Month: Friday June 26th, 2015

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Summer Sessions Call for Proposal 2015
Deadline: May 25th, 2015

The Summer Sessions Talent Development Network are short-term residencies for young artists initiated by V2_(Institute for the Unstable Media) and organized by a network of cultural organizations all over the world.

The Summer Sessions offer a highly productive atmosphere with production support and expert feedback to jumpstart your professional art practice. The result is a pressure cooker in which you develop a project, from concept to presentable work, ready to show. From May 2009 on, more than 30 world-wide artists have participated in the Summer Sessions, and the partners are from all over the world including China, Spain, Canada, Norway, among others.

Joining Summer Sessions Talent Development Network in 2013, CAC has sponsored one Chinese artist (Hu Weiyi) and one Chinese artist group (Zhou Jiangshan and Long Xinru) to conduct their residency at V2_ and hosted two international artists (Johannes Langkamp, Máté Pacsika) who developed their work in shanghai for two months.

This year’s program is now calling for application. The application requirements and other details are as follows:

Eligibilities
-Early Career artists under 35 years old and/or graduated no more than 5 years before the time of applying.
-Artists can only apply if one of the partners in the talent development network is based in their country of residence. For Chinese artists, please choose CAC as your sponsor institute.

Duration
Roughly 8 weeks in the period between June 15th and September 30th 2015.

Application Procedure
1. Create a 2-minute video explaining your project, the support you need and why you should be a part of the Summer Sessions. Please note that all the partners in the network review the submitted video's, so English is preferred (don't worry you won't be judged on grammar or pronunciation).
2. Upload your video to a service like Youtube or Vimeo. Note that on Youtube you can make the video 'unlisted' so it can not be found without knowing the URL. On Vimeo you can set a password.
3. Go to http://www.summersessions.net/ and select your country of residence.
4. Fill out the online application form to provide your personal details and the link to the online video proposal.

Important Date
1. May 25th 2015: application deadline
2. Early June 2015: notification of acceptance.

For application and more information, please go to http://www.summersessions.net/

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2014 Summer Session Review: Máté Pacsika and the Vertigo System 

About the Artist 

Máté Pacsika was born in Budapest and obtained his MA in Media Design from Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design Budapest. In 2012 his graduation project Floatomat and its underlying theoretical research investigated the various layers of the relationship between attraction and narrative in media art. After graduation he moved to Rotterdam to work for V2_ Institute for the Unstable Media and went on with his next research about experience based art education.
http://kupiczacola.com

About the Vertigo System by Máté Pacsika

Vertigo System is the work created by Máté Pacsika during his 2014 summer  residency at Chronus Art Center.It is based on the automatization of a cinematographic technique called Dolly Zoom, also known as Vertigo Effect named after Hitchcocks movie from 1958. Vertigo effect is an in-camera effect based on a really simple optical game. It’s a highly unsettling effect with strong emotional impact, often used to emphasize dramatic events in the storyline. The goal of the Vertigo System is to build a fantastic video archive of tons of frightened faces.

In the show, audiences are trying the Vertigo System and experiencing the Vertigo Effect in an automatic real time process where one suddenly finds oneself in a frightfully different reality -- the background becomes a variable surroundings, an all-relative universe where one can experience an elementary feeling of subconscious distress. “I am interested in how and why situations like this would effect human perception in such a powerful way,” says the artist.

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About Fellowship:
This Fellowship has been created by the School of Art, Birmingham Institute of Art and Design (BIAD), Birmingham City University in conjunction with the Chronus Art Center (CAC) in Shanghai. The Fellowship offers an exciting opportunity for an artist at the commencement of or at a critical point in their professional career, to further develop his or her practice particularly in relation to Chinese art and culture. The Fellowship will be based in the School of Art. The successful applicant will be expected to become a full and active member of the Centre for Chinese Visual Arts (CCVA) and research community within the School.

This Fellowship is designed particularly for Chinese national students and graduates based either in China or in the UK. The successful applicant is to hold a postgraduate degree in Fine Art or a related subject and able to communicate in fluent English orally as well as in writing. The duration is normally, for 6 calendar months commencing in April 2015 .The Fellowship will normally conclude with an exhibition of work produced during the Fellowship as a CAC Fellowship section within the BIAD MA Fine Art show.

Value:
A total award of ￡10,000 will be offered to cover:

  • A monthly basis for 6 months at a rate of ￡1,000 per month.
  • One international return flight between China and the UK.
  • The rest ￡3,000 could cover both local transportation in UK and materials for production.

