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


METAPOLISM. Urban matters

AЯT PROTECTS YOU / Jochen Traar (A)
gangart / Simonetta Ferfoglia, Heinrich Pichler (A)
Institute for Cultural Resistant Goods / Barbara Zeidler, Abb? Libansky (A/CZ)
Josef Ramaseder (A)
Heiko Bressnik (A/D)
Curator: Jakob Racek

Opening: Oct. 15, 2010 - 5 PM.
Panel: “Utopias of disorder” with Alexander Klose / Berlin - 6 PM.
Exhibition: Oct. 16 - November 12, 2010

"METAPOLISM. Urban matters“ in the Center for Contemporary Art CCA Plovdiv shows artistic interventions addressing the cycles of utilization and devaluation of mundane things. Found objects, raw and waste materials are being recruited for artistic means and subjected to a series of rededications. Every project of the exhibition is set within different urban circuits and they all use “recycling” as an artistic strategy to create arrangements with an open outcome rather than completed works of art. Eight artists from Austria, Italy, Germany and the Czech Republic are working for two weeks in Plovdiv to realize site-specific installations that address the circulation of goods, people and intangibles. Their works are the starting point for a survey of urban landscapes and their metabolic processes.
“METAPOLISM. Urban matters” has set itself the task of learning from the maenadic systems beyond the order of urban infrastructure and to undertake an “analysis of practice” by artistic means. We approach the city of Plovdiv as a morphological field of forces in which models of spontaneous partnership and cooperation are vividly developing. The artistic interventions unfold this previously under-exposed terrain of informal urban agency. They move in spheres, where political decisions, social distribution and corporeal positioning are questioned in terms of a better understanding of the function of community.

This project is kindly supported by bm:ukk (Austrian Federal Ministry for Education, Arts and Culture), Austrian Embassy Sofia, Goethe-Institute Bulgaria, Robert Bosch Stiftung, European Cultural Foundation, Municipiality of Plovdiv, Liebherr.

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


FA?ADE VIDEO FESTIVAL PLOVDIV
a project by Art Today Association in collaboration with the Goethe-institute Bulgaria

October 5 - 10, 2010 – every day from 8 to 10 PM.

Competition
The Bulgarian city of Plovdiv will host for the very first time the international FA?ADE VIDEO FESTIVAL starting on October the 5th, 2010. Exteriors in the picturesque part of the Old Town will be transformed into screens for video art in all its variety of forms. More than 40 competition entries of emerging and advanced video art authors from over 25 countriesall over the world were selected by an international jury: БBettina Steinbr?gge, Berlin, a curator and critic;Sevdalina KochevskaPlovdiv, an artist; Kalin Serapionov, Sofia, an artist; Krassimir TerzievSofia, an artist; Emil Mirazchiev, Plovdiv, an artist and the director of Art Today Association. The festival will close with this year's FA?ADE VIDEOAWARD winner on October the 10th, 2010.

Parallel events
A series of parallel events will accompany the festival?s main competition panel. On Wednesday, October the 6th, a selection of 40 years of german video art (40jahrevideokunst.de) will bring together some of the most progressive and influental authors from Germany in the recent decades. Within the open class panel we have invited Bettina Steinbr?gge to talk about "Modes of Curatorial Practice: Moving between art, cinema and performance". On the following day, October the 8th, we will show a special selection of video works produced within the framework of the "DAAD Berliner K?nstlerprogramm". Since 1961 this program has been inviting artists to live in Berlin for a year. The videos selected for FA?ADE VIDEOFESTIVAL represent the urban context of the German capital with its various historical, social and cultural strata. On Saturday, October the 9th, the open class panel will offer a"Video art tutorial", for artists, introducing some conceptual and technical basics of video art production.

