The tenth edition of the SURVIVAL Art Review will take place at the ‘Oławka’ stadium at ul. Na Niskich Łąkach 8 in Wrocław, and in its nearest proximity (the area of the so-called Bermuda Triangle). This area, despite being located near the centre, lie out of the main traffic routes. The ‘Oławka’ stadium itself is a picturesque training centre with well-kept sports facilities.

In consequence of choosing a venue of this kind, the content of the jubilee edition of the SURVIVAL Art Review will be determined by key words and phrases such as: competition, struggling for perfection, spectacle, games, collective experience etc. Sport and physical culture are connected with a wide array of notions and human desires: with perfecting the body and the spirit, fair play, the need for competition. Sport rivalry is primarily an opportunity to test and prove one’s skills as well as a chance to overcome weaknesses and inhibitions. Sport is also a collective experience and peculiar rituals – a spectacle, an enactment of a game. Therefore, the motto of the tenth edition of SURVIVAL – ‘Up To You’ – refers to broadly defined activity and the need for putting one’s abilities to the test.

Situating the tenth edition of the Review on the premises of a functioning sports centre will also take on significance in the context of the approaching EURO 2012 Football Championship. Contemporary sport is just one of many commodities on the global market, and the element of rivalry connected with it becomes visible as soon as countries and cities begin the competition for being the host of the most important sports events. The world of art is also being increasingly dominated by market rules. Some of the rules governing the world of contemporary art may resemble those functioning in the world of sport. Just like in sports games, in the world of visual arts there is competition and only few of the ‘players’ (artists) succeed in ‘coming top of the league’ and later defending their position. The complex system of numerous competitions, often prestigious ones, fuels  these ‘artistic Olympics’. The artists who take part in them become the ‘representatives’ of their countries, galleries, institutions, circles. The long-standing tradition of SURVIVAL, based on selecting some of the art projects entered in the competition, also operates in terms of rivalry, choosing ‘winners’, i.e. authors of most interesting conceptions. The deciding game, however, always happens when the artistic idea is carried out in live public space.

The SURVIVAL Art Review has taken place in Wrocław for ten years, each year exploring a new venue and a new set of notions connected with it. The artists of SURVIVAL have worked at the Central Railway Station in Wrocław, in an air-raid shelter, in a park and in former Soviet barracks, to name but a few. During the Review, works of both beginning artists and acclaimed representatives of Polish contemporary art were shown, including the realizations of Dorota Nieznalska, Jerzy Kosałka, Rafał Jakubowicz or Stanisław Dróżdż.

Deadline for sending entries to the competitions: 31 March 2012
More information about the competition and the previous editions of the Review available at www.survival.art.pl
Rules / regulations and entry form available [HERE].

10th SURVIVAL Art Review / ‘Oławka’ stadium, ul. Na Niskich Łąkach 8, Wrocław / 22 June – 1 July 2012

Organiser: ART TRANSPARENT Foundation

Topics of activity:
- Contemporary visual art
- Art in public spaces
- Transformation of public space in different European countries
- Life long learning
- Buiding partnership between organisations providing cultural education
- Exploring the landscapes of institutions dealing contemporary art in Europe

Forms of activity
Learning partnership consists of certain number of visits (mobilities) of staff and learners of applying organisations to other countries and study visits connected with getting to know local environment of the hosting organisations, exchanging experience and contacts. Every partner will be responsible for hosting one visit. The project lasts 2 years. Apart from visits for a successful project partners should involve local actions connected with the partnership.

Finances
Learning partnerships are being financed by the Grundtrvig Programme http://eacea.ec.europa.eu/llp/grundtvig/grundtvig_en.php. Every country has a  National Agency(link) where you can find more information under Partnership Projects. Projects are financed by flat rate  and depends on number of mobilities (7000-24000 eu), is easy to administer. Deadline for applying it 21.2.2012. All organisations apply with the same – master application, that is being submitted to the national Agency out with attachments. There is no leading organisatin, all partner have the same rights and duties.