Studio Space & Access to the facility in BIAD ：

The Fellow will be allocated a studio within the Margaret Street building. Additional space will         be available during July and August. Access to the general teaching and learning resources in Margaret Street will be available, including use of the library and use of the extensive workshops.

Fellows will:

  • Be required to commit the majority of their time to the Fellowship and to work in and from the studios of the School of Art in Margaret Street, Birmingham;
  • Engage with the development of the CCVA;
  • Contribute at least two seminars within the School;

Method of Application & Selection :
The application form(http://www.chronusartcenter.org/CAC.docx) should be accompanied by visual evidence (as PowerPoint/Keynote/PDF, or as video, soundtrack) with accompanying information such as scale, materials, duration etc., and a written statement of not more than 1,000 words in English. Please email your application form to  fellowship@chronusartcenter.org 
Short-listed candidates will be required to make a 15-minute presentation in front of the panel on their work, reasons for application, and development of work on the Fellowship.

Both parties agree to develop this annual fellowship for at least three years as a long-term collaboration.

The Closing Date for Application:

  • 0:00 am Sunday 21st December 2014
  • Interviews will take place by late January 2015 in Shanghai, China

More info ： 

Sasa Qin （ sasa.qin@chronusartcenter.org )

About Birmingham Institute of Art and Design (BIAD):
BIAD, a Faculty of Birmingham City University, is one of the largest Institutions of its kind in the country.  It provides art and design courses at pre-degree, degree, postgraduate and research levels for over 3,500 full and part time students. The Schools of Fashion, Textiles and Three Dimensional Design, Visual Communication, School of Jewellery and School of Art are located across four sites at the exciting new faculty building at Parkside, Bournville, Vittoria Street and Margaret Street.

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Langkamp is a new media artist based in Rotterdam, Netherland. He received his bachelor of Fine Arts at the ArtEZ, AKI Academy of Visual Arts in 2011.

In his work he emphasizes an art practice through Video and Installations.

Often fascinated by the element of movement, he turned his current research to the illusional movement of the sun and our relationship to this visual environment (nature/ daily visual attendent/ environment).

In "Analog Sun Tracking", he wants to follow this optical movement through a 24 hours time-lapse video. A camera driven by a mechanical tracking device is recording the path of the sun.

"From the point of our view，the star at the center of our solar system shifts every minute and we call it "rising" and "setting" even though we understand its nature. It strikes me to play with this daily illusion and to do research about our relationship with this visual nature.

 

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A&T @

Art & Technology @ (working title) is an experimental project initiated by the Chronus Art Center (CAC) in partnership with ZKM | Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, Germany.

A&T@ is inspired by the rich tradition of the interdisciplinary, experimental synergy of art, science and technology throughout the mid-twentieth century as seen in the Art & Tech program advocated by Maurice Tuchman, chief curator of LACMA (Los Angles County Museum of Art) in the late 1960s, and the E.A.T (Experiments in Art and Technology) movement championed by artist Robert Rauschenberg and Bell Lab engineer Billy Klüver on the East Coast. Both programs played defining roles in conceiving art anew and in profoundly shaping the future trajectory of art history at a threshold in which human perception was increasingly intruded upon, expanded and constructed by a growing technological reality.

The A&T@ program aims to update this valuable legacy to meet the challenges and opportunities brought about by the ever more rapid innovation and ubiquitous deployment of digital technologies that dominate contemporary experience, as manifested in every aspect of the social, economic and cultural constitution of a global society; and to bring to date constructive cooperation between artists and technologists through critical dialogue and creative engagement.

A&T@ supports mid-career and established Chinese artists working in traditional media to venture into otherwise inaccessible channels of advanced programming and production facilities by pairing them with technologists and related industry to develop works that are unique and different from their established artistic vocabulary and formal strategies, thus opening up new horizons, furthering the experimental potential for these artists and, in turn, contributing to the development of art making in the twenty-first century.

The commissioned works are of a research nature, which require methodical approaches, close ideation, iteration and prototyping among the collaborating parties. The research and production cycle is approximately one year. The result will be first exhibited at the CAFA Art Museum in a dual exhibition format with an invited international media artist co-present an existing work, or in conjunction with a select work in the collection of the international partner institution (museum collection).  This paired exhibition format creates an exchange and dialogue between contrasting methodologies toward the use of technology and from different cultural and historical perspectives interpreting the nature of technology and its ramifications in shaping contemporary consciousness. The exhibition then travels to an international partner institution. The @ symbol indicates that the A&T program is an open platform which embraces future partner venues and collaboration with @ representing its diverse destinations. The entire process will be documented and archived for scholarly publication at a later date.

