in Mumbai.

Art Today Association
Center for Contemporary Art - Plovdiv
The Ancient Bath


Open Call

Facade Video Festival 2012

Artists from all over the world are invited to send their video art to Plovdiv, Bulgaria.

The Art Today Association/Center for Contemporary Art, Plovdiv, "The Ancient Bath" will host the 3rd edition of the Facade Video Festival between 12 and 16 September 2012.
The Facade Video Festival connects people, art and urban environment by projecting videos onto the walls of houses in the historic city and around - still an unusual artistic practice in Plovdiv.

Videos should be submitted before 31 May 2012.
There are no restrictions concerning the theme.

You can find out more about the Facade Video Festival and the Open Call on www.facade.arttoday.org/en/2012.

Art Today Association
Center for Contemporary Art - Plovdiv
The Ancient Bath


Open Call

(to artists from Plovdiv)

ART POSITIVE 2012 – FESTIVAL FOR CONTEMPORARY ART

For the ninth time in a row Art Today Association organizes the annual project Art Positive that - according to the association’s philosophy - supports the development and establishment of contemporary art in Bulgaria. Every year the organizers set a different topic to provoke the participants. This year the festival’s motto is MINI with all of the possible meanings and interpretations. There are no restrictions for the art techniques or genre, which allows the artists to participate with paintings, sculptures, audio-visual projects, performances, music, theater, dance, installations and happenings. For the first time Art Positive will also include activities in urban spaces.

The festival gives an opportunity for expression to both established and young artists, who have just begun their artistic work in the field of contemporary art. In this way Art Today is able to promote young talents. The participants can submit their projects including a short biography and approximate budget until March 5, 2012. After the deadline the jury will evaluate the projects and choose the best ones which will be financed and finally shown during the festival.

In addition to the exhibition in the Ancient Bath and the activities in urban spaces Art Today also organizes a secondary program, which will include workshops, presentations, lectures, discussions and projections. The complete program of the festival will be announced in March.

Art Today's annual festival Art Positive is unique in its kind and sets the benchmark for any manifestation of artists from Plovdiv. It encourages the development of contemporary art in all its forms.
The ninth edition of the festival has the ambiguous motto -MINI-

The concept -MINI- is a starting point for artistic explorations and an endless field for interpretations and associations. It gives many possibilities for experiments with the topic, materials and techniques.

-MINI- as minimalism, as a radical refusal and liberation from ornaments. Minimalism as a search for the fundament of art and as a focus on the creative energy on one single form, colour or sound. Minimalism as the end phase of the eternal cycle of art which destroys the already existing opulence and makes a new way for the modern. Or minimalism as a small claustrophobic space in which the artist desperately tries to fit an idea. The minimalistic movement in art originates from the 1960s in the USA and has proven itself as a unique provocation towards the audience which is left alone with its own imagination and has to reach the message of art without any help. But minimalism can also function as a border position in art which rebels against the already existing aesthetics. -MINI- has the potential to wake the memory of minimalism which is still alive due to artists like Robert Morris and Sol Lewitt.

-MINI- is also a provocation towards the modern society. We all live in a situation of pre-apocalyptic fear of the collapse of globalization in a time when people are forced to live with the minimum. This minimum’s position on the scale of welfare is an unknown value which wakes new predictions and fears. But the minimum is a challenge towards the artist in a situation of reduction of the market and resources. -MINI- challenges the definitions of how art originates and which is the absolute minimum for the existence of an artwork.

-MINI- is also a linguistic provocation which stimulates the associative thinking and gives infinite possibilities for interpretations in all areas of art.

Terms of participation:
1. A short biography
2. Idea for a project – description and budget
3. Visual materials

Please submit the required documents at office@arttoday.org in the following formats: doc., pdf., jpg., mpeg2., quick time, mp3.

Deadline: 05.03.2012

Art Today Association
Center for Contemporary Art - Plovdiv
The Ancient Bath


The 17th Week of Contemporary Art

The End and Beyond

Art Today Association is pleased to present the project “The End and Beyond” within the framework of the 17th Week of Contemporary Art

Curator: Vera Mlechevska

Artists: Cyprien Gaillard, Janek Simon, Rada Boukova, Vikenti Komitski, Nasan Tur, Isabelle Krieg, Markus Selg, Boryana Rossa & Oleg Mavromatti feat. Ultrafuturo, Igor Bosnjak, Luiza Margan, Erik Sikora, Pavel Sterec, Lara Favaretto, Lubri, Nedko Solakov, Pravdolub Ivanov

The future is over and now we stand on the ruins of projects for happy and prospering humankind. During the last decades a start countdown has been activated from ground zero and it set a new threshold between old and new in the intersexual relations, geopolitics and history, wishing to close chapters with antiquated rules.
The artists who participate in the exhibition do not search for an apocalypse at all means, or at least – they do not find their audience after that. Most of them offer us a view from the end and beyond. Their artworks turn time into an endless loop, time, which bends into itself and carries different perspective to past events; it offers us to believe into new utopias or to dethrone the belief that the future is happy.

Today we live beyond the end of the story, beyond the end of art... As we find ourselves in that very moment when the animation character has stepped over the edge of the precipice, and walked into the air and a second after he has realized that, he would fly down.

The exhibition “The End and Beyond” will be opened on 9th September, 18:00 o’clock at Center for Contemporary Art – Plovdiv, the Ancient Bath and it will remain open until 9th October, 2011.
Working hours: 11:00 – 18:00.
Closed on Monday

With the support of the Foundation of “America for Bulgaria”, Municipality of Plovdiv, Goethe Institute Bulgaria, Robert Bosch Foundation, Pro Helvetia, Czech Cultural Centre Sofia and of the media partners BNT Plovdiv, Katra FM and Radio Plovdiv.