Who are we looking for? Organisations, institutions and places dealing with contemporary visual art and art in public space from EU countries and Croatia, who are offering also different types of educational offer for adult learners (non-professional education, not within formal education framework); interested in getting to know other institutions in Europe and learning from their experience.

Contact: Paulina Maloy paulina.maloy@gmail.com, skype: paulina.poznanska, 

Who are we?
ART TRANSPARENT Contemporary Art Foundation was originated in 2005 in Wrocław. People who are involved in its work are specialists in a variety of fields: artists and lecturers associated with the Wrocław Academy of Fine Arts, psychologists and specialists in the area of social sciences. The Foundation’s goals regarding contemporary art and social topics are being achieved by means of local and national projects as well as own initiatives and attempts to consolidate the artistic and intellectual environment around current social and art problems.
Since 2005 ART TRANSPARENT organizes the SURVIVAL Art Review /www.survival.art.pl/, and since 2007  runs the Contemporary Art Gallery in the former studio of professor Eugeniusz Geppert ‘Mieszkanie Gepperta’ (Geppert;s Apartment) /www.mieszkaniegepperta.pl/. Besides, the Foundation is engaged in publishing and educational activities, in particular those connected with the issues of social exclusion, otherness and anti-discrimination.

According to Borges’s deliberations (Osvaldo Ferrari, Jorge Luis Borges, ‘The Reencuentro – Dialogos Ineditos’, Sudamericana 1999), writing the fifth gospel, in literary terms an apocrypha on a par with its four predecessors, seems to be an impossible task, or one that would require sacrificing a whole life – in a sense, making an ‘offering’ of life. The death of the Italian artist Pier Paolo Pasolini, who was violently murdered in 1975 (probably due to his uncompromising political views and equally uncompromising artistic work – Pasolini died just before the premiere of the famous ‘Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom’), could be understood as a final, tragic act of devoting one’s life to art – or one artwork – which Borges mentions. Pasolini’s work becomes synonymous with the term ‘gospel’ and takes on its functions because – being a poetic parable, a symbol, a hyperbole, an anecdote – it is also a political manifesto and a radical declaration. The literal reference to the original text and an attempt to tell it anew – that is, to reinterpret it – is crucial.

Pasolini’s ‘Gospel’ (or a gospel according to Pasolini) was written using especially the language of the cinema. Literal reading of the Biblical original was reflected most clearly in his three masterpieces of cinematography:  ‘La Ricotta’ (1962), ‘Gospel According to Matthew’ (1964) and ‘Theorem’ (1968). In these realizations, which refer to the Passion, traditional figures reveal their conventionality or take on a new depth, far beyond canonical regulations and ordering doctrines. Pasolini took away all their sacredness, their sanctifying aura, in order to show his own metaphysics derived from a consent to a terrifying randomness of the world. A feeling of such randomness permeates almost all the artist’s works, both film and literary ones.

The third part of the ‘Gospel of the Damned’ is devoted to the idea of ‘exegesis’, showing a possibility of an individual reading and interpretation of the ‘Scripture’ – thus experiencing personally the canonical test (i.e. a text which has become an order). The subject of ‘Gospel of the Damned part 3: EXEGESIS’ revolves around issues connected with the coexistence of individual ‘religious’ experience (which does not necessarily have to be connected with any ‘rite’, or a regulated ‘way’ of ‘professing’ a faith, but could be an element of the not-everyday life, in which a metaphysical experience is combined with experiencing the present moment, the passage of time, being entangled in social roles, sex, desire, attachment) and traditions and orders which regulate this experience (such as norms, rituals and doctrines).

Works of artists from Wrocław: Anna Kołodziejczyk, Maja Wolińska, Dy Tagowska, Łukasz Paluch and Michał Bieniek will be presented in the Mieszkanie Gepperta Art Gallery (and outside – in open urban space)
Curator: Michał Bieniek
Verrnissage: 10 November, 7 pm.
The exhibition will be open until 9 December; the gallery is open from Wednesday to Friday, from 4 pm. to 7 pm.
Mieszkanie Gepperta Art Gallery, ul. Ofiar Oświęcimskich 1/2, Wrocław