The first artist commissioned in this series is the internationally renowned painter LIU Xiaodong.

About the partner institutions of A&T@

Chronus Art Center

Established in 2013, Chronus Art Center (CAC) is China’s first nonprofit art organization dedicated to the presentation, research / creation and scholarship of media art. CAC with its exhibitions, residency-oriented fellowships, lectures and workshop programs and through its archiving and publishing initiatives creates a multifaceted and vibrant platform for the discourse, production and dissemination of media art in a global context. CAC is positioned to advance artistic innovation and cultural awareness by critically engaging with media technologies that are transforming and reshaping contemporary experiences.

http://www.chronusartcenter.org/en/
ZKM | Center for Art and Media

As a cultural institution, the Center for Art and Media (ZKM) in Karlsruhe holds a unique position in the world. It responds to the rapid developments in information technology and today's changing social structures. Its work combines production and research, exhibitions and events, coordination and documentation. For the development of interdisciplinary projects and promotion of international collaborations, the Center for Art and Media has manifold resources at its disposal: the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Media Museum, the Institute for Visual Media, the Institute for Music and Acoustics and the Institute for Media, Education, and Economics.

http://www.zkm.de

Collaborating Galleries

Lisson Gallery

Lisson Gallery is one of the most influential and longest-running international contemporary art galleries in the world. Since being founded in 1967 by Nicholas Logsdail, it has championed the careers of artists who have transformed the way art was made and presented. These include many important Minimal and Conceptual artists, such as Sol LeWitt and Richard Long, as well as a whole generation of significant British sculptors from Anish Kapoor and Richard Deacon to Shirazeh Houshiary and Tony Cragg. It continues to support the future of its artists, the legacy of historical figures, the evolving practice of established artists and the wide-ranging potential of emerging and new talents.

LIU Xiaodong is represented by Lisson Gallery

http://www.lissongallery.com

Development and Founding Affliate

Beijing Contemporary Art Foundation

Beijing Contemporary Art Foundation (BCAF) is committed to bringing the appreciation and enjoyment of the arts to a greater number of people, by organizing extensive and dynamic philanthropic activities, creating a contemporary urban think tank that gathers creative ideas, and connecting art with a variety of other disciplines. The Beijing Contemporary Art Foundation has been officially registered with the Beijing Municipal Civil Affairs Bureau since 2008, and is governed by the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Culture. BCAF is the only publicly funded foundation dedicated to contemporary art and urban culture.

http://www.bcaf.com.cn

 

About the artist

LIU Xiaodong is a painter of modern life, whose large-scale works serve as a kind of history painting for the emerging world. LIU locates the human dimension to such global issues as population displacement, environmental crisis and economic upheaval, but through carefully orchestrated compositions, he walks the line between artifice and reality. A leading figure among the Chinese Neo-Realist painters to emerge in the 1990s, his adherence to figurative painting amounts to a conceptual stance within a contemporary art context where photographic media dominate. His undertaking ‘to see people as they really are’ was galvanized in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square uprising and, alert to the legacy of Chinese Socialist Realism, his compositions are painted with loose, casual brushstrokes and layered with meaning. While he works from life and often en plein air, he chooses sitters to supply ancillary narratives to landscapes or situations. This participatory dimension to his practice, where projects are also documented by diaries and films, reflects an urgent sense of interconnection: ‘Society and art’, he says, ‘should be like breathing – one breathes in and the other breathes out’ (2008).

Lui Xiaodong lives and works in Beijing but has undertaken projects in Tibet, Japan, Italy, the UK, Cuba and Austria, and closer to home, in Jincheng, in the north-eastern province of Liaoning, China, where he was born in 1963. He has a BFA and an MFA in painting from the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing (1988, 1995), where he now holds tenure as professor. He continued his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts, University of Complutense, Madrid (1998–99). Solo exhibitions include Kunsthaus Graz, Austria (2012) and Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing (2010), while his work was been included in numerous group exhibitions such as the Shanghai Biennale (2000, 2010), the 15th Biennale of Sydney (2006) and the 47th Venice Biennale (1997).

http://www.lissongallery.com/artists/liu-xiaodong