[artinfo] Open Call Symposium Frontiers of Solitude

[Milos Vojtechovsky]

Open Call for Participants

The international symposium Frontiers of 
Solitude, organized as part of the eponymous art 
project, will offer a comparison of the opinions, 
experiences, and points of view of artists, 
curators, and invited guests on the theme of 
transitions in the landscape in which we 
currrently live.

The symposium will search for relationships 
between the cultural, political, and economic 
aspects of contemporary concepts and our 
understandings of what is meant by such words as 
countryside, landscape, and land, including the 
topography of transitional zones, with an eye on 
both establishing and crossing over boundaries 
and limitations.

The term landscape can be understood to reflect 
our relationship with the land. It is everywhere 
around us, under our feet; it is our shared 
starting point; it is that which at once unites 
and separates us. With this in mind, we can begin 
to raise questions about what is happening to the 
land. How are we connected to it, how do we 
relate to it, what separates us from it? How and 
to what extent can we understand the land, and 
what do we all know and not know about it? To 
whom does it belong, and how do we change it, for 
better or worse?

The artist, architect, businessman, scientist, 
farmer, and specialist each see the land in their 
own terms. How can we express and capture in 
human, rather than statistical, terms, both the 
visible and invisible transformations that the 
land undergoes, both locally and globally, with 
regard to the entire biosphere and climate?

Industrialization brings about mobility of people 
and goods, hyper-connectivity, overproduction and 
urbanization, which have transformed a large part 
of the 21st-century landscape into an industrial 
concourse, test laboratory, and a field of 
conflict among people, and between people and 
other living creatures. From this, there comes 
about a blurring of existing, seemingly 
well-defined borders, zones both separate and 
interconnected, with regions of safety and 
danger, rich and poor, managed and wild.

Have we already entered an ideosphere of beyond 
imaginary boundaries? Does contemporary art make 
it possible to orient ourselves within this 
unstable and ever-changing territory? Do these 
art projects and festivals on the theme of the 
Anthropocene offer fresh approaches, or rather 
exploit the fascination and anxiety that is 
elicited by superficial and ultimately temporary 
phenomena?

We encourage artists, scientists, cultural 
researchers, environmentalists, and other lateral 
thinkers to submit proposals for the symposium.

We welcome proposals until 30 November 2015.

Proposals should comprise: an abstract (250 
words) and a bio/resume (200 words).

Please direct proposals to: info at frontiers-of-solitude.org.

This project focuses on current transformations 
of the landscape and the close connections 
between our post-industrial civilization and 
nature. These themes are elaborated in terms of 
the cultural geography and morphology of three 
specific areas of central and northern Europe. 
The project includes residencies and workshops in 
selected areas of the Czech Republic, Iceland and 
Norway. The project is a joint initiative of the 
Skolská 28 Gallery (Deai/setkání), the Atelier 
Nord, and the Skaftfell Center for Visual Art, 
and is supported by grant from Iceland, 
Lichtenstein and Norway through the EEA Grants.

http://frontiers-of-solitude.org/