Art Line International art- and culture project started

At the end of 2010 the application for art-project Art Line to the South-Baltic Cross-Border Co-Operation Programme was granted. During the 18th and 19th of January 2011 all 14 partners involved in the project met for the very first time to discuss the future of the project. This meeting took place on Stena Line´s ferry, on its route from Karlskrona, Sweden to Gdynia, Poland.

What is Art Line?

Art Line is a big art- and culture project; a collaboration between 14 partners from Poland, Russia, Lithuania, Germany and Sweden. Kaliningrad Branch of the National Centre for Contemporary Arts is one of those partners.
The project will run during 3 years until 2013, and it is the very first art-project granted money from the South Baltic programme.
The purpose of Art Line is to expand upon and strengthen the regional and international art-scene with a professional collaboration between art-institutions, museums and colleges, as well as create a vibrant, contemporary and open space for public discourse in the South Baltic region.

Digital artplatform

During the three year period of the project a digital art-platform, amongst many other digital and physical artifacts, will be developed. The platform will be used for exchanges and experiments in digital- and social media, and work as a platform for showcasing artworks. The storytelling-project ”Telling the Baltic” will be showcased here. This project will gather stories from seamen, stories that will later on be turned into works of art by different artists from the South Baltic region.

Seminar

At the kick-off seminar on Stena Line the 19th of January project leader Torun Ekstrand informed all participants about the project.Future plans were laid out and discussions held. Lectures were as well given by curator Dmitry Bulatov from the Kaliningrad Branch of the National Centre for Contemporary Arts, Martin Schibli, curator of Kalmar Art Artmuseum and the polish artist Mateusz Pek. At the end of the interesting and intense meeting all participating partners stepped off the ferry to start their respective work on what is going to be a bridge-building and innovative art-project that will soon reach the public.