INVITATION TO LECTURES AND ARTISTS’ TALK: HOW CAN ART ACTIVATE NEW AND LOST QUALITIES IN OUR EVERYDAY LIVES?
As part of their research to develop an art project for “WE PARAPOM!” the artists Zbyněk Baladrán, Amica Dall (Assemble), Paul Rajakovics (transparadiso) and Apolonija Šušteršič will present their working methods as well as selected projects. During the exchange with the audience, cultural actors of the city, all interested Chemnitz residents and guests are invited to propose topics for “WE PARAPOM!” and to discuss them in relation to current social issues together with the artists and the urban ethnologist Kathrin Wildner (metroZones). The exchange of different perspectives on the city, of experiences and desires, opens up new visions that leave behind the “unfeasible” and strive for the impossible.
The art project “WE PARAPOM! – European Parade of Apple Trees” is one of the first visible projects in the program of the European Capital of Culture Chemnitz 2025. Up to 4,000 trees of different European apple varieties will be planted in an axis across the city and across property boundaries. The apple tree plantings of “WE PARAPOM!” will be continuously accompanied by artistic interventions until 2025. These address current social issues such as migration, working conditions, ecology, soil sealing, questioning the representation of power and stimulate discussions on the current situation of democracy and a new commitment of civil society for active democratic participation. “WE PARAPOM!” is a project of the European Capital of Culture Chemnitz 2025 GmbH and is curated by the artist Barbara Holub.
More informations about the project: weparapom.eu.
After the event, we invite you to visit together the art action MOVING GARDEN by Maider López. Meeting point is at 6:30 p.m. at Brückenstraße.
PROGRAMM
Location: former EDEKA market / department store, Bahnhofstraße 62, 09111 Chemnitz
02:00–02:30 p.m.: Apolonija Šušteršič, Oslo/Ljubljana
02:30–03:00 p.m.: Paul Rajakovics (transparadiso), Vienna
03:00–03:15 Uhr: Coffee break
03:15–03:45 p.m.: Zbyněk Baladrán, Prague
03:45–04:15 p.m.: Amica Dall (Assemble), Barcelona/London
04:15–05:00 p.m.: Discussion moderated by Kathrin Wildner, Berlin
ARTIST TALKS BY:
Apolonija Šušteršič: Neigbours & Citizens
Apolonija Šušteršič will present her practice and talk about an ongoing project, NEIGHBOURS & CITIZENS. The project emphasises the concept of the “neighbour” and the role of the “citizen”, questioning the history and the future of our society, as well as being concerned about the just past and the future of our immediate neighbourhood. The project is an exercise of cooperation, solidarity, and taking care of the immediate environment.
Apolonija Šušteršič is a visual artist and architect. Her research-based practice is situated, cross-pollinating different fields of spatial practice and critical theory with projects that would activate cooperation between people or groups of people. She creates processes for engagement and platforms for action where people can reconnect with their sense of agency through getting involved in working with space and place. She taught at Oslo National Academy of the Arts, Head of MFA Program: Art & Public Space. Her exhibitions include the Tirana Biennale 3, Tirana; 12th Architecture Biennale, Venice, and Gwangju Biennial.
Paul Rajakovics (transparadiso): Direct urbanism: artistic-urban action for the city and society
The transdisciplinary action of transparadiso is characterized by the method of direct urbanism, for which they develop artistic-performative actions and urban interventions to address the increasingly unplannable challenges of urban development – for a socially engaged society.
transparadiso works on shifting boundaries and creates situations for this purpose, for which they employ artistic strategies such as the production of desires, anticipatory fiction or macro-utopia. By presenting the projects Commons come to Liezen, Times of Dilemma and Harbour for Cultures, Paul Rajakovics shows how boundaries between “folk culture” and “high culture” are broken down and how art projects can resist neoliberal interests.