Context
The concept of FA?ADE VIDEO FESTIVAL follows two major ideas:
The urban space changes its function of a passive background and transforms into an active zone. The neglected public space of the Old Town of Plovdiv is transformed into a vivid place of artistic encounter. Connoisseurs of art and passersby form a unique audience. The facades themselves start to act, talk and move - they become alive.
Video art leaves its hermetic and privileged venues as galleries, museums and arthouse-cinemas. It is taken out into direct contact with the public and its surroundings. The facade becomes a new medium of encounter between artist and recipient, between art and urban environment. The festival will become a platform where cultural institutions, curators, artists, critics from all over the world will be able to exchange ideas and experience in the field of the contemporary art.

www.facade.arttoday.org

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


Facciata - fa?ade editor
media project in public space by "media architecture", Weimar (Germany)

September 17 - 18, 2010, 8 PM.

The project »Facciata« picks up aspects of change, flexibility as well as of combination and quotation and creates a mapping of the new facade. The facade becomes an image, an individually and interactively designed fiction within the real space.

"mediaarchitecure.de" is an award winning, Weimar based studio operating at the intersection of art, design and technology. Some of the studio’s projects resemble classical commercial work, but venture regularly into art, design or technology research. "mediaarchitecure.de" was founded in 2006 by Jens Weber and Andreas Wolter in Weimar.

»Facciata« is part of FA?ADE VIDEOFESTIVAL PLOVDIV, October 5 -10, 2010

This project is kindly support by Goethe-Institut Bulgaria, Robert Bosch Stiftung and Municipiality Plovdiv.

www.mediaarchitecture.de/projekte/facciata

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


Appendix - notes on a vanishing body
Exhibition by Katharina Racek (A) in the Corridor Gallery

September 10 - October 30, 2010

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


DWELLING-IN-TRAVEL
16th Week of Contemporary Art, September 10 - October 10, 2010

Alterazioni Video (IT), Yael Bartana (IL), Ursula Biemann (CH), Jota Castro (PE), Mekhitar Garabedian (BE), Seamus Farrell (FR / IE), Iman Issa (EG), Hiwa K. (IQ), Daniela Kostova & Miryana Todorova (BG), Daniel Knorr (RO), Carlos Motta (CO), Ivan Moudov (BG), Ahmet ?g?t (TR), Maria Papadimitriou, (GR), Enzo Umbaca (IT)
Curators: Katia Anguelova and Andrea Wiarda

The exhibition Dwelling in Travel takes place in the context of the 16th Week of Contemporary Art organised by the Art Today Association in Plovdiv. Located in the middle of the ethnically, culturally and linguistically diverse Balkan region, with borders that have continuously shifted throughout history; the area now called Bulgaria has experienced a myriad of peoples and cultures crossing, staying or passing through its territory.
The exhibition Dwelling in Travel aims to explore issues relating to what has been termed ???fluid citizenship’ and ???new mobility’ in contemporary global society, most specifically in the extended European territory. The project as such doesn’t focus on the historical or political problems of migration nor on the rights of migrants, but rather on the state of being, living and working in a place, a culture, that is not necessarily one’s own – thus, dwelling-in-travel.
Dwelling in Travel brings together the work of 15 artists and collectives in the Ancient Bath (Chifte Banya) in Plovdiv. Seven specially conceived or re-elaborated projects will be presented: by Seamus Farrell (born in Ireland, living and working between Paris and Patria), Iman Issa (born in Egypt, living and working in New York), Hiwa K. (born in Iraq (Kurdistan), living in Berlin), Daniela Kostova/Miryana Todorova (both born in Bulgaria, living and working in New York), Daniel Knorr (born in Romania, living and working in Berlin), Ivan Moudov (Bulgaria) and Enzo Umbaca (Italy), the last two both with significant ???migratory experience’. All projects contribute to an exhibition of works which reflect on nomadic, cultural and oral history, with the dual aims of critical exploration and practical intervention.

Kindly supported by: Municipality of Plovdiv, Robert Bosch Stiftung, Goethe Institut Bulgarien, UniCredit Bulbank
Technical materials are kindly provided by: Gallery Vitosha, art project Depot, Essenza