The Pole of Attraction 2010

Dear friends and colleagues!

Happy Holiday season from the Ekaterinburg branch of the NCCA!

New insights, new dreams, new achievements in the upcoming 2010!

Thank you for your interest in our projects.

Our plans for the next year

February

«The Sunday School» for young artists

EB NCCA Program: Education

Lecture Hall, EB NCCA, Dobrolyubova 19a

«The Sunday School» for young artists is an educational program that introduces the audience to the nuances of aesthetics, the basic concepts, genres and tendencies in contemporary art. Young creatives, students and the graduates of arts schools and humanities majors are invited to participate in the series of workshops and discussions.

March

“Reconsidering Industrial Landscapes: Investigation, Preservation and Perspectives of Development”

International conference

March 11-13, Ural State University

Program: Ural Factories: Industries of Meaning

The conference will focus on the analysis of the role of industrial heritage in strategic marketing of territories and cities. Industry is understood as not solely a cornerstone of modern civilization that has revolutionized mindsets and lifeways, but also as a ubiquitous sphere of the production of meanings, historically changing views on resource use. In the context of post- and re- industrialization, this inexhaustible heritage becomes a unique material for artistic thinking, a provocateur of cultural events. The conference aims to define the strategies and perspectives of revealing and realizing the creative potential of industrial cities, which in its turn will also foster the reformation of political and economic resources of the territory.

The conference will become the key preparatory part of the first Ural Industrial Biennale of contemporary art that is to be held in Ekaterinburg in September 9 – October 10, 2010.

April

PRO-city

art & architecture action

Program: Practices of Interdisciplinarity

The project is held as part of the International day of memorial and historic heritage protection. During several days various artistic actions will enliven the historical architectural sites of Ekaterinburg. The participants will include creative communities and organizations, architectural studios, students of art, architecture and design majors. The action will be preceded by a series of workshops by specially invited architects and artists. The project is intended to popularize architectural heritage of Ekaterinburg by the means of contemporary art.

May

Public-art project within the Museum Night

Program: Ural - Regions

EB NCCA, Dobrolyubova 19a

Since 2007 EB NCCA takes an active part in organization of the city action “Museum Night”. Traditionally the projects are realized on an open space area near the NCCA building: in 2008 it was a project by young Ekaterinburg artists «Аrt-Polygon», and in 2009 German artist Agnes Meyer-Brandis has presented “IMPACT: Studies in Cause and Effects”. In 2010, EB NCCA invites emerging artists to continue experiments with the spaces outside the white cube. Both the participants and the viewers will be part of the process of creating an alternative “zone of cultural gravity”.

Theory and Practice of Media Art: Parergons and Perspectives

International seminar

Program: Art-Investigation

As new media art becomes more ubiquitous it is crucial to see through the trendiness of this topic and discover its epistemological and aesthetic qualities. There has already been a comprehensive theoretical basis built to support the growing practice of international media arts. A substantial contribution to the progress of media art practice and theory during the recent decades has been produced in Germany. In Russia, the development of this highly promising field of arts is still sporadic, almost no ground exists for understanding its specificities and underpinnings. The seminar is intended to introduce to Ekaterinburg audience some of the most important issues of international media art theory and practice and to instigate further discussions, research and practice in the region.

In conjunction to the seminar there will also be a presentation of media art works from the collections of ZKM Karlsruhe, Ars Electronica Center (Linz), and MediaArtLab (Moscow).

September-October

Ural Industrial Biennale of contemporary art

September 9 – October 10

Program: Ural Factories: Industries of Meaning

Industrial spaces of Ekaterinburg, Berezovsky, Kamensk-Uralsky, Nizhny Tagil

Unprecedented penetration of contemporary art into the city's functioning and abandoned factory spaces will help to establish a unique quality of Ekaterinburg as an internationally recognized creative center with the magnetism and infrastructure to attract ambitious art projects by the world leading artists.

Ural Industrial Biennale of Contemporary Art will be a platform to integrate business and artistic elites, which is decisive in the development of creative industries in the one of Russia’s most thriving areas. The Biennale is intended to place Ekaterinburg at the cutting edge of today's global dialogue about the direction of post-industrial civilization. It will resurrect the essential meaning of the term “industry”: a process of creation and bringing new forms to life.

The motto of the Biennale “A factory per an artist!” refers to a post-industrial competition of potentials, capabilities, and understandings of the challenge of critically re-identify the industrial past of the region.

The projects of Russian and international artists that apply the cutting-edge strategies and techniques will be selected by the international curatorial group and presented for a final decision to the organizing committee.

The Other Lands

Exhibition

Program: Ural – Regions

A peculiar tendency can be observed in young art in Russian regions: a will to escape the social and political themes in favor of meta-reality explorations. Each artist creates his/her own rules and dimensions, transcending the borders between a physical world and fantasy realities, inhabiting these imaginary liminal spaces with forms and characters whose aesthetics is both surreal and cyberpunk.

The exhibition will be presented at the festival “Alive Perm” in May and as part of the Ural Industrial Biennale in September.

November-December

VoTH

Exhibition.

Program: Collaboration

VoTH is a moving exhibition of Dutch and Russian contemporary art. During 2010 it will be presented in Yaroslavl, Krasnoyarsk, Ekaterinburg and Moscow, the final destination point for the tour will be the Stedelijk Museum ‘s-Hertogenbosch.

VoTH will feature artists from the Netherlands who work in Russia or are deeply influenced by it and Russian artists with connections to the Netherlands, i.e. living/ studying or working in the Netherlands. These artists embody an insider/outsider position and reflect on their home country from a slightly detached perspective. An artist-nomad invests in a personal visual language, claiming an autonomous zone for creativity, illuminating the differences and building new bridges between the cultures.

Initiated by: KW14 (www.kw14.nl), a well-known artist's initiative in the south of the Netherlands.

Ongoing projects

ZA ART magazine

Program: Cultural Journalism

an informational and analytical web-resource (distributed in pdf-format) that provides a review of cultural contexts and projects from the Russian regions, a critical platform for promoting art news of the “Non-Moscow”.

Open Mondays

EB NCCA Program: Education

lecture and discussion club on the issues of contemporary art: events (biennale, festivals, exhibitions, conferences, premiers, concerts, etc.), aesthetic and philosophical aspects, thematic and disciplinary divisions (visual arts, film, theatre and dance, architecture, sound and media art). Lectors and moderators include artists, curators, critics, film directors, writers and other creative professionals.