Paul Rajakovics is an architect, urbanist and artist. In 1999 he founded transparadiso with Barbara Holub as a transdisciplinary practice between architecture, urbanism, art and urban interventions. He is a member of the editorial board of dérive-magazine for urban research, lectures at TU Vienna and realized workshops at Universidad Católica/ Valparaíso, London Metropolitan University and IUAV Venezia, among others. Recipient of the Schindler Grant/ MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Los Angeles, 2004, Otto Wagner Urban Design Award 2007; Austrian Art Award 2018 for visual arts. Partner of the EU project SPACEX (Spatial Practices in Art and Architecture for Empathetic Exchange, 2022-2025).
Foto: Tomáš Vodňanský
Zbyněk Baladrán: Limits of cooperation.
What are the limits of cooperation. Is individually conceived art still an expression of social desires and passions? Didn’t the Internet, the mass media and corporations take over this role?
Description of the artist’s practice on the border of art production and knowledge production. An attempt to articulate activities after the postmodernism ended and nothing else began.
Zbyněk Baladrán is an author, visual artist, curator and exhibition architect. In his works he is investigating territories that are occupied by that part of civilization, which we call Western. Using methodology similar to those used by the ethnographer, the anthropologist and the sociologist, this post-humanist “archaeologist” is digging up the remnants of the not-so-distant past, looking particularly at societal systems in relation to the heritage of the political left. He studied art history in the Department of Arts, Charles University and New Media at the Academy of Fine Arts, both in Prague. In 2001 he co-founded Display – Association for Research and Collective Practice, where he is working as a curator and organizer. He took part in Manifesta 5 in Donostia / San Sebastian (2004), the 11th Lyon Biennial, the 56th La Biennale di Venezia (2013) and at a show in MoMA (2015). He is represented by the Jocelyn Wolff Gallery in Paris, Gandy Gallery in Bratislava, Hunt Kastner in Prague and cooperative Salvator Rosa.
Amica Dall (Assemble): Never work with Children or Animals
Amica Dall will present a short summary of her work with children, and describe some of the theoretical and cultural frameworks that support, animate and enable this work. Making work with children is often understood as a social act, or a way of ‘giving back’. Amica Dall will describe how her work is based on an opposite dynamic, in which the children’s creative, political and social insights are the sustaining force, and offer new ways of approaching and acting in the world.
Amica Dall is an interdisciplinary practitioner and a founding member of Assemble, a founder of Assemble Play, a founding trustee of both Baltic Street Adventure Playground, Glasgow, and of Theatrum Mundi, London / Paris. With postgraduate training in Anthropology at UCL, her work focuses on the material culture of the city, pedagogy and children in the built and designed environment. She is an expert in participatory practice with children, engaging children in organisational and design processes, and in designing both for play and learning. Amica Dall has run undergraduate architecture units at the Architecture Association (2018-21), Bartlett School of Architecture (2019-21), Kingston School of Art (2018-19) and acted as lecturer at Dirty Art Depart, Sandberg Institute Amsterdam, and at the Royal College of Art. She currently teaches in “Situated Practice” at the Bartlett School of Architecture, and works as a resident designer, curator and occasional educator at Banana Mountain, an off-grid, independent learning community for children 6-16, where she also runs an AIR programme for artists working with children. Assemble received the Turner Prize in 2015.
Kathrin Wildner conducts research as an urban ethnologist in New York, Mexico City, Istanbul and other urban conglomerations. Her research focuses on ethnographic methods of spatial analysis, theories of public space, transnational urbanism, and artistic practices. She is involved in numerous international projects, publications and exhibitions, founding member of the group “metroZones” and scientific-artistic coordinator of the research and exhibition project “Global Prayers. Liberation and Redemption in Megacities”. From 2013 to 2015, she was a visiting professor in the master’s program in spatial strategies at the Berlin Weißensee School of Art. From 2012 – 2021 she held the professorship for Cultural Theory and Cultural Practice at the HafenCity University Hamburg